COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
Communication Method
As a Business Analyst the key factor that differentiates from other roles is the test of their communication skills. It has to be effective in both verbal and written form so that every stakeholder understands about the requirement which the client is looking for. There can be no compromise what so ever because misled communication by a Business Analyst can take the entire project to a downfall. Verbal communication plays a key role when the Business Analyst conducts meetings with his team during the initial project phase.
Since every Business Analyst acts as a client interface in a project , there are few communication techniques and methods that needs to be adopted . These methods play a crucial role in defining the project scope.
Apart from various methods and techniques that the business analyst uses, communication in the form of diagram also acts as one of the crucial tool to the Business Analyst in defining requirements.
The UML tools used by the Business Analyst include :
Use case diagram – The high level overview of the Use case diagram includes systems, actors, Use cases and relationships. It has to show the system or the application. Then it shows the people, organizations or other systems that interact with it and finally it shows the basic flow of what the system or the application does.
Activity diagram – It is made to understand the flow of activities .It is a flow chart , which elaborates various activities performed from the system point of view as what the system does.
Furthermore the requirement elicitation techniques like brain storming, focus groups, observation, JAD , Interview and sorting of the requirements, prioritization and validation techniques used by the Business Analyst in defining the requirements is yet another key form of communication method.
Every Business Analyst primarily deals with the Business stakeholders and defining the requirement before concluding the solution is an important factor. Since the Business analyst acts as an interface between the client and the business stakeholders , communication needs to be done clearly to the developers so that everyone are on the same page. As a pre requisite, the Business Analyst has to have an active listening skill with the client during the requirement gathering phase so as to prepare the Business requirement document.
The main focus of the Business Analyst in the communication method is to ensure that the ROI in a project is considered.
