Essential Business Analyst Skills

Discover the Top Business Analyst Skills

• Who Can Help Me Reach My Goals?
  • Sometimes people in high positions, like VPs of Sales, need to be able to see things in the system that seem like they would be simple to set up but are complex in reality
  • For example, a team’s “quarterly forecast amount”
  • Since higher-ups are generally focused on their function, they may not always be able to implement what they need, and are reliant on someone else stepping up, recommending an ideal solution, and seeing it through to fruition
• Enter the Business Analyst
  • BAs are the fix-it people of the business world. They are generally members of a project management team and play a significant role in the project lifecycle - their job is to enable chance in an enterprise. Examples:
    • Improving a business process (business driven) or system (IT driven)
    • Helping implement something useful and relatively simple for individual executives
  • BAs are highly curious people who love to learn and use what they learn to elevate their understanding - they are expert at learning, understanding, and recording needs
  • Role specifically involves eliciting, analyzing, and documenting information, then employing communication strategies to ensure maximum collaboration among the project team
• Top Skills of the Business Analyst
  • Information Discovery - to make informed decisions/recommendations, BAs need to gather information from all levels
  • Analysis and Synthesis - BAs spend a lot of effort looking through the information they’ve gathered, including details and high-level information to chart needs and develop plans and schedules. They also align skills/experience of people involved on the team to determine the best way to achieve a successful outcome.
  • Communication, Collaboration, and Documentation - BAs must communicate clearly and efficiently to everyone so all stakeholders understand the project, goals, and proposed solution.
    
    
• Primary, high-level role of a business analyst on a project management team is helping enable change
• Top skills for a business analyst are Analysis and documentation and information discovery and communication

Explore Techniques for Information Discovery

• Information Is Important
  • As BA, gather as much information as possible by exploring all areas of the project. Do this by asking every 5W1H question you can:
    • Who are the stakeholders? Who is involved? Who follows the process? Who hands things off?
    • What is done first? Next? What problem is being solved?
    • Where is the information input? Where does the information go after it is input? Where would a person be when doing this?
    • Why are we doing this? Why is this important?
    • When does this happen? When do we need a solution?
    • How does this work now? How should it work?
• Where to Find Key Information
  • Project information is the agent of change - it drives the solution and the business change. Three key types of information:
    • Project History or “project orientation”
      • This information ensures that you don’t inadvertently repeat work that’s already been done or rehash previous decisions
      • Helps your understanding of the existing systems, design, requirements, and business processes
      • Learn the processes and systems involved to get as much insight as possible into both business operations and how the systems work
    • Elicitation
      • Defined as the drawing forth or receiving of information from stakeholders or other sources. Main path to discovering requirements and design information. Can involve talking with stakeholders directly, researching topics, experimenting, etc. Many methods:
        • Brainstorming
        • Document analysis
        • Focus groups
        • Interface analysis
        • Interviews
        • Observation
        • Process modeling
        • Prototyping
        • Requirements workshop
        • Surveys/questionnaires
      • Elicitation is not an isolated or compartmentalized activity. It happens throughout the lifecycle but is necessary to begin crafting and documenting requirements. It happens in three general stages:
        1. Prepare for elicitation - gather comprehensive, accurate info about the project’s business need
        2. Conduct elicitation - meet with stakeholders
        3. Confirm elicitation results
    • Analysis
      • Enterprise Analysis: helps inform about an organization’s structure, who reports to who, which departments and people have which functions, etc
      • Strategy Analysis: this is about getting to the heart of the problem.
        • First, identify the need of strategic or tactical importance-the business need
        • Then, “gap analysis” - observe the current state and define the future and transition states that will address the business need
        • Assess options for achieving the desired state, including the work or scope required, and recommend the highest value approach for reaching that state
      • Stakeholder Analysis: stakeholders are the individuals or groups who make decisions and have an important role in determining the priorities and requirements for your project. Stakeholders are anyone who has an interest in, or may be affected by, the issue under consideration

• Enterprise analysis involves uncovering who reports to whom and the functions/interactions of departments within an organization
• Elicitation happens during any task that includes interactions with stakeholders as well as during independent analytical work

