process

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.

Various roles of a Business Analyst

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.

Dear Project Manager – your “faith” in 5 pillars of project can get you miraculous success in any Project

I remember a small inspirational story read somewhere recently. A small girl took all the money she had in her piggy bank and went to a nearby drug store. The drug store owner was busy on a phone, and the girl was waiting for him to get free at the earliest. As she got desperate she interrupted the owner – “excuse me – I want to buy miracle, how much it costs?”. The owner kept on talking over the phone with giving an ear to her. She repeated the same again, this time in a raised tone. Owner told her as he is busy talking to his brother staying in a far country after a long time. The little girl literally had tears, helpless as if she wanted something urgently. Another man was standing inside the shop. He got curious by what the girl had asked for. He asked the girl – “what do you want?”. She said I want miracle, and I have money for it. “But what do you need it for” – the man asked her. “My brother is very seriously ill, and my mother says only a miracle can save her” – she replied. The man was the most senior neuro-surgeon of the country. He accompanied the girl by saying – ok, I have the miracle, let us go to your house to see your brother. The boy was operated free of cost and got well. The total cost of operation was “FAITH” of the little girl and some dollars she had in her piggy.

Like the little girl, the project manager has to have this tool with him all the time to win over any situation and to gain success in any project. The 5 pillars of the project where a PM has to put his total faith into are:

5. Customer: The customer is the on whose money your organization, management, your teams, and you exist. Your faith in customer has to reflect in all your discussions, communications, deliveries and product. Chose your words very carefully when you are in front of your customer or even when you are having an off-hand communication through phone conversations, emails etc. Your actions speak louder than your words. So take care of your gestures and bod language too.

4. Management: Your management is banking on you for the building and delivery of the product. Don’t mingle facts with over-enthusiastic assumptions when you present the project report to your management or to your customer. Be realistic and conservative in presenting the facts and projections.

3. Team: Don’t divide your team into doers and non-doers, slow and fast runners, perfect and imperfect. Labels regarding the individuals once set in your mind will drastically and adversely affect the project. Trust them in the same volume as you want them to trust you.

2. Processes: Whatever processes and procedures you adopt for project management, follow them ethically, trust them and they will deliver you the best.

1. Self: This is the prime factor. If you don’t have this, if you don’t trust yourself, you will not be able to adhere to the 4 points mentioned above. You can (deliver your best) only if you think you can.

Miracles do happen but only buying coin is TRUST.