Business analyst

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The term Business Analyst (BA) is used to describe a person who practices the discipline of business analysis. A business analyst or "BA" is responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients and stakeholders to help identify business problems and propose solutions. Within the systems development life cycle domain, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of services to the enterprise. Common alternative titles are business systems analyst, systems analyst, and functional analyst, although some organizations may differentiate between these titles and corresponding responsibilities.

The International Institute of Business Analysis has the following definition of the role: "A business analyst works as a liaison among stakeholders in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. The business analyst understands business problems and opportunities in the context of the requirements and recommends solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals."

The British Computer Society proposes the following definition of a business analyst: "An internal consultancy role that has the responsibility for investigating business systems, identifying options for improving business systems and bridging the needs of the business with the use of IT."

1 Typical deliverables
2 Prerequisites
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Typical deliverables

Business Requirements constitute a specification of what the business wants, the purpose of initialising a specific project (Project Initialisation Document), what the needed achievements will be, and the quality measures. This is usually expressed in terms of broad outcomes the business requires, rather than specific functions the system may perform. Specific design elements are usually outside the scope of this document, although design standards may be referenced.

Example: Improve the readability of project plans.

Functional Requirements describe what the system, process, or product/service must do in order to fulfil the business requirement(s). Note that the business requirement often can be broken up into sub-business requirements and many functional requirements. These are often referred to as System Requirements.

An example that follows from previous business requirement example:

(1) System must provide the ability to associate notes to a project plan. (2) System must allow the user to enter free text to the project plan notes, up to 255 characters in length.

User Requirements is a very important part of the deliverables, the needs of the stakeholders will have to be correctly interpreted. This deliverable can also reflects on how the product will be designed, developed and how the creations of the test cases will have to be formulated.

Non Functional Requirements are requirements that cannot be met by a specific function, e.g. performance, scalability, quality of service(QoS), security and usability requirements. These are often included within the System Requirements, where applicable.

Report Specifications are reporting requirements such as the purpose of the report, justification of the report, report attributes and columns, or runtime parameters.

The Traceability Matrix is a cross matrix that traces the requirements through each stage of the requirements gathering process. High level concepts will be matched to scope items which will map to individual requirements which will map to corresponding functions. This matrix should also take into account any changes in scope during the life of the project. At the end of a project, this matrix should show each function built into a system, its source and the reason that any stated requirements may not have been delivered.

[edit] Prerequisites

There is no one defined way to become a business analyst. Often the BA has a technical background, whether having worked as a programmer or engineer, or completing a Computer Science degree. Others may move into a BA role from a business role - their status as a subject matter expert and their analytical skills make them suitable for the role. Business analysts may overlap into roles such as project manager or consultant.

A BA does not always work in IT-related projects, as BA skills are often required in marketing and financial roles as well.

The International Institute of Business Analysis provides a certification program for business analysts (Certified Business Analyst Professional or CBAP), as well as providing a body of knowledge for the field ([Business Analysis Book of Knowledge or BABOK).

A few consulting companies provide BA training courses and there are some consulting books (UML, workshop facilitating, consultancy, communication skills) on the market. Some helpful text books are:

Customer-Centered Products by Ivy F. Hooks and Kristin A. Farry (Amacon, USA, 2001).
UML for the IT Business Analyst: A Practical Guide to Object-Oriented Requirements Gathering by Howard Podeswa,
Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistair Cockburn and
Discovering Real Business Requirements for Software Project Success by Robin F. Goldsmith.

BAs work in different industries such as finance, banking, insurance, telecom, utilities, software services, etc. It is common that BAs switch between industries. The business domain subject areas BAs may work in include workflow, billing, mediation, provisioning and customer relationship management. The telecom industry has mapped these functional areas in their eTOM (Telecommunications Operational Map) model.

Finally, the Business Analyst do not have a predefined and fixed role as they can take a shape in operations (technology architect or project management) scaling, sales planning, strategy devising or even in developmental process! Hence they get a different name for the played role. Even the International Institute of Business Analysis and its associates have had several editions of the roles and responsibilities of a person undertaking the Business Analyst (BA) role.