The term business analyst has become quite popular in the world of business today. If you are interested in becoming a business analyst, it is important to understand what exactly a career in this field entails and what makes a good business analyst. By understanding the business analyst roles and responsibilities, you can decide whether this is the line of work you want to go into. Mostly, organizations with medium or high operations require the services of a business analyst. Here are the responsibilities of a business analyst.
- Understanding the Requirements of The Business
A business analyst is expected to work alongside the stakeholders in the business to understand the business requirements. They will later translate these requirements in a way that is easy for developers to understand. The skill required in this case is the ability of the analyst to translate different information from the project stakeholders or the consumers into a version that is consistent and easy to understand. Therefore, an analyst is required to attend meetings with stakeholders to be able to get all the information they need to create a report for the development team.
- Public Speaking and Presentation Skills
For any business, it is impossible to downplay the importance of creating and delivering top-notch presentations on various topics. A business analyst is required to create presentations on project status, business requirements, and application designs. Generally, the analyst is mostly expected to present their findings to the IT and senior business management. Therefore, the work of the analyst is to create award-winning presentations that will impress stakeholders.
- Supporting Project Implementations
While the analyst is not actively needed in the project implementations process, they may be required to step in if there are issues with the implementations process. This is because there may be additional needs that call for the attention of the management team. The analyst is best placed to call a problem-solving meeting that will determine how the issues can be resolved.
- Testing the Projects
After the analyst has seen the project through, it is still their duty to test the product and ensure it is working as it should. They need to make sure the product or service delivered to the users actually satisfies the requirements. The analyst is also expected to create testing scenarios through most of the stages of development.
- Maintaining the Business Operations
After the business analyst has overseen the requirements of the project and offered solutions to all issues, they are then required to move to preventing, changing, correcting, maintaining, and enhancing the value of the system. Part of the business analyst roles and responsibilities include the creation of maintenance reports, deactivations plans, as well as system validation reports. The analyst also plays a role in system evaluation to find out when deactivation or replacement is needed.
- Team Building
This is an inevitable role of a business analyst. For their job to get done, they need to work alongside project developers, the stakeholders, and management. Therefore, they need to play an active role in creating a working relationship between different departments involved in same projects.