The Day to Day activities of a Business Analyst
If you are considering starting a career as a business analyst, you are possibly imagining what a typical day looks like. Where there is no typical day for a business analyst, there are surely some specific patterns that you should expect, and also different objectives of what you can achieve on a day-to-day basis. For a given project, a business analyst will normally try to oversee a sequence of carefully designed assignments aimed at achieving the common objectives of the review, construction, planning and evaluation process. These assignments can include attending team meetings, working on challenges, analysis, documentation, and reviews amongst others. There are online business analysis training programs that offer courses on how to effectively manage your daily activities as a business analyst.
Here are the various day-to-day activities a business analyst should undertake.
What a Business Analyst Does?
- Carrying out an Investigation on Project Goals and Issues.
As a business analyst, part of your daily job includes asking a lot of questions. To fully understand the project and for proper clarification, you need to conduct interviews and read and observe the ongoing works. Also, you need to investigate, analyze, and search for solution alternatives (both within and outside the organization).
- Elicitation Techniques.
This is a very important yet challenging activity that a business analyst does. Elicitation involves working with the stakeholders to know their project objectives or to know how the business is run today. A business analyst needs to regularly engage and work with the stakeholders in relation to defining requirements. This could be in the form of interviews, individual meetings, prototyping, workshop facilitation, or even a collection of these and other analysis techniques.
With Elicitation, you can bring out the best ideas from people who view all the various parts of the problem. By observing someone do their work, and with that, you create a workflow document representing what you understand from your observations, and then you have properly carried out elicitation.
There are many techniques involved in elicitation but It is important to note that active listening is the most important of them all. Some of the elicitation techniques include requirements workshop (which is made up of five phases: planning, opening, execution, closing, and follow-up), interview, observation, document analysis, interface analysis, brainstorming, prototyping, surveys and questionnaires, and focus groups amongst others.
- Information Analysis.
Part of your regular activities as a business analyst involves analysing information (otherwise known as the Analysis phase). It involves fully explaining the elements of the project, clearly establishing without any doubt what the business needs to do for the problems to be solved. Here, it is crucial that you work with the development team to clearly define what the solution should look like.
- Communicating with a large number of people.
A good business analyst should spend a good number of hours daily communicating with people. This involves more than just speaking, but also hearing and discerning verbal and non-verbal information, building an open conversation, making sure you understood what you heard, and communicating what you have learned to those who will develop the real solution.
- Documenting Findings.
After conducting an analysis, Business Analysts also spend a decent amount of time daily recording and documenting what they have learned and observed. They also record and document their results in various models, text-based descriptions, and visuals like graphs, charts, illustrations, and so on. It is important that these findings are documented in a clear and concise manner. These documented findings can then be used to communicate with the stakeholders to help make decisions about business requirements.
- Evaluating solutions.
Part of the business analyst’s daily activities involves pointing out options for solving specific issues and then helping select the best one. The business analyst will also estimate the best solution across all the layouts and planning ensuring that it meets the business requirements.
- Managing Requirements.
Business analysts also work with stakeholders as well as project delivery teams to prioritize the implementation of the requirements. They also address any changes requested to the requirements and manage the requirements all through the project life cycle.
- Implementation.
This is not the last daily activity of a business analyst, but it is the most precarious phase. A business analyst must be very careful not to miss any objectives of the project because it can lead to the failure of the project. Finally, the business analyst should be familiar with how clients utilise the framework.
With day-to-day activities, a business analyst always knows the end destination, how to get there, and how to handle adjustments if the need arises. As an entry-level business analyst, the online business analysis certification course includes the daily activities of a business analyst
