During my initial career, at many times, I have heard people mocking
“What does Business Analyst do?” “Do they just prepare documents?” “Its such an easy job anyone can do.”
At many companies, people including the top management hardly used to know the importance of a business analyst and what work are they suppose to do. So in that case, it happens that irrelevant work can be assigned which a business analyst is not responsible for and Boom! Your career is in danger.
So, after 2 years of experience, I would like to share the role and importance of business analyst which can be helpful for the people who has just initiated or are thinking to opt for business analyst role. Also, this post is for people who doesn’t know why they should hire a business analyst and what major changes can a business analyst bring in their organization.
So here it is!
Piling or modernizing your eCommerce site is a mammoth project, one that needs a great coordination and administration in order to keep everything run swiftly. But the entrepreneur people have already got enought tasks to get their head spin by managing the budget and getting all the things ready to go live successfully in an estimated timeframe. That’s where exactly a business analyst comes in. Specifically in today’s demanding online world, business analysts are becoming an in-demand trend and can make a definite difference between a project knocked out due to miscommunication and a successful project delivered in a defined timeframe.
So what exactly does business analyst do? What are their roles and responsibilities?
Here’s a brief analysis of some (but certainly not all as the role might change subject to company’s defined rules and regulations) of the business analyst’s responsibilities in any project:
Communicating with the client to gather the project requirements via skype, email or call whichever is preferable and convenient to the client
Eliciting business requirements into technical requirements
Preparing work break down sheet which means breaking down the requirements into smaller tasks and making it more clear and concise
Researching and evaluating all possible solutions for the client
Checking the feasibility of the requirement
Documenting a project plan with tasks sorted efficiently
Conducting a kick-off meeting with project managers and providing them an understanding of the project and solving their queries, if any.
Handling questions as and whenever they arise.
Preparing SOW, BRD, FRD, Wireframes, Mockups as required
Getting approval from client and freezing the requirement
Coordination with client and project managers
Follow up to ensure the project is going well without any hassles.
So basically a business analyst (BA) is constantly in touch with the client and project managers to ensure the proper working of the project.
They also suggest various services and platforms that are currently in trend and would work best in order to get the client’s business more successful. Business analysts are well versed with a number of eCommerce solutions and recommend accordingly to ensure the client is receiving the best solution.
Once the project requirement is freezed, they start eliciting the requirement into small, specific tasks that are easy to understand for the development team. They name this document as “Work Break Down Sheet”. They send this to manager and then the manager develops a tailored project plan prioritizing the tasks to ensure that the tasks are completed on time and efficiently.
A BA then is in constant communication with the client and project manager in order to track the progress and updates, and in case any of them faces a loop, BA again comes into picture and solves it.
Also, in some cases if Project Manager is not available, then BA coordinates with developer and provide updates to client via scrum call, PMS etc whichever is preferable by the client. This is done to ensure that the members working in a particular project are in same page and if there are any modifications required, they can get it done at the same time which in fact saves a lot of time.
BA works with varied clients in a diverse array of industries and know from experience which solutions fit best for which clients.
So we can say that BA plays an important role in swifting the project lifecycle process and also the clients are more tend to be happy to receive suggestions that can be beneficial for their business.
And Happy Clients means Happy US! What else would any organization need?
So what are your views for a BA role? What is your experience so far being a BA or your thoughts for opting for this role? Would you like me to write specifically on any particular topic? If yes, please let me know in the comments below.
If you have any questions related to the roles of BA, let me know in the comments or you can also email me at khayalishah29@gmail.com – I’d love to help
Thanks.
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