Who is a Business Analyst?

Business Analysts have emerged to have a key role in recent business scenarios. Some people think that the role of a Business Analyst is to make money for the organization, which may not be true in direct context. But indirectly, the action and decision taken by Business Analysts do leave an impact on the financial prospects of the organization.

A primary job responsibility of Business Analyst is to communicate with all stakeholders & to elicit, analyze and validate the requirements for changes to business processes, information systems, and policies.

A professional business analyst plays a big role in moving an organization toward efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

Before we jump into the tutorial, we will see some basic perspective of a Business Analyst to help the organization succeed. The foremost priority for any business analyst will be to try understanding following things

• Understand what business does and how it does
• Determine how to improve existing business processes
• Identify the steps or tasks to support the implementation of new features
• Design the new features to implement
• Analyze the impact of implementing new features
• Implement the new features

Different Business Analyst Role

Business Analyst can be from any sector, and the role differs based on the sector. Business Analyst are classified into various categories like

• Business Analyst
• Business Process Analyst
• IT Business Analyst
• Business System Analyst
• System Analyst
• Data Analyst
• Functional Architect
• Usability or UX Analyst

Typical Qualities of a Good Business Analyst:

• Analytical skills– An outstanding analytical skills will separate out a good business analyst. A good part of BA role includes analyzing data, workflow, user or stakeholders inputs, documents, etc.
• Leadership skills– directing team members, forecasting budget, helping team members with the problem, etc.
• Business process and planning– Planning the project scope, understanding and implementing requirement of project, identifying resources required for the project and so on
• Technical skill– If a business analyst is in the IT sector, few technical aspect are expected to know like operating systems, hardware capabilities, database concepts, networking, SDLC methodology, etc.

Tools of the Trade

To make their work easier, the business analyst often depends on tools like

• TopTeam Analyst: This tool helps in providing a complete solution for requirements gathering and management
• SmartDraw: It is a graphic diagramming tool that use stencils for organizational charts, swim lanes, data flow diagram, etc.
• Blueprint: This tool produces a blue print of the project artifacts like development models, test scenarios, use cases, flow charts, etc. to ensure that everything is falling in line and as per expectation
• Survey Monkey: It allows you to send survey to stakeholders, capture their feedback, rank and prioritize their view and turn them into requirements

There are many other tools like iServer, Meetingsense,Ravenflow,AnalystPro, which could be used by Business Analyst during the project.