Sharpen Your Communication Skills

• Communication as an Essential Tool
  • BAs improve overall productivity and drive final outcomes simply by communicating effectively
  • BAs should apply communication skills at every juncture: project kickoff, requirements elicitation, meeting with stakeholders, delivery of final solution
  • Most important times to communicate:
    • Communicating stakeholder’s needs to the project team
    • Ensuring that the needs have been met at the conclusion of the project
    • Breaking down barriers to communication between stakeholders and developers: time, attention, expectation, language
• Tips for Engaging Stakeholders to Achieve Project Goals
  • Make it a conversation - ask questions and listen to answers
  • Share how you can help - demonstrate your value to the stakeholder
  • Get commitment for next steps - Acknowledge their time respectfully. Explaining next steps and the need for their commitment.
  • Develop relationships - people work together more effectively if there is trust.
  • Remember, we’re all human - sometimes irrational, unreasonable, inconsistent, and unpredictable
• Communication Comes in All Forms
  • Communication encompasses listening, reading, comprehending, processing, and transferring information
  • Verbal communication
    • Speak clearly and loudly
    • Choose your words carefully: use words that show you are professional and intelligent
    • Use an appropriate tone: make sure it matches your sentiment, and is appropriate to what you’re saying and feeling
    • Consider your audience: formal audience should be a more formal dialog. Less formal when you are familiar with the participants.
    • Respond appropriately: think before you speak, formulate your thoughts before you respond
  • Nonverbal communication
    • Eye contact: maintain eye contact to show you are interested and focused on who you are speaking with, but avoid staring
    • Personal space: pay attention to proximity to others
    • Posture and movement: be aware of it. Slouching can be interpreted as disinterest. Moving too much, like bouncing your leg, can make others uncomfortable.
    • Openness of body: Avoid crossing your arms, which may be interpreted as defensiveness.
  • Written communication - BAs provide a written record of information for reference to keep people and groups in sync.
    • Be clear and concise: key is to be understood - be straightforward as possible.
    • Don’t rely on tone: maintain a professional tone. Be clear, concise, and straightforward. Add personality in follow-up verbal communication.
    • Take time to review written communication: reread written correspondence before sending them, ideally taking a break before you review what you’ve written.
    • Keep a file of writing that’s been effective for reference: Develop a consistent writing style based on example communication from the past.
  • Visual communication - includes media like charts, graphs, images, sketches.
    • Consider your audience - should be appropriate to your audience and their level of understanding. Visual should clarify, not complicate.
    • Consider the meaning you are trying to convey - should be related to the topic at hand and provide an easier way to consume the information
      
      
• Use communication skills at every juncture of the project
• Eye contact and openness of body are nonverbal communication skills

Explore Documentation Types

• The Winning Trifecta for the Successful Business Analyst
  • Communication - keeps information accessible and flowing between stakeholders, development teams, and project management teams.
  • Collaboration - team members come with their own views, ideas, and objectives.
  • Documentation - discussed below.
• Types of Documentation
  • Types of documentation you create depends on a variety of factors:
    • Type of project
    • The business need
    • Stakeholder needs
    • Assumptions
    • Constraints
  • Document types:
    • Glossary of terms - list of key terms and definitions that boosts understanding across teams involved in the project
    • RACI chart - stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Matrix delineates who is responsible for what in the context of the BA’s world.
    • Interviews and elicitation records
    • Stakeholder analysis - document identifies: Who you should talk with to understand the business problem, who can help flesh out the requirements, individuals who can give you a range of perspectives
    • User stories - describes the functionality that a business system should provide so that it can be developed. It is often called a ticket or work item. Format is “As a… I want to… So that I can…”
    • Use cases - identifies, defines, organizes system requirements from the perspective of a user
    • Business analysis plan - lists all BA activities that will take place throughout the project
    • Current state analysis - BA analyzes and documents the current state before scoping a project to improve upon it
    • Scope statement specification - most fundamental deliverable on any project. Clear definition of what needs to be achieved and the work that must be done to deliver the project or product.
    • Functional requirements specification (FRS) - business requirements defined from an end user or business perspective. Specifies the expected outcomes.
    • System requirements specification (SRS) - details how the complete system should function and enumerates hardware, software, functional, and behavioral requirements of the system
    • Gap analysis document - describes the gaps between the current process and the intended process
    • Change request logs - log of all change requests in the project including date of request, requester, and other key information
    • Wireframes and other visual documentation - contains renderings of the user interface
    • Test plans, test cases, user acceptance test plans - describes the test plans and detailed test cases
    • Change management - document describes the method for pushing out changes to the business
• How to Think About Documentation
  • BAs create and update documents throughout the project lifecycle. The documentation fulfills various project needs, is consumed by different types of stakeholders, and is presented in varied formats/media.
• Presenting Results
  • Use a format that’s easy for everyone to understand (and update).
  • To decide on best presentation model, ask:
    • Who is the target audience? Is the info appropriate for them?
    • What do each of the stakeholders need, and will they understand it?
    • What info is important to communicate?
    • Are there regulatory or contractual constraints to conform to?
      
      
• Top three skills of a BA are communication, collaboration, and documentation
• The scope statement specification is the most fundamental deliverable on any project because it clearly defines what needs to be achieved and the work that must be done to deliver a project or product