Business Analysis Chapter 1:- Who is Business Analyst?

Is he a Professional who has Bird’s eye view as well as worm's-eye view? Let’s go around the history and perceive!

Software applications or Hardware or any other new development happens to accomplish a need of a customer to resolve a business problem there by customer gets a competitive advantage in the market. Due to globalization and modern communication technologies the solution for the problem could be developed and deployed from anywhere in the world.

There were many challenges that came up during the boom of IT revolution to solve business problems. What are those?

• Logistic and time zone differences created a physical and psychological gap between a customer and the Solutioning team. So is there a need to bridge the gap?   
•  IT services started bringing up a technological solution for every business problem, where technology should be an enabler to resolve the situation. So is there a need to bring a solution without need of developing an application?
•  The talented computer engineering team started creating the solutions for the problem. When business users continued to talk directly with software engineers their needs got lost in translation? So is there a need to create an exact solution that customer want?

The end user could not communicate technically and express their needs commendably while programmers could not always read between the lines what the business users were trying to express. That’s it. The world of the business bump into with the world of technology and the expertise of today’s Business Analysis and functional consulting was born to address the need that we discussed above.

While business analysis as a pool of actions has been around for years, preceding even the introduction of the International Institute of Business Analysis™ in 2004, business analysis, as a discipline, has progressed meaningfully during the last 14 years.

Business Analyst started addressing the problem the problem, between End user and Technology Team.  Did you get the answer for the question who is a business analyst and why she/he is important in the Software Development Life Cycle? In short he is a person who can bridge the gap and represent the real user to build a solution for the business problem.

The skill set required for an effective Business Analyst is diverse and can range to

•        Domain Skills (Healthcare, banking, Airlines etc.).
•        Effective communication (Bird’s eye view as well as worm's-eye view)
•        Problem Solving and Critical thinking
•        Documentation and Specification (Narrative and Graphical)
•        Requirement Elicitation Techniques (Brain Storming, Focus Group etc.)
•        Data Modelling Skill (RDBMS, NOSQL, MDM etc.)
•        Business Analysis tools (Wireframe and Use Case Diagrams)
•       A thick skin to face feedbacks J

 A Business Analyst's educational and professional background may differ as well. Most of the successful BAs come from the business stakeholder area while others nourished from technological background.

Today Business Analyst is getting transformed as Product Owner with the rapid acceptance of Agile Scrum Developmental methodology. Business Analyst were considered as individual contributors traditionally in the waterfall SDLC model but currently he has to wear another cap as Team owner / player in the Agile SDLC model. Hence in addition to the traditional skill set he need to understand the Product Vision, Road map and Strategies.

What are the typical roles and responsibilities of a BA in Waterfall SDLC?

• Requirement Gathering / Elicitation based on the Project Scope
•  Requirement Analysis
• Create the Business Requirement Document
• Create Use Case Narrative Document
• Use Case Diagrams
• Requirement Validation walk through with client and get it signed off.
•  Explain the Requirements to Development and Testing Team
•  Participate the Technical Solutioning sessions
• Validate the Test Scenarios
• Develop the Product Documentation (User Guide, Configuration Guide etc.).
• Perform the Acceptance Testing

What are the typical roles and responsibilities of a BA in Agile SDLC?

• Participate in Scrum ceremonies to connect with team
• Responsible and accountable for maximizing the value of the product
• Requirement Gathering / Elicitation based on the Project Scope
•  Requirement Analysis
• Create EPICs, Features and User Stores
• Ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best accomplish goal
• Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog
• Validate the Test Scenarios
• Perform the Acceptance Testing
• Develop the Product Documentation (User Guide, Configuration Guide etc.).
• Act as SPOC for all requirements.