When you immerse yourself in your tasks, sometimes you don’t know what the colleague at the table to the right is doing every day. To correct this situation, we will deal with professions in IT. With developers and testers, of course, they create the product. PM is a controversial character, but he is in almost every team, so everyone has already figured out what questions to go to him with.
But why do you need a person with the fashionable profession of Business Analyst (BA), no one understands for some reason. It may seem that he writes documentation all day and spends a lot of time discussing some solutions with the team. What does a business analyst do if there is already a PM and a technical writer?
Who is a business analyst — another layer of management or a developer’s best friend? Let’s explain in this article.
WHO IS A BUSINESS ANALYST
A business analyst is the person who stands between the business and the development team. It collects and discovers requirements for a future product or system function, and then translates them into a language understandable to engineers.
How a business analyst’s day goes
The responsibilities of a BA in a team can vary, but there are 4 main functions specified in all projects and in all business analyst jobs.
Management of requirements: their identification, preparation and detailing, division of requests into requirements and “some not very important whims”.
Strategic analysis: in many companies, BA works together with top management on the company and project development strategy, because he knows the product best.
Design solutions: preparation of documentation and sometimes creation of prototypes. Everything to come up with and convey to the team how solutions will be developed and implemented.
Product management: communication with designers, engineers, stakeholders, business and Product Owners.
WHY DO YOU NEED A BUSINESS ANALYST
Imagine the situation, the customer sends the developer a link to the competitors and says: “I need a site! Just like this one!” Programmer: “I don’t understand what “exactly” means. Give TK, you will have to rework less.”
The customer goes to his friend, a part-time business analyst, to complain about the programmer. Next is a dialogue between the customer and the business analyst.
Customer: Tell me, WHAT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE HERE? Take and make exactly the same site, is it so difficult to repeat?
Business analyst (in a sad voice): Well, in general, I’m on the side of the programmer. Absolutely everything is unclear in your request. Now I will prove. Let’s see together what exactly you like about this site. There is a “Compare” button here, do you need it?
Customer: No, it is not needed.
Business analyst: These people have a separate page for delivery and another for payment on their website, do you really need two machines or can you combine delivery and payment into one page?
Customer: You can combine, I really don’t want to fill two pages with anything.
Business analyst: You see, it’s not one-to-one anymore, right?
Customer: I probably meant more visual design.
Business analyst: And the programmer was talking about functionality.
How is the day of a business analyst2 1
This case shows how differently the same product (in this case, a website) can be viewed. It turns out that BA is the person who can save the project from “done, but not that”. Therefore, it is better to involve a business analyst before the team faces problems in communications with the customer.
The first bell, which cannot do without BA, can be considered too superficial requirements from the customer (as in the example above). The reverse is also the case, where the team seems to be doing cool things, but can’t tell the client exactly what’s been developed because they use overly technical terms that the client simply doesn’t understand.
It seems that if the customer had a technical background, it could solve all the issues. But they didn’t guess. Technically savvy customers, instead of focusing on drafting the TOR, may start telling the team what to do and how to do it, without having sufficient expertise in the field. Or worse, they start writing code and advocate for its implementation in the project. In this situation, BA acts as a psychologist: he reminds the customer that a team of professionals works for him, and by his actions he simply slows down the development process. The team, in turn, is asked to be more loyal to the customer and not to send him a link to Wikipedia.
There is a third type of communication problem — when the way the customer sees the product is too different from what the team thinks is the optimal solution to the business need. In such situations, a business analyst acts as a kind of referee and combines the best proposals from two options, along the way arguing for changes for both parties. Wait, but that sounds more like a Project Manager job, doesn’t it?
In some sense it is. Not all companies have individual people assigned to both roles, and you need to work with the requirements in any case. However, in medium and large projects, both the business analyst and the PM have enough work for the whole day (even with overtime).
How a business analyst’s day goes
ONE DAY BUSINESS ANALYSIS IN IT
Let’s describe a typical day in which a business analyst manages to complete all his tasksbasic functions. Of course, not all BA weekdays are like this. Depending on the current tasks and the stage of development of the project, the amount of time changes, the work of the business analyst adapts, but in an ideal world without burning deadlines, the BA schedule might look like this.
10:00 — 12:00 TEAM HELP
In some cases, communication with the team can take almost an entire day. In an ideal schedule, during these two hours BA answers questions when something is unclear and participates in the discussion of problematic situations.
There are cases when a seemingly simple task is taken up, but during execution it turns out that there are technical limitations, and the previously approved solution will take much more time.
The BA organizes a meeting where he explains the initial business need to the team and asks if the team can propose a solution that will take less time and resources. If the optimal solution is found, the business analyst changes the requirements. No, it’s time to “delight” the client with the news.
The BA should always have a clear understanding of how important a particular requirement is to the customer, and whether further changes need to be discussed with the customer. At first it is better to ask everything. Understanding in which situation you can make a decision on your own comes with experience.
What is important when working with teams:
Being in touch almost 24/7.
