Business Analyst
These are technical notes I compiled while studying using Trailhead, Salesforce's free self-learning portal.
Notes by Exam Topic
Some content in this section taken from Salesforce’s Certified Business Analyst Exam Guide.
Some notes and links below were taken from the Prepare for Your Salesforce Business Analyst Credential Trailmix as it existed in July-September, 2022. Other notes are taken based on content from Mike Wheeler’s Salesforce video courses.
Introduction
- MW: Business Analyst Course Introduction 9/12
Customer Discovery: 17%
- Determine business strategies, goals, initiatives, and challenges to define the scope of business analysis.
- Discover how a customer is leveraging and benefiting from Salesforce products to establish the current state.
- Understand and explain Business Analyst roles and responsibilities in different phases of the implementation lifecycle.
- Apply the implementation lifecycle for planning business analysis activities.
- Analyze the customer’s Salesforce environment to identify opportunities and constraints.
- Demonstrate knowledge of Salesforce capabilities and its potential to recommend solutions to the business.
- Drucker School—Business Performance Basics ~1 hr 7/22
- Salesforce Business Analyst: Quick Look ~10 mins 7/23
- Journey Mapping ~50 mins 7/24
- Innovation Customer Discovery ~1 hr 5 mins 7/25
- Business Analyst Best Practices ~40 mins 7/28
- Customer-Centric Discovery for Salesforce Partners ~45 mins 7/30
- Application Lifecycle and Development Models ~40 mins 3/24/21
- Admin & BA Job Comparison: Quick Look ~10 mins 7/31
- Drucker School—Organizational Change Leadership ~1 hr 15 mins 8/6
- Essential Business Analyst Skills ~45 mins 8/7
- Salesforce Optimizer ~30 mins 8/9
- Security Basics ~1 hr 25 mins 8/10
- Salesforce Customer 360 ~35 mins 8/13
- Demo Storytelling ~20 mins 8/13
- Innovation Ideation & Prototyping ~55 mins 8/15
- Business Analyst: Skilling Up for the Implementation Lifecycle, video ~25 mins 8/5
- Why do I Need a Center of Excellence, Anyway? ~10 mins 8/7
- Features Evaluated in Salesforce Optimizer ~5 mins 8/10
- Get Lightning Experience Adoption Insights with the Lightning Usage App ~5 mins 8/10
- System Overview: User Interface ~5 mins 8/10
- Review: Platform: Org Health
~5 mins 8/11
- MW: Customer Discovery 9/14
Collaboration with Stakeholders: 24%
- Plan discovery activities based on the target stakeholders to perform a thorough analysis of business needs.
- Identify key stakeholders and develop relationships with them as a trusted advisor to act as a liaison between business and technical teams.
- Given a scenario, choose the most effective technique for eliciting business needs from stakeholders.
- Explain how to move from current state analysis to an agreed future state design.
- Understand how Salesforce features and best practices impact solution options and business processes.
- Given a scenario, manage competing priorities to obtain sign-off from stakeholders.
- Scrum and Kanban at Salesforce ~40 mins 8/16
- Trust and Influence ~40 mins 8/17
- Relationship Building ~20 mins 8/18
- Content Strategy Development ~1 hr 8/20
- Virtual Whiteboarding: Quick Look ~15 mins 8/20
- Process Mapping for Business Analysts ~30 mins 8/21
- Survey Basics ~1 hr 35 mins 8/23
- Diagramming Essentials ~30 mins 8/24
- Sales Operations Use Case and Best Practices ~20 mins 8/30
- User Management ~50 mins 9/22/20
- Salesforce Adoption Strategies ~45 mins 9/2
- Atlassian Agile Basics ~30 mins 9/4
- What is Sales Enablement? ~5 mins 8/18
- Writing Good Salesforce Requirements: A Dramedy In Two Acts, notes taken from this video ~40 mins 8/27
- 5 Key Steps To Documenting Process Like A Rock Star, notes taken from this video ~35 mins 8/28
- Create Strategic Company Alignment With a V2MOM, notes taken from this blog post by Marc Benioff ~10 mins 9/4
- MW: Collaboration with Stakeholders 9/15
Business Process Mapping: 16%
- Demonstrate how to define the scope of a complex business process and break it down into manageable steps.
- Apply understanding of hierarchical process mapping to engage stakeholders at different levels of an organization.
- Analyze and document a business process to elicit requirements and identify resources to visualize a future state.
- Apply governance on agreed future state processes to control scope.
- User Experience Basics ~45 mins 9/5
- Governance Basics ~40 mins 9/6
- Design Patterns, notes taken from Salesforce Architects Diagrams Page ~10 mins 9/5
- How to Build Salesforce Diagrams, notes taken from Salesforce Architects Designs Page
~10 mins 9/5
- MW: Business Process Mapping 9/15
Requirements: 17%
- Distinguish between requirements vs. user stories to engage business and technical stakeholders.
- Verify and prioritize existing requirements and identify new requirements to develop the future state.
- Document requirements in a version controlled repository to manage scope.
- Change Set Development Model ~30 mins 3/25/21
- Git and GitHub Basics ~1 hr 50 mins 9/10
- Become A Business Analysis Detective, notes taken from this blog post ~10 mins 9/7
- LinkedIn Integration Guide ~10 mins 9/7
- Why Stakeholder Alignment is Key to Salesforce Success, notes taken from this blog post ~10 mins 9/7
- Monitor Setup Changes with Setup Audit Trail, notes taken from this help article ~10 mins 9/7
- MW: Requirements 9/16
User Stories: 18%
- Understand the components of a user story to perform thorough analysis.
- Contrast the difference between acceptance criteria vs. definition of done.
- Document user stories in a version controlled repository to manage scope.
- User Story Creation ~20 mins 8/29
- Scaled Agile Center of Excellence ~10 mins 8/7
- View Debug Logs ~10 mins 9/9
- MW: User Stories 9/16
User Acceptance: 8%
- Define and prepare the User Acceptance Test plan to confirm the solution meets the business requirements.
- Guide UAT and manage the results to determine whether the solution meets the requirements.
- Given a scenario, make a go/no-go release decision when new business or technical issues arise.
- User Acceptance Testing ~20 mins 9/9
- Advanced Salesforce Release Readiness Strategies ~50 mins 9/11
- Salesforce Release Readiness Strategies ~30 mins 9/10
- Salesforce Release Readiness Strategies ~30 mins 9/10
- Sandbox Access Considerations ~10 mins 9/10
- User Acceptance Testing Strategies for Large Data ~10 mins 9/11
- MW: User Acceptance 9/16
Notes and links below taken from the Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Prep Trailhead module as it existed in September, 2022
- Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Prep ~70 mins 9/12
Exams
- Certification Exam Failed 9/17/2022 (Received 68%, Pass Threshold 72%)