What are the basic requirements of a Business Analyst?

Business analysis is a process of analyzing, evaluating, identifying the requirements needed by the client and providing solutions for implementing it. Every project is unique and requires a deep analytical understanding. So, it is the Business Analyst to conduct analysis, to understand the requirements of the stakeholders and accordingly work to provide the needs. The BA needs to first understand the current trends in the business so that he/she can propose a solution to make changes or further enhancement of the product concerned.

1. Communcation skills: It is very important for a Business Analyst to have good communication skills as he/she is the face of the organization to the client/stakeholders. It is his responsibility to gather requirements from the client and give them to the development team and also facilitate other important tasks like UAT and deployment. He should have good verbal, nonverbal, written communication skills. Certain elicitation techniques like conducting Brainstorming sessions, JAD sessions, workshops, focus groups etc. require excellent verbal communication skills as it is the Business Analyst who precedes over these sessions.

1. Good knowledge about elicitation techniques: The BA should have good knowledge about elicitation techniques as this will help him to gather the requirements from the stakeholders in an efficient way. He/she should be aware of the important techniques like Document Analysis, JAD sessions, prototyping using tools like Axure and Balsamiq. Prototyping helps the BA to explain the features of the product visually.

1. Stakeholder analysis: Stakeholder analysis helps the BA to understand who the business stakeholders are, project stakeholders, the third-party stakeholders, negative stakeholders. With the help of a RACI chart the BA will be able to understand the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in each stage of the product life cycle.

1. Documentation: Documentation or writing of important documents like Business Requirements Document and Functional Requirements Document are crucial therefore the Business Analyst should know how to write these documents, the format, he/ she should be able to explain the product vision, goals and objectives.

1. Modelling of Requirement: Modelling of requirements is crucial as it will help BA to explain/ communicate the requirements to the development team. UML diagrams like Use case Diagrams, activity diagrams and sequential diagrams can help in modelling the requirements. The tool used is MS visio.

1. Tracking of requirements: The Business Analyst should have a good knowledge on how to track requirements to see if they are being met. He/ she can use RTM I.e. Requirements Traceability Matrix to see if all the requirements in the project have been mapped to the test cases of their respective functionalities.

1. Handling Change Request: Another important requirement for a BA is the ability to handle a change request initiated by the client. The Business Analyst should be able to conduct the feasibility study and impact analysis of that change request and see if it will affect the scope of the project.

1. Facilitate User Acceptance Testing:

• He/ she be able to prepare the UAT Plan – UAT Test plan is the document that outline to identify test cases which validate the deliverable.
• Create UAT test cases – Test Cases provides the steps to guide in the testing of the software. It’s important to write the proper test cases to conduct a good UAT.
• Run the Test – The software will be run on the client UAT server and will be tested using the sample data to check whether it meets the specified requirement or not.
• Record the results in the Traceability Matrix – The progress of the test will be document in the traceability matrix. If the test goes well and client has given his acceptance, then BA mentions about it in the traceability matrix and move ahead to the deployment phase.
• Confirm the Business objectives are met – If the requirements are not met then the issues will be listed in the defect column against the test case of the traceability matrix and the software will be send to the development team to fix all the defect.
• The Business Analyst takes a sign off on the Client Acceptance Form once all the requirements of the project have been met and accepted by the Client.