The Business Analysis Role: Insights from an Industry Event

The Business Analysis Role: Insights from an Industry Event

According to a private research report, Business Analysis (BA) is one of Australia’s most in-demand skills in 2024. Recently, Angelo Monteiro Gomes, a student from Mindroom, attended an industry event where he gathered valuable insights that he is excited to share with his fellow Mindroom students.

The session opened with the important statement: “Everyone is a stakeholder. You must learn how to identify the strong and weak ones.” In this post, our Business Analysis student, Angelo, will share his key takeaways.

What is a Business Analyst or BA?

A Business Analyst (BA) acts as a bridge between the executive team and the developers. They understand stakeholder needs and translate these into requirements for the development team.

During the event, participants discussed how the BA role involves understanding and organizing requirements, ensuring they are met until delivery. The role can vary between companies and may be linked to different areas such as finance or data, or even include technical skills like knowledge of coding.

The BA Process

1. Define Business Areas and Scope

  • Purpose: Focus efforts, identify stakeholders, and set clear objectives. Documenting what is and isn’t included in the scope is crucial to avoid miscommunication. Clear communication with stakeholders is key.
  • Techniques used: Use case diagrams to show where time will be spent, scope modelling, business process mapping, work breakdown structure, and requirements workshops.

2. Requirements Gathering

  • Purpose: Clearly establish the guidelines.
  • Techniques used: Interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, observation, and workshops.

When starting a project from scratch, the BA is responsible for designing processes using these techniques.

3. Analysis

  • Purpose: Ensure clarity, identify gaps, prioritise tasks, and align stakeholders.
  • Techniques used: Use case analysis to see what’s happening and what needs improving; user stories and epics to outline the personas who will interact with the system.
    • Functional Requirement Analysis: Identifies the specific functions necessary for the system to achieve its purpose.
    • Non-Functional Requirement Analysis: This analysis focuses on how the system performs, such as its reliability, security, and usability.

4. Documentation

  • Purpose: Essential for clear communication, risk management, and compliance.
  • This includes user case documents, business requirement documents, functional specifications, visual diagrams, and process workflows. The BA gathers requirements, visualises tasks, validates them, and sometimes stores them on platforms like SharePoint.

In Australia, it’s common to use Jira for creating tasks from scopes, but it’s important to consider milestones first. When choosing software for processes, it’s key to understand how the company currently operates and select a tool that fits those needs. The specific tool doesn’t matter as much as getting the job done, as most are similar.

5. Validate Requirements

  • Techniques used: Peer reviews, stakeholder feedback, requirements workshops, and reviews.

It is recommended to hold meetings to validate requirements and double-check documents with stakeholders.

6. Design

  • Purpose: Develop blueprints, optimise the user experience, and visualise stakeholder needs.
  • Techniques used: Prototyping, use case diagrams, data modelling, interface design, workflow diagrams, mockups, and design thinking workshops.

7. Implement and Deploy

  • Techniques used: Cloud platforms, monitoring tools, version control, and integrated development environments.

This is where the actual development takes place, turning the specifications into a working product or feature.

8. Evaluation

  • Purpose: Measure success, identify gaps, and look for improvements.
  • Techniques used: Key Performance Indicator (KPI) monitoring, surveys, benefit realisation analysis, and lessons learned.

9. Maintenance and Optimisation

In cases where the BA is on-site, it’s important to understand body language, communicate precisely, and stay flexible.

Visual aids can be incredibly useful. In Australia, showing a document, map, or diagram can help people trust your ideas as if they are already real and approved.

Key Skills to Become a Business Analyst:

  • Analytical and creative thinking (curiosity),
  • Communication,
  • Problem-solving,
  • Technical and business knowledge,
  • Project management.

How to Develop These Skills:

Obtain certifications and research tools used in your field, and identify the most demanding technical skills in BA job listings.

Final Tips:

  • Don’t be too hard on yourself, and don’t give up. The beginning can be tough, but things will become more natural with time.
  • Watch videos and read about potential biases in analysis.
  • Study business case studies.
  • Question your own analysis and make notes.
  • Discuss task prioritisation with your manager.
  • Attending team meetings—understanding the context will help with analysis.
Angelo Gomes

Author: Business Analysis student – Angelo Monteiro Gomes

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