SKILLS AND QUALITIES REQUIRED TO BE A GREAT BUSINESS ANALYST

Core Skills

Communication Skills

Must be good communicator.

Facilitate working meetings, ask good questions, really listen to the answers, and absorb what is being said.

Problem-Solving Skills

The entire project is a solution for a problem.

Facilitate a shared understanding of the problem, the possible solutions, and determine the scope of the project.

Critical Thinking Skills

Responsible for evaluating multiple options.

While discovering the problem to be solved, must listen to stakeholder needs.

Critically consider those needs and ask probing questions until the real need is understood.

Business Analysis Skills

Documentation and Specification Skills

Ability to create clear and concise documentation.

Creates requirements documents.

Analysis Skills

Uses a variety of techniques to analyze the problem and the solution.

E.g. Use cases, Business Process Models, Decision Models.

Identifies the downstream impact of a change or new solution.

Visual Modeling

Ability to create visual models, such as work-flow diagrams or wireframe prototypes.

Important to be able to capture information visually – whether in a formal model or a napkin drawing.

Facilitation and Elicitation Skills

Facilitates specific kinds of meetings.

Most common kinds of elicitation sessions are interviews and observations.

More advanced roles, the meetings are called “JAD sessions” or “requirements workshops.”

Business Analysis Tools

Ability to use basic office tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Ability to use modeling tools, (e.g. Visio or Enterprise Architect), requirements management tools, (e.g. DOORS or Caliber) or project and defect management tools.

Soft Skills

Relationship-Building Skills

Ability to build strong relationships, often called “stakeholder relationships”.

This skill involves building trust.

Self-Managing

The most successful BAs manage the business analysis effort.

Manages themself to commitments and deadlines.

A Thick Skin

Receives a barrage of feedback – on their documentation and proposed solutions.

Able to separate feedback on his documents and ideas from feedback on his personally.

A Paradoxical Relationship with Ambiguity

Ambiguities in requirements specifications lead to unexpected defects.

Ambiguities in conversation lead to unnecessary conflict.

At every stage of a project, can be found a BA clarifying and working out ambiguities.

At the beginning of a project, before the problem is totally understood and the solution is decided upon, a BA must be able to embrace the ambiguity and work effectively through ambiguity.

Aloka Perera
alokabperera@gmail.com Send Mail

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