1. Nguyen Duy Nghiem, Msc.
Senior PM – FPT Software Danang
What is the job of Business
Analyst?

2. The term “Business Analyst” is synonymous with a career in the IT
industry. The most successful and valuable analysts are those who understand
the “business” rather than those who understand “IT“.
The BA has come to become a person of great value to an organization,
and who is a generalist capable of functioning competently in diverse roles.
Typically, these people have a broad educational background and a diverse
skill set with a wide range of work experience in different jobs and
industries. In essence, they are able to visualize the "big picture" - that is -
understand the business from different perspectives, as well as the
technology side of what can be effectively used to improve the business
Quoted from Sanjay Dugar, www.businessgyan.com
BA, What’s that mean?

3. So what exactly is the Business Analysis?
What is the Business Analyst’s role?
What is the best background for this job?
What skill set is required?
Contents

4. Business Analysis:
Business analysis is the discipline of identifying
business needs and determining solutions to business
problems. Solutions may include a systems development
component and may also consist of process improvement
or organizational change or strategic planning and policy
development.

5. IT Business Analyst:
The people who carry out the process of Business
Analysis are called a Business Analysts or BA. BAs who
work specifically on developing software systems may
be called IT Business Analysts, Technical Business
Analysts, or Systems Analysts. Each organization may
have its own ideas about the role, skills, responsibilities
and expectations for the Business Analyst.

6. The Business Analyst Skills in a broad perspective comprises of the
person being a …
Business Planner,
Systems Analyst,
Project Manager,
Subject Area Expert,
Organization Analyst,
Financial Analyst,
Technology Architect,
Data Analyst,
Application Analyst,
Application Designer, and Process Analyst.
Skills

7. Skills of an IT Business Analyst:
The skills required by the B.A. are much more than just
good inter-personal communication skills and experience
with wide range of tools and techniques are needed, as
well as an appropriate background and personality.
Skills

8. Major roles of a BA
Define and Scope
Business Areas
Elicit
requirements
Analyze and Document
requirements
Communication
Requirements
Identify Solution
Verify solution meets
the Requirements
The role of
Business Analyst

9. Define and Scope Business Areas
 Must be sure that the project scope is clear and complete
before the start of detailed requirements gathering.
 Defining and documenting the project scope requires the BA
to understand why the project has been initiated, and the
objectives of the project. An important contribution of the
BA to the project is the analyzing of the business problem
without "jumping" to a solution
 A complete project scope will name and define all the
stakeholders that will be involved with the project, including
people, systems, internal departments, and external
organizations.

10. Define and Scope Business Areas
 Other important components of the project scope
documentation include the project viewpoint, project
assumptions, and business risks. These components give the
BA the information necessary to prioritize and focus the
requirements gathering.
 Finally the project scope should include a high-level
description of the business processes. It may also include a
list of items that specifically will not be included in the
scope. This gives the entire project team a complete
understanding of the work that the BA will be doing during
the detailed requirements gathering phase.

11. Define and Scope Business Areas
Essential Skills Required:
1. Facilitation skills to bring multiple groups together
to scope project and get consensus
2. Ability to document the project scope using business
terminology
3. Project scope documentation techniques

12. Elicit Requirements
 We use the word elicit, since the BA must be able to get
people to say all that they have to and not leave anything as
assumptions.
 It is critical that the BA initially gathers Business
Requirements and completely understand the business needs
before defining a software solution.
 The BA must assess the type of project, the people involved,
and the volume of information required; and then determine
how and where to find the requirements.

13. Elicit Requirements
 BAs have a variety of techniques available to them including
interviews, facilitated information gathering sessions,
surveys, questionnaires, observation, and existing
documentation from which to choose.
 Gathering complete, detailed requirements is an iterative
process that involves the BA asking questions, pondering
answers, asking follow-up questions, and bringing divergent
opinions to consensus. It also involves prioritizing the
requirements to assure that the most critical issues are
addressed by the project solution

14. Elicit Requirements
Essential Skills Required:
1. Asking the right questions
2. Active listening
3. Interviewing techniques
4. Facilitation techniques
5. Documentation
6. Ability to categorize requirements

15. Analyze and Document Requirements
 The BA is responsible for following their organization's
standard documentation format or for creating their own.
 When developing a documentation format, the BA must
consider the best format for communicating with the
information technology team and the best format for
communicating with the business area experts.
 The BA must also determine the appropriate level of detail
for the documentation.

