Dos AND DONTs AS A BUSINESS ANALYST

BLOG WRITING 2- Dos AND DONTs AS A BUSINESS ANALYST

Any field of work or any job role has some rules or ways to follow. In the same way a Business Analyst also has few basic Dos and Donts to follow for the progress of his organization and in turn himself.

Few basic DOs and DONTs as a Business Analyst can be summarized as follows:-

1. Never say a “NO” to Client, for any of his requirements or concerns or questions. As saying No may directly lead to loss of Business from the client.
2. There is NO word called as “BY DEFAULT”. Never imagine anything in terms of GUI. A Business Analyst has to question everything when required. Example: what client gives may not always be correct.
3. Consult a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Clarifications in Requirements.
4. Every Problem of each Client is unique. No two problems of different Clients are same. example: May be the approach, technology, place of use, local laws may be varied to make their problems to be different.
5. Go to Client with a plain mind with no prior assumptions. Listen carefully and completely until Client is done and then BA can ask his Queries. Please do not interrupt the Client, when the client is giving you the problem.
6. Maximum try to extract the leads to Solution from the Client itself- As this may give an idea of what kind of solution or terms the Client is expecting to get. It may not be correct and if found to be incorrect it can be ignored after consulting with the technical team and Project Manager.

7.Never try to give Solutions to Client straight away with your previous experience and assumptions. Try to concentrate on the important and truly                required Requirements. Don’t be washed away by the add-on Functionalities or don’t imagine solutions on Screen basis right away.

Following are some thumb rules for a Business Analyst :-

8. Solve Client Problem only by our IT Solution- As a Business Analyst, we should not probe into the reasons of the Business failure and advise solutions to come out of it, instead we should concentrate more on providing the Client with an IT Solution.
9. Be like a lotus in the mud, free from opinions and viewpoints, do not grasp them and enter into disputations and arguments, as it is natural to have difference in opinions between people of different areas of work roles. Everybody may have their own viewpoint. BA shines by making the development Team to deliver the right Solution on time to Client. This can be done by bringing Clarity in Requirements and communicating the same, in understandable format, to the Development Team. He should not be influenced by the Client views or the development Team views, his concentration should lie in molding the requirements to bring out a perfect IT Solution.
10. Never take tensions but pass on the tensions – All that comes from the Client is in reference only to the project. The Client never intends to say anything personal. Since a Business Analyst is the only point of contact to the Client, the Client tends to shell out all his concerns on this contact. Business Analyst should be invincible to any of the Clients comments, because it may affect the rest of the  projects that he is working on.

11.Requirements hurried is Project buried! Because the Project success majorly depends on the correct gathering and analyzing of requirements. Chances are there that, any mistakes or failures made in the initial phases of Software Development Life Cycle will be carried forward into the implementation and final phases of product development and it may not be possible to rectify the mistakes when found at final stage. Hence a Business Analyst has to practice caution as to not hurry in the Requirements gathering and Analysis phases.

The basic idea of gathering the requirements is to realize the organizational goals. We have to document everything that we have gathered from the Client. Identify the right stakeholders, who are going to use the proposed IT Solution. Gather enough requirements in detail. Try to understand business Goals and Objectives and not just the requirements alone. Document everything you find useful for the project. Involve users who are the actual users. See them at work. Look for the unhappy path. Get behind the scenes. Observe them how they work when something unusual happens in the process. Pull out those documents. Always try to build a new system, don’t just copy the old one.

12. Never criticize any stakeholder – BA has to appreciate them even for their small efforts. BA has to always keep in mind that a BA is trained to elicit requirements but not the Clients or Stakeholders. As a Business Analyst, you have to manage good public relationships with the clients or stakeholders and also along with good Professional relationships with all the team associates.

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