Focus on solving the problem: find out what the point is, turn the conversation into a positive and constructive direction and offer an alternative solution.
Escalate problems in a timely manner: do not try to solve everything yourself.
Discuss the difficulties that the project may face in case of changes. Notify stakeholders in a timely manner.
It is important not to get hung up on communication with the team and learn to understand when all current issues are resolved and you can focus on another task.
12:00 — 14:00 DOCUMENTATION WRITING
How a business analyst’s day goes
There is one downside to documentation: if it’s too long, no one will read it.
What does a business analyst do at this stage:
- Creates specifications.
- Describes user stories/acceptance criteria/use cases.
- Formulates non-functional requirements — describes the conditions under which the system is effective. For example: “The system must be fail-safe and compatible with Google Chrome…”.
- Simulates business processes.
- Prototypes solutions.
What is important when writing specifications:
- Determine the required artifacts in advance.
- Describe the requirements in ENOUGH detail: no more, no less.
- Understand the principles of usability.
- Follow notations when working with diagrams.
14:00 — 15:00 LUNCH
How a business analyst’s day goes
Lunch is an ideal opportunity in an informal atmosphere to learn about people and communicate with the team, so it is advisable not to dine alone.
15:00 — 18:00 COMMUNICATION WITH THE CLIENT
How a business analyst’s day goes
Working meetings are those meetings where you can not only learn about the requirements, but also get to know the true needs of the client. In other words, to answer the question “why do we need this?” and think whether the solution is really optimal or whether there are other options. To communicate with the customer in one language, you need to understand the subject area of the business.
In the course of such interviews, requirements are collected, identified and clarified, documents, prototypes, models, diagrams, product demos or even a finished solution are demonstrated.
Importantly! Validate the results with the customer and be sure to keep the “approvals”. Even a screenshot of a message in a personal correspondence is considered “approval”. Access to the same client’s Slack can be terminated at any time, so it’s important that you keep “approvals” with you, along with requests.
18:00 — 19:00 CONSULTATIONS WITH TEHLEDS
How a business analyst’s day goes
When the BA draws up the requirements, he must understand all the related technical details. Even if he knows how to write code, he has other tasks assigned to him on the project, so it is necessary to consult with those who are engaged in development: architects, tim/techlids and subject matter experts.
At such consultations, high-level requirements are discussed: how they should be better designed, implemented, decomposed, etc. If there are no architects in the team, you need to go to the developers and consult with them. The direct responsibility of the BA is to understand the subject area from all perspectives: not only from the business side, but also from the technical side.
What does a business analyst do every day
WHO MAKES A GOOD BA
Business analysis can come from both business and development backgrounds. Strong BAs come from technical writers because they understand exactly how good documentation is produced. Managers, economists and even specialists from the support team grow from business in BA, because they understand the pains and needs of the client.
The role of BA in the company can be performed by various specialists.
Sales Manager A sales specialist is the first to identify requirements and understand what the client wants. Experienced salespeople pump the necessary BA skills to competently collect the first information about a possible product.
Account Manager The account manager knows a lot about the product and the customer’s wishes, so he can guide the customer on where to develop.
Product/ Project Manager Within the scope of work of PMs it is necessary to convey requirements to the team and manage them, so a more or less serious project cannot do without knowledge of business analysis.
A team lead or the most experienced developer A developer can fulfill the role of BA if the customer has at least some technical competence. This model is most often found in outsourcing.
QA engineer The tester understands exactly what the team should develop. During testing, QA creates test cases, and these cases are almost the only documentation that the team works on in the absence of BA. It’s not best practice, but it has its place nonetheless. By the way, QA professionals need a few months to master the additional techniques required for BA and go into business intelligence.
UI/UX designer Designers communicate a lot with clients and work with feedback. They can tell the team what and how it should work. Since the designer does not understand development, the role of BA on such projects is shared by the designer with the team.
Scrum master, Scrum team If the team works according to the Agile model, these specialists can take on the role of BA.
HOW TO BECOME A BA?
How is the day of a business analyst8 7
If after reading the article you thought that business analysis could be the next stage of your career growth, that is a good idea. Even if you change your mind after training, knowledge of business analysis will significantly increase your value in the market.
To grow into a business analyst, you need:
Understand the role of a business analyst in your company, because tasks can vary greatly from project to project.
Determine your current competencies and compare with the BA competency matrix. Sometimes one competence (for example, good English) can be decisive.
Identify the missing competencies and undergo training on them.
Master the basic techniques and methods of BA. Implement the received techniques in work and monitor the results.
Submit a resume for a junior position with a cover letter. It is important to write why you want to work for this company and why it should hire you: what you did for this, what courses you took and what you can do. Don’t be afraid to submit test projects that you did during your studies along with your resume – they will be a great example of your first job.
For some, the working day of a business analyst will seem boring, for someone, it will be a dream job (calmer than that of project managers, but still a lot of communication and influence on the result). In any case, the knowledge of business analysis is becoming more and more in demand in the market every day, so if you want to develop in IT, it is worth getting pumped in working with requirements.