business knowledge

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

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.

Top 5 reasons of Project Manager getting fired

Project Failure: First failure will downgrade the level of next project to be given to the project manager. Not only this, but it will also trigger hidden cameras in the organization that start monitoring each and every step of project manager. These hidden cameras could be top management or some selected down the line people working with project manager.
Customer Feedback: Organizations are taking customer feedback very seriously. A remark by a customer regarding a project manager – “I want this project manager to manager all my future projects ordered to you. Infact if you don’t depute this person as project manager, you don’t accept our orders” triggered such a magic that it immediately presented the project manager with an out-of-turn hefty increment. On the other hand a customer CEO sent a confidential email message to the CEO of projects organization stating – “We don’t want the current project manager to be seen in out campus with immediate effect” put a very big question mark on project manager’s capabilities.
Project Team Feedback: Sometimes even if Project fails project manager is able to survive if project team and customer give a positive feedback. Then the reasons are different which are beyond the control of project manager. But if project fails and feedback is also not very positive, all axes will fall on project manager’s neck.
Lack of Technical Depth: A shallow or artificial demonstration of technical depth will not help for long. Although project manager has not to do technical activities on his own but his depth of knowledge will definitely help in driving the project in right direction and meeting targets.
Lack of business knowledge: Sometimes smart team members manage many a weaknesses of their project manager if he has demonstrated his strength in certain areas. But the lack of business knowledge is something that will certainly affect the product built, customer confidence in product and project manager’s knowledge. And if project manager is not clear about the business concepts of the customer, his presence in project, product and customer meetings will not be as effective as it is supposed to be.

10 golden rules for Requirements Based Testing

10. Document with complete and clear requirements is as important as oxygen in the air: Requirements based testing is purely based on the requirements specified by the customer or software sponsor during the business requirements study phase. Documentation of all requirements (user level and management level) at micro level is very (Very) crucial. Missing out any requirements or unclear requirements can call for a big problem at the implementation and project close-out stages. Getting the sign-off to freeze all requirements is equally important.

9. Requirement freezing does not mean “No Change”: You can’t close your doors for a change in requirements after initial business study phase. The business and business rules keep changing thereby meaning that the CHANGE in REQUIREMENTS can happen at any stage after requirement freezing till the project close-out. The impact of change on time and cost is a different subject altogether.

8. Start building test cases” along with the development: The moment after requirement freezing as discussed in the first point above, the project manager’s first job is to do the resource management, requirements break down in tasks and task allocation for development. At the same time, the testing team has to start understanding the requirements and build their extensive test cases based on the requirements.

7. Business Knowledge is as important as the testing knowledge: The rule of 50:50 is applicable for both – the developers as well as testers. It has to be 50% technical knowledge and rest business knowledge for developers. Similarly the testers should have the same ratio between the business knowledge and the testing knowledge to write down the sensible test cases.

6. Confirm complete coverage of requirements in your test cases: Ensure that the requirements are completely and exactly covered as per the business need built in the software (or being built parallel). Incomplete coverage of requirements in building test cases will again result into a disaster for the project and product.

5. Change your test cases alongwith the Change in Requirements: For the purpose of requirements based testing, you have to keep modifying the test cases after understanding the exact changes required (documented and signed-off). Don’t forget to vet for the change coverage in your test cases re-built or modified as per the need.

4. Build a repository of your test cases: Building a repository will always help in saving of time writing the test cases afresh in case of similar (or same) requirements scenarios. So keep building your repository with clear documentation of the coverage a set of test cases is meant for.

3. Start testing as soon as one unit is ready: Don’t wait for the product development to complete. Start your testing as soon as the smallest unit is done, so atleast the unit testing is over alongside the development (and most part of integration testing too as the units are increasing during development).

2. Re-test to confirm: Re-testing of your test cases with the business requirements is as important as the re-verification of test cases built.

1. Measure the benefits of Requirement based testing over the post development testing: Don’t forget to build a small metrics to measure the benefits drawn out of your requirements based testing in comparison to the complete testing being started post development. This analysis will definitely reflect great results in terms of time, efforts and money.