Business Analyst Certification Prep

Get Started with Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Prep

Describe the key topic areas of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification. Access resources to prepare yourself for the Salesforce Business Analyst certification.
  • Exam is intended for individuals who have 2 years Business Analyst experience and 2 years of Salesforce Platform experience
  • Exam covers the following key topics:
    • Customer Discovery: 17%
    • Collaboration with Stakeholders: 24%
    • Business Process Mapping: 16%
    • Requirements: 17%
    • User Stories: 18%
    • User Acceptance: 8%
  • 60 questions + 5 non-scored items
  • Passing score: 72%
  • Salesforce Administrator certification is a prerequisite of the Salesforce Business Analyst certification

Learn About Customer Discovery

Determine business strategies, goals, initiatives, and challenges to define the scope of business analysis. Discover how a customer is using 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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Stakeholders
    • Work streams
    • Change management
    • Application Lifecycle Management
    • Product roadmaps
    • Release notes
    • Salesforce Customer 360

  • Proven way to help executives understand how new processes or products can enable change?
    • Describe how the system can enable business innovation and help customers
  • When a business analyst is creating a journey map, what assumptions are needed to get started?
    • Why you’re doing it and who you’re focusing on
  • What is an effective way for a business analyst to learn about a customer’s challenges?
    • Read recent industry reports in trade publications

  • Salesforce Optimizer
    • Tool that takes a snapshot of a Salesforce org and looks for potential problems in the implementation
  • Persona
    • Fictionalized characters in which primarily demographic characteristics are represented
  • Salesforce Customer 360
    • An integrated CRM platform that unites marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams with a single shared customer view
  • Storyboarding
    • Process for mapping ou the connection between a customer’s current challenges and goals for the future with realistic next steps

Review Collaboration with Stakeholders

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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Lead discovery
    • Agile
    • Whiteboarding
    • Journey map
    • Process design
    • Solution roadmap
    • Technical debt

  • To ensure effective collaboration with stakeholders, what technique would help a business analyst maintain their trust?
    • Be transparent and truthful
  • Why is the scope statement specification the most fundamental deliverable on any project?
    • It clearly defines what needs to be achieved and the work that must be done to deliver the project.
  • A company wants to enhance the organization’s security by requiring users to identify themselves with additional info besides username/password. What capability should be added to the backlog?
    • Multi-Factor Authentication
  • What does a business analyst hope to learn from documenting the current sales process?
    • Where the process needs improvement

  • The individuals who make decisions and who have an important role in determining the requirements for a project
    • Stakeholders
  • The drawing forth or receiving of information from stakeholders or other sources
    • Elicitation
  • Waterfall vs Agile
    • Waterfall: creates critical paths; a project can’t move forward until a blocking issue is resolved
    • Agile: an iterative approach to development with regular feedback intervals
  • A short, time-boxed period when a scrum team works to complete a set amount of work
    • Sprint

Study Up on Business Process Mapping

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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Lead discovery
    • Agile
    • Whiteboarding
    • Journey map
    • Process design
    • Solution roadmap
    • Technical debt

  • When creating a process map, what is the first high-level step?
    • Identify the process to map
  • Which one of these is a principle of Universal Process Notation (UPN)?
    • Limit of 8-10 activity boxes on a screen
  • When assessing a new process, which type of diagram should be used to identify waste within and between processes?
    • Value Stream Map - a value stream map is used to visualize the flow of material and information that is needed to bring a product to the customer
  • When a business analyst maps processes, which option is a best practice?
    • Validate maps

  • A framework used to create visual representations of work processes
    • Process mapping
  • This process diagram shows the key elements of a process including Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers
    • A SIPOC Map
  • Visual characteristics of a Universal Process Notation (UPN) diagram
    • Activity box, Resource, Line with text, Attachment, Decision, Drill down

Review Requirements

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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Pain points
    • Well-defined requirements
    • Lifecycle
    • Change sets
    • Business needs
    • Dependencies

  • How is a change set used during implementation of a new project?
    • It builds all of the changed metadata, possibly unrelated, to be deployed at the same time
  • When using the package development model, which metadata changes need to be tracked manually?
    • Changes to components that are unsupported by source tracking
  • When using the Agile framework for project management, how should Kanban teams respond to unplanned work and changes?
    • Assess the priority of the new request and start the work when it’s at the top of the backlog
  • When using the Agile framework, when is a retrospective executed?
    • At the end of every sprint

  • Whiteboarding
    • Using a blank physical canvas (or online equivalent) to help track thoughts and ideas during a meeting
  • A tool to track changes
    • Setup Audit Trail
  • Visualize workflow, limit work in progress, incremental and evolutionary changes, metrics, are traits of…
    • Kanban

Refresh Your User Story Skills

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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Acceptance criteria
    • Implementation
    • Testing
    • Sign-offs
    • Definition of done
    • Version controlled repository

  • When a business analyst conducts a user story-writing workshop, which project team members should be involved?
    • All of the project team - most productive user story-writing workshops include as much of the project team as possible
  • When a business analyst conducts a user story workshop, why is it detrimental to use an undefined user as the “who” in a user stories?
    • Intention of the user can’t be clearly defined
  • What are the three components that make up a user story?
    • Who, what, and why - User stories describe the roles of users in a Salesforce system, their desired activities, and what they intend to achieve. As a <who>, I want <what>, so that, <why>.
  • How does version control ease the burden of collaboration among team members?
    • By providing a way to organize work from many team members

  • A storage location for software packages
    • Software repository
  • An explanation of a feature that helps translate technical requirements into easy-to-understand ideas
    • User Story
  • Acceptance Criteria
    • A set of statements, each with a clear pass/fail result, added to a user story
  • The three most essential parts of a user story
    • Who, What, Why

Explore User Acceptance

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.
  • Key Topics:
    • Test scripts
    • Compliance
    • Testers
    • Go/no-go
    • Collaboration
    • Feedback
    • Data collection
    • Stakeholder sign-off

  • What is the end goal of the user acceptance testing (UAT) phase?
    • To determine a Go/No-go decision for deployment
  • When is user acceptance testing implemented in the project lifecycle?
    • The last step before production release
  • In most cases, what is the busienss analyst’s (BA) role in user acceptance testing (UAT)?
    • The BA prepares for and guides UAT through completion
  • What is the objective of the User Acceptance phase?
    • To ensure the product or enhancement that is being delivered meets the quality and expectations of the business

  • This type of testing evaluates how the system responds when large volumes of records or operations are being handled
    • Performance Testing
  • In-App Prompt
    • Notification that alerts Salesforce users about what’s new, in context of the tool, at the right time
  • Unnecessary complexity in an org that increases the time to deploy new innovations in the future
    • Technical Debt