16. Analyze and Document Requirements
 The entire organization uses a consistent documentation
format and approach.
 The BA is often the person leading the development and
maintaining the standard documentation format.
 Typically there are many requirements. To organize them and
make them easy to review, they are divided into categories or
groupings. It may be good to categorize requirements into
Business, Functional, and Technical

17. Elicit Requirements
Essential Skills Required:
1. Analysis Skills
2. Understand the system development methodology
3. Utilize modelling techniques
4. Categorization skills
5. Prototype user interfaces
6. Develop a textual template for requirements

18. Communicate Requirements
 The BA should be the best communicator on the project
team.
 The BA must also work very closely with the Project Manager
to ensure that the project plan is adhered to and scope
creeps / changes are approved and documented.
 As the requirements documentation is being created, the BA
will conduct informal and formal requirements reviews. These
review sessions increase the quality of the document by
finding missing or unclear requirements.

19. Communicate Requirements
Essential Skills Required:
1. Run effective meetings
2. Active listening skills
3. Precision questioning techniques
4. Conduct formal and informal presentations
5. Write clear emails, memos, and status reports
6. Conduct a comprehensive requirements review
7. Change management
8. Write review summaries

20. Identify Solution
 The BA should work closely with the Business Area Experts to
make a recommendation for a solution and work with the
technical team to design it.
 If software automation is part of the solution, the BA should
assist with the screen design, report design, and all user
interface issues by providing detailed functional requirements.
 If a software package is going to be purchased, the BA works
with the Business Area Experts, IT personnel, and the
potential vendors to discuss the requirements and verify that
the package selected will meet the needs.

21. Identify Solution
Essential Skills Required:
1. High level understanding of the software design
2. Ability to evaluate vendor software packages
3. Ability to estimate solution costs and benefits and
build a business case for implementation

22. Verify Solution meets the Requirements
 The BA should remain involved in the project even after the
technical team takes over.
 The BA reviews the technical designs proposed by the design
team for usability issues and to assure that the requirements
are being satisfied.
 Once the solution is developed into software, the BA is
uniquely qualified to assess the software and determine how
well it meets the original project objectives

23. Verify Solution meets the Requirements
 The BA should work closely with the Quality Assurance team and
to assist with the entire testing process.
 Testing is based on requirements, so the BA's intimate knowledge
of the requirements allows accurate design of test cases.
 If there is no Quality Assurance team available, the BA can still
assist with User Acceptance testing, the time when the Business
Area Experts are asked to approve the software for
implementation.
 As the software is tested, the BA ensures that it is clearly
documented and reports defects and variances from
requirements.

24. Verify Solution meets the Requirements
Essential Skills Required:
1. Basic understanding of system design concepts
2. Knowledge of software usability principles
3. Understanding of testing principles
4. Ability to write and review test cases

25. Conclusion
Seriously... The reality is that there isn't such as thing
as a standard requirements document template to help
guide the business analyst in the creation of this
document.
The format of a Requirements Document vary depending
on the type and size of project, type of organization,
maturity of the business analysis team, use of
specialized requirements management tools, type of
methodology and development process(agile vs. RUP vs.
structured analysis), etc.

26. Conclusion
Having said that, here are some common types of information found in
many requirements documents
 Background/History
 Scope and Objectives
 Regulatory Requirements
 Business Level Requirements
 Strategic
 Tactical (Interoperability)
 Operational (Process related mostly)
 Stakeholder and User Analysis
 User Requirements (the abilities that the users need)

27. Conclusion
 Functional Requirements
 Non-functional Level User Requirements
 Assumptions/Constraints
 Risks and Dependencies
 Solution Options
 Business Glossary (the nouns and noun-verb phrases of the
business)
 Reference to Business Rules
 Reference to Business Case/Vision
 Use Case Models

28. One more observation: requirements documents are
also known by a variety of names which, at times,
mean the same thing and, other times, refer to totally
different documents:
• Requirements Document
• Business Requirements Document (BRD)
• Software Requirements Document
• Software Requirements Specification (SRS)

29. There is a chain of reasoning that leads from the statement of a problem to the implementation of solutions…
POST-IMPLEMENTATION
Business Analysts feed back to the Owner how well their
measure of success has been achieved
Owners
defines measures of success and $targets
…Business Analysts confirm & document
Strategists
determine the strategy to hit the targets
…Business Analysts help do market research, create strategy, challenge &
documentSponsors
establish a Programme that delivers the strategy
…Business Analysts document Programme TOR
and help build the Business Case
Programme Managers
Institute Projects that implement the programme
…Business Analysts document the Project TOR
Project Stakeholders
…Business Analysts specify requirements for
Projects (in the Business Model)
Design Analysts
design solution that satisfies the requirements
…Business Analysts write functional specifications, protect
requirements & document compromises
Project managers
Implement solution
…Business Analysts help with
-Process and data migration
-Cutover planning
-Rollout
Solution Builders & Business
test solution
…Business Analysts ensure tested against requirements
Solution Builders
build solution
…Business Analysts protect requirements & document compromises
Users
Accept solution
…Business Analysts help with
-$MEASURING $BENEFITS $REALISATION
Setting the scene: scope of the Business Analyst role
$Money!
…involving up to 10 groups of people…