Skills and requirements for a good Business Analyst

Nowhere exists any mention about any specialized degrees to be possessed in order to take up the role of the BA neither is an IT background important for the same. The only requirement needed in order to become a BA is to be able to understand the business needs and functions and successfully communicate the same to the technical team and developers.
There exists a variety of skill sets for becoming a good business analyst. A few and the typical ones are as mentioned :-
1. Interviewing skills – Most of the time BA is vitally involved in communications, asking several questions for reaching a level of better understanding and conversing the same to the technical team.
2. Facilitation skills – One of the main tasks as a BA is to facilitate various sessions on elicitation methods for requirement gathering or constant jam sessions with the technical teams for finding appropriate and feasible solutions. Hence, as a BA it is important to have good facilitation skills.
3. Analytical skills – In addition to the already mentioned skills, the development of the analytical skills is also a must as a business analyst. One of the prime responsibility of the BA is to be able to understand and judge each problem in depth and reach to the point of the root cause of the problem in order to provide an accurate solution.
4. Project Management skills – As a BA, one would be dealing with a lot of people, be it the clients or the organization members. The more the number of people the more is the chances of conflicts among them. So a BA should be able to resolve all the conflicts in order to reach to the goal in d specified timeline considering the cost factors as well. Not just these, the BA should also be aware of the various tools in order to use the best tool suitable for the particular situation for achieving the goals.