Typical Business Analyst Responsibilities
The day-to-day tasks of a business analyst vary greatly based on their industry, department, and projects. That being said, many business analysts find themselves acting and working with different groups, departments, and team members. Business analysts will hear new ideas and requests every day. They must understand when and where to act, and which requests will be most critical to the success of business end-goals. In general, they will be responsible to:
- Prioritize requirements from various stakeholders
- Communicate, translate, and simplify business requirements to ensure buy-in from all stakeholders
- Assess change-proposals and define solutions to help the organization achieve its goals
- Discover, organize, and clarify business needs and review/produce specifications for change
- Work with the Technical Analyst and development team to ensure that they understand the specifications.
- Work with training team to document system scenarios and identify roles impacted to help develop a change management/training plan.
- Conduct business process modeling and generate applicable scenarios for the technology functionality testing team.
Skills of a Great Business Analyst
First and foremost, business analysts are communicators. They work with multiple stakeholders and need to be able to convey needs, requirements, and solutions to different departments. But that’s not all they do; great business analysts have many skills, including:
- Exceptional ability to position and “sell” solutions that are reasonable, actionable, and cost-effective, including the ability to properly gauge the requirements and “plug” the appropriate solution.
- Forward-thinking and resourceful to skirt red tape and ensure solutions are brought to fruition and requirements are closed properly.
- Ability to problem solve and apply methodologies such as Unified Modeling Language and Rational Unified Process, to prepare detailed specifications using case statements and related documentation
- People skills, with the ability to engage diplomatically with stakeholders and communicate changes that may not be aligned with the original expectations
- Knowledge of proper requirements specification and development, such as process/functional requirements definition methods, JAD/RAD sessions, use case development, process flow diagrams
- Working knowledge of Agile and Waterfall Methodologies
