Role of Business Analyst

Role of a Business Analyst

Lets discuss the Role of B.A. in an IT enviornment... so according to WiKipedia :

The role of BA is to apply analytical skills to business requests (which are often high-level or lacking in detail) and communicate these business wants/needs in a clear and unambiguous manner. A key part of this is ensuring these requests or requirements are consistent and not in contradiction with each other. The emphasis in the role is to understand the requirements from the business perspective and translate them into a form that can be understood and acted on by a service provider. This often takes the form of ability statements, smaller sub-requirements, functions, tasks, etc. These can be used by a project manager in a WBS(Work Breakdown Structure). The analysis may consist of several areas such as business/subject knowledge, IT capabilities, feasibilities, costs, relevance, data, and dependencies across other business or project areas.

Other popular definations and roles of BA:

A key role of the business analyst is the identification and reconciliation of the practical and ‘people’ problems that can delay the best planned of projects. The move towards balancing the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills in delivering business change initiatives is becoming increasingly important as organisations strive towards world class standards in change project delivery.

Stress management (negative) and personal growth (positive) are now on the corporate agenda. Business analysis can have a key role in delivering change initiatives that are positive in approach and enhance individual expertise

According to Boston Uni :

The role of the business analyst is to identify business needs and communicate them to software developers. As such, the analyst is a liaison between key business decision makers and programmers.

A business analyst who works effectively, providing software developers with complete and correct requirements, can create a competitive advantage by helping programmers develop software that is ideally suited to the organization. As a result, the analyst can have a significant impact on development costs and help the business minimize project delays.

So the bottom line comes up that a BA basically passes on the functional and non functional requirements to the IT developers who can betetr understand what is required out of them and hence produce an end product which will be what the customer is actually looking for.

What Next...

So we know a lot of stuff what a BA does... and actually stuff he needs to carry on his job and all that.. but is it easily understood for some one naive towards all those jargons?? to be honest a couple of years back i would have been baffled if some one asked me what RUP was or JAD session.. or WBS / Use Case / UML... all that was something i hadnt heard.. but then i did.. and i learned.. and boy dont i like it now...

Any How lets discuss all the stuff i mentioned a BA does point by point and am sure i'll be helping some folks who might wana have a brief tutorial for Business Analyst...

Lets begin with the Role of Business Analyst...