CHAPTER 4

The business analyst

 Objectives

• Student need to understand:

–the vital functions the BA performs
–the skills and knowledge an effective analyst needs
–how to develop such people in organization
–proposes a job description for a requirements
analyst, and you can also access a sample BA job
description
 Contents

1. The business analyst role

2. The business analyst’s tasks
3. Essential analyst skills
4. Essential analyst knowledge
5. The making of a business analyst
6. The analyst role on agile projects
 Business analyst role

• The business analyst is the individual who has the primary

responsibility to elicit, analyze, document, and validate the
needs of the project stakeholders.
• The analyst serves as the principal interpreter through
which requirements flow between the customer
community and the software development team, as shown
in Figure 4-1.
• The BA plays a central role in collecting and disseminating
product information, whereas the project manager takes
the lead in communicating project information.
The business analyst role
 The business analyst’s tasks

• Define business requirements: Work with the

product manager or project sponsor to document
the project’s business requirements
• Plan the requirements approach:
–develop plans to elicit, analyze, document, validate, and
manage requirements
–these plans align with the overall project plans
• Identify project stakeholders and user classes
• Elicit requirements
 The business analyst’s tasks
cont’d
• Analyze requirements:
– Look for derived requirements that are a logical consequence of what the
customers requested and for implicit requirements
– Use requirements models to recognize patterns, identify gaps in the
requirements,
– Reveal conflicting requirements
– Confirm that all requirements specified are within scope
– Determine the necessary level of detail for specifying user and functional
requirements.
• Document requirements:
– Responsible for documenting requirements in a well-organized and well-
written manner that clearly describes the solution that will address the
customer’s problem.
– Using standard templates accelerates requirements development
 The business analyst’s tasks
cont’d
• Communicate requirements:
– must communicate the requirements effectively and efficiently to all
parties.
– when it is helpful to represent requirements by using methods other
than text, including various types of visual analysis models, tables,
mathematical equations, and prototypes
– ensure that they understand the information you are communicating
• Lead requirements validation:
– Analysts are the central participants in reviews of requirements.
– review designs and tests that were derived from the requirements to
ensure that the requirements were interpreted correctly
– acceptance tests should also be reviewed
 The business analyst’s tasks
cont’d

• Facilitate requirements prioritization: collaboration and

negotiation among the various stakeholders and the developers to
ensure that they make sensible priority decisions in alignment with
achieving business objectives.
• Manage requirements:
– create the project’s requirements management plan
– establishing a requirements baseline
– tracking the status of those requirements
– verifying their satisfaction in the product, and managing changes to
the requirements baseline
 Discuss

• What skills are required for a business

analyst? Also, define such skills in depth
(Group-work)
 Essential analyst skills

• Listening skills • Leadership skills

• Interviewing and • Observational skills
questioning skills • Communication skills
• Thinking on your feet • Organizational skills
• Analytical skills • Modeling skills
• Systems thinking skills • Interpersonal skills
• Learning skills • Creativity
• Facilitation skills
 Essential analyst knowledge
• Need a breadth of knowledge, much of which is gained
through experience.
• Need to understand contemporary requirements
engineering practices and how to apply them in the
context of various software development life cycles.
• Need to educate and persuade those who are not
familiar with established requirements practices.
• The effective analyst has a rich tool kit of techniques
available and knows when—and when not—to use each
one.
 Essential analyst knowledge

• Understanding of project management, development life

cycles, risk management, and quality engineering
• Analyst can minimize miscommunications with users
• Understand the organization and business domains often
detect unstated assumptions and implicit requirements
• Suggest ways that users could improve their business
processes or propose valuable functionality that no other
stakeholder thought of
 The making of a business analyst

• The former user

• The former developer or tester
• The former (or concurrent) project manager
• The subject matter expert
• The rookie
The making of a business analyst
 The analyst role on agile projects

• Define a lightweight, flexible requirements process and

adapt it as the project warrants.
• Ensure that requirements documentation is at the right
level: not too little and not too much
• Help determine the best approach to document the
backlog, including whether story cards or more formal
tools are most appropriate.
• Apply facilitation and leadership skills to ensure that
stakeholders are talking to one another frequently about
requirements needs, questions, and concerns.
 The analyst role on agile projects
cont’d

• Help validate that customer needs are accurately

represented in the product backlog, and facilitate backlog
prioritization
• Work with customers when they change their minds about
requirements and priorities, and help record those changes.
• Work with the rest of the team to determine the impact of
changes on iteration contents and release plans