Business analyst

From ArticleWorld

Business analyst (also referred to as BA) is a job title that refers to an individual that is responsible for analyzing the business needs of a client, with the purpose of identifying problems and providing solutions for them. The Business analyst will have different roles, based on the industry he/she is involved in and the means of action one will provide will also differ, sometimes from one individual to the other.

Responsibilities

The client comes to the BA with a request. It is his job to apply analytical skills in order to transform that request in an understandable business form that is correct and easily understandable. First of all, the business analyst will analyze all requests and will make sure that none of them are in opposition. He will then provide a solution that is, in most cases, in a simple form. That solution will be given to a Project Manager. Several areas of expertise can be included in a BA capability circle and some of these practitioners will specialize in certain fields of activity.

Skills

As a Business analyst needs to be very skilled, many people do not understand what the needed skills are for such an individual. Here is a list of common such skills needed:

• Business Subject Knowledge – The BA needs to gather background information on the given subject so that the requirement gathering can be efficient. In most cases the term Domain analysis is strongly linked with the Business Subject Knowledge
• Feasibility – The Business analyst needs to analyze just how realistic the requirements are
• IT Capabilities – He needs to understand the systems involved and what they can and can not do or provide
• Relevance – The solutions he portrays need to be relevant to the company needs
• Data – The Business analyst needs to identify the data the business currently has, what he needs to find out and must analyse what can be achieved if a new system is applied.