business analysis

Oct 26 2009   10:00AM GMT

Five ‘must-have’ skills to be a Business Analyst

Posted by: Jaideep
business analyst, business analysis, Project Management, Software Project, software, business process, business rule, customer requirement, software requirement, quality, process, Development, business knowledge, technical knowledge

As stated in my previous post, a Business Analyst is a quite powerful role that establishes the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer. Let us see what are the ‘must-have’ skills without which a business analyst can not survive? And why are those skills so important to be a business analyst? Without any relevance to the order in which they are mentioned (as all are equally important) these skills are:

5. Business Knowledge: A good amount of experience/ exposure/ knowledge of customer business are very important for a business analyst

4. Listen and Understand: A business analyst has to be a good listener and with a sharp understanding power without which all the discussions with customer will be fruitless.

3. Technical Knowledge: There will be quite a few technical discussions at customer site. The BA has to be quite conversant with the technologies and methodologies present at his organization.

2. Communication: A business analyst has to be a strong communicator. During the customer meetings, if he does not communicate well about his organization’s capabilities to build up the trust and confidence, probably customer may not gel well with his ideas.

1. Writing skills: Very important skill required for documentation and for conveying the right messages across the board.

Oct 23 2009   10:00AM GMT

Various roles of a Business Analyst

Posted by: Jaideep
business analysis, Project Management, Software Project, software, business process, business rule, customer requirement, software requirement, quality, process, Development

Business Analyst is a quite powerful role forming the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer.

For a software company having various new development projects a business analyst has to understand the existing business processes, methodology, rules etc. of the customer, document it (which itself is a specialized task) and hand it over to development team to embed the customer requirements into the software to be built.

For a software (or IT) sales company a business analyst has to sit behind the sales/ business development teams – understanding their current process of acquiring new business or sustaining current business and bring out a better approach, methodology, process to enhance business in terms of new business and holding current business.

For a manufacturing company a business analyst has to understand the process, re-engineer it to enhance the production, product yield, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and reducing defects or rejections.

A business analyst ‘s various caps thus include – business process analyst, business strategy analyst, business methodology analyst thereby becoming a backbone to business process managers, sales teams, management, development teams , product teams, quality teams etc.

Jun 10 2009   10:00AM GMT

Ten Reasons of getting into pitfall of leaving a scope of software development at customer site

Posted by: Jaideep
Project Management, Software Project, change management, project organization, developer, project sponsor, project director, project manager, key user, implementer, technical lead, business requirement study, business analyst, business analysis, requirement analysis, requirement gathering, implementation phase, project phase

In the previous post we learnt what all could a software project could lead to in presence of higher scope of software development at customer site during implementation phase. Let us see what all factors are responsible of insufficient requirement gathering during business study phase of a project.

1. Incompetent team (vendor): Any project calls for a project team. A good team at both ends is important. Both teams have a substantial role during a project. If key users selected at customer site for delivering process knowledge to requirement analysts (vendor), there are higher chances of wrong information driven. The key users chosen should rightly be the actual process owners not essentially be at the higher level in the organization.

2. Incompetent team (customer): A right selection of project manager and analysts is equally crucial. The team has a short duration stipulated for gathering requirement information and understanding business processes. And mind it, this is not an individual race, it is a relay race, and weakest link will decide the overall result of the project.

3. Non commitment (customer): Well the process owners are the key users, but if are not serious or have not received the right message from their management may not be seriously committed to the vendor team. A non committed team will not be able to impart right knowledge, processes, practices and information required critically for a project.

4. Non commitment (vendor): A team of good committed project manager and analysts is equally crucial for gathering information. The previous experience on business domain and success factor definitely counts in.

5. Lack of time (customer): Key users identified if are engaged in other important projects running in the organization will be always short of time for providing right information to vendor project team.

6. Inappropriate discussions: In a limited timeframe of business study, there will be limited discussions. So all discussions should be crisp, purposeful, well driven and result oriented.

7. Improper documentation: Well explained requirements if not documented properly may lead to a wrong, incomplete product. Right people with right business and process knowledge have to acquire a good documentation skill also to lead the project to right direction and grand success.

8. Top Management involvement (customer): If customer management thinks that providing key users completes their job in the project, they are wrong. Their involvement in all important meetings is as important as the business is.

9. Project Organization: A right architecture of project team is very important. The project sponsor, project directors, project managers, key users, developers, implementers, technical leads from customer and vendor respectively should be the right mix of people.

10. Change in requirements: Any change in business or process during or after the requirement study phase has to be communicated to vendor team well in time, so that by following the change management procedure, the changes are taken care of properly.