A Business Analyst is a person who assists clients and stockholders by analyzing business practices, identifying potential problems and providing solutions to these problems. They may go by other titles including budget analysts, financial analysts, or management analysts if they specialize in a particular field. Analysts sometimes referred to as a “BA” are also responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients to help identify business problems and propose solutions. Within the systems development life cycle domain, a business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of services to the enterprise.
They are responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients to help identify business problems and propose solutions. A business rules analyst, however, can be thought of as a business analyst with a focus on business rules. Professional business analysts understand business systems and the overall business processes in the enterprise. They have the qualities to savvy users of the major business systems within a company and are deeply aware of trends and significant changes in business data needs across the company.
To be a good business analyst, you should be skilled at working with end-users to determine what their needs are. So, good analysts should have technical experience which is useful in determining if a user’s requests are feasible and should be essentially objective observers of a particular business or a specific department. Their job is to review the processes, personnel, and investments made within a company and determine the exact functioning, and possibly potential functioning, for the area under analysis.
You should know that when you are an analyst you are accountable for solutions that meet defined needs. You must also have the ability to assess projects after implementation. Business analysts are given the tools and trained in the skills necessary to accomplish this task. However, successful business analysts have attributes that cannot be taught.
Business analysts are expected to analyze and understand business problems and present solution recommendations to the business stakeholders. Business process modeling adds value to projects by ensuring the technology solution will meet the business needs. They are usually educated to degree level and many have relevant work experience and vocational skills, perhaps as part of a sandwich course.
Project Leaders in Business Analysts
Project leaders are usually interested in the costs of the various options that may be available, and call upon business analysts to provide cost estimates. From these estimates, they can choose the “best” solution. Project teams must be reconfigured to make the best use of this new role. Business analysts are much more valuable to the team when they have learned how to gather, analyze, organize, and document data requirements.
Finally, professional business analysts play a critical role throughout the business solution development life cycle. BA’s are the static link between the business and IT departments and they must be able to speak both languages. Business analysts pursue nonlinear, heuristic, and sometimes wholly intuitive avenues of analysis and discovery, using tools designed to support these interrogations. So make sure to try and have all the qualities and requirements to be a successful analyst.