14 May ‘TASKS OF BUSINESS ANALYTICS’
A business analyst acts as an intermediary between all interested parties, identifying, analyzing, and approving requirements for changes in business processes, corporate policies, and information systems. Business analysts are focused on solving customer business problems and often act as translators of customer requirements into terms and categories that are understandable to technical specialists.
That is why for a business analyst, oral and written communication skills, logical and tactical thinking are especially important. Of exceptional importance is the ability to inspire the client – after all, it is the business analyst who will have to deal with his wishes.
SKILLS REQUIRED
1. Effective communication
In practice, this means that the business analyst is responsible for organizing meetings and phone calls, he must be able to ask the right questions and actively listen to the answers, be able to highlight all the important and useful information in the dialogue.
You will mainly have to communicate online – the virtual communication mode provides a wonderful opportunity to communicate with people from all over the world. But at the same time, the work sometimes has to be adjusted to the client’s time zone. However, adjusting to the features of communication within a distributed team is not so difficult, you just need to be ready for this.
2. Ability to solve problems
Anyone who professionally practices business analysis should be able to solve problems, because in nature there is not a single project free from them. We can say that any project from the very beginning is aimed at solving specific problems. The task of a business analyst is to understand what they are and determine the amount of work to eliminate them. Then BA participates in the search for people who can cope with the technical aspects of the problem, promotes such specialists during negotiations between the business and the IT team.
3. Critical Thinking
Business analysts should not only collect information on requirements from all interested parties, but also critically evaluate it. Clarifying questions allow us to detect real problems and formulate tasks that business representatives could not articulate on their own.
4. The ability to quickly learn and work in the face of time pressure
In an ideal world, you always enter the project at the initial stage, you know all the project requirements, create the documentation yourself, and start building relationships with the project team at the same time that all its members get to know each other. In reality, this may not be so at all.
If you joined the project later, you need to think very quickly. You will not only have to carefully study all the available documentation, but also find those who can and should ask questions. Until answers have been received, your value to the team remains in doubt.
5. Willingness to make decisions
Although a business analyst is only one member of the project team and does not determine the final form of the product, the ability to make solid, sometimes risky decisions is extremely important for him.
A business analyst should be independent enough to make the decisions necessary for the project, to know who is responsible for their implementation and what criteria this implementation should meet.
6. Spatial Intelligence
A business analyst should be able to think with visual images and translate the accumulated information into graphic form: illustrations that explain business processes, prototypes, and professional layouts. Fortunately, today we have access to a wide range of applications, including free ones, which, when used expertly, can do 80% of your work. But the main thing is to remember that anyone can pick up convenient tools; artistic abilities are not necessary in and of themselves.
– Mathew Marcelino