Who Can Be a Business Analyst

I believe, Business Analysis as a discipline is not evolved yet.  Business Analysis has different interpretation in different organizations based on the need of those organizations. What a Business Analyst does could be different in different kind of organizations.  They do different things in product based companies and service based companies. Also, the tasks will be entirely different in big organizations and small organizations.

In such kind of situations, it is really important to understand what this discipline is all about and what are the organizations that are helping for the evolution of Business Analysis as a discipline.

There are many names for a business analyst in the organizations primarily based on the kind of job they do:

• System Analyst
• Business Analyst
• Business Systems Analyst

Primarily  two kinds of people are

becoming business analysts in organizations:

• MBAs as a typical career opportunity
• Non MBAs who are very good in the domain   side (Subject Matter Experts)

However, the skill-set for a business analyst should be analyzing certain aspects of business/product/market in order to build a product/service which helps the customer/client with some value addition.  Whoever is becoming a business analyst has to acquire this skill-set in order to be a good business analyst.  Though domain/product knowledge is very important to be a business analyst, the following qualities should be developed over a period of time for building products/services which helps the customers.

•  Ability to probe the stakeholders for getting the requirements right
•  Understanding details, ability to draw a line between business/system requirements
•  Looking more from customer/business aspect while building a product/service
•  Understanding the philosophy of product/service and who its clients are
• Sensing the market and the concerned market segment and its demographic changes
•  Developing good relations with all stakeholders and respecting their role in the organization

Nobody knows everything. So, it is important for a business analyst to maintain good relations with everybody and understand from them as to what is needed to build a product which the client wants to see. So, a business analyst should be a great listener and should acknowledge others and value others opinions. They should be able to get the buy-in from all the stakeholders for freezing the requirements only by building right relationships.

A business analyst typically understands what the product/service that needs to be built for the customer/client from wide variety of stakeholders and help the software development team develop exactly how he/she envisions the product should be.  Business Analyst takes the responsibility for building the product as it should be and guides the software development team periodically as appropriate. They also take the responsibility for getting the sign-off from the senior management by working with the product owner.

So, if somebody wants to become a business analyst they need to think like a business analyst and develop the above skill-set in order to be a business analyst. I will put the responsibilities of a business analyst in coming posts.