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Considering The Skills of A Successful BA: Outstanding Communication

To be a successful business analyst, one needs strong communication skills, the ability to conduct detailed research and analysis, and strong time management and organizational skills. Additionally, business analysts must be able to see the big picture of how a project fits into the overall business objectives and priorities. They must also maintain a customer-focused and value-driven perspective to ensure solutions meet stakeholder needs. Business analysts require a large toolkit of techniques to apply the right analysis method for each situation or problem.

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25 views

Considering The Skills of A Successful BA: Outstanding Communication

To be a successful business analyst, one needs strong communication skills, the ability to conduct detailed research and analysis, and strong time management and organizational skills. Additionally, business analysts must be able to see the big picture of how a project fits into the overall business objectives and priorities. They must also maintain a customer-focused and value-driven perspective to ensure solutions meet stakeholder needs. Business analysts require a large toolkit of techniques to apply the right analysis method for each situation or problem.

Uploaded by

Harik C
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Considering the Skills of a Successful

BA
When performing business analysis, you need to be equally proficient in
several skills so you can apply them at different times based on the project
you’re working on. But you can’t stop there; you also have to know when to
use which skill. The following sections spell out a few skills you need to
succeed at business analysis.
Outstanding communication
Communication is integral to everything in business analysis, so you need to
be great at it. BAs operate at the intersection of business problems and
business solutions, which means you have to be able to communicate with
two groups of folks that sometimes seem to be speaking different languages.
We cover more on communication in Chapter 3.
Detailed research, analysis, and recording
BAs need to have the curiosity for understanding processes, procedures, and
systems. They shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions. If you’re consistently the
person in the room with your hand up when a presenter asks for question, you
just may be cut out for work as a BA. Even if you know the subject matter
well, you can still ask questions to understand it in more depth and detail.
That curiosity helps you understand what each person needs from the project.
The key isn’t just asking questions of other people; it’s wanting to understand
all aspects about how something works or what the underlying problem is.
Such curiosity could lead to conducting research on your own to figure out
where the problem exists and then analyzing the issues and barriers that
would create an effective solution.
Time management and information organization
If you ask a true BA when analysis is done, his answer will be “Never!”
However, the reality is that you have a limited time to complete your project,
so to be successful, you have to be able to effectively manage your work and
be good at setting priorities. Because you’ll be dealing with a lot of people
and a lot of information, you need to be good at organizing all the
information in a way that lets you recall it when needed to support your
communication. You need to understand which pieces of your elicited
information are relevant to which stakeholders and how you are going to use
what you found to communicate your results.
The ability to see the big picture
If you get close enough to an impressionist painting, all you see are brush
strokes. Only as you move away from the painting can you start to see the
image of a cathedral or a picnic. Being able to step away from the project at
hand and see the big picture is crucial for any business analysis practitioner.
You must be able to work on a project while understanding how that project
fits in with other projects in the organization and continues to meet the
business’s overall objectives. This macro view is a particularly important skill
because the BA is typically the only person with this vital perspective. You’re
the one who can keep efforts relevant, synergistic, and efficient.
Once, a project Paul was a part of was being worked on by several
smaller areas (or silos, in BA lingo) within one organization. He studied
the entire end-to-end process — including the different silos — and
discovered that multiple silos were creating the same data stores when
having just one for everyone to access made more sense. Focusing on
the big picture allowed Paul to catch the issue in time to get things back
on track.
Customer-focused and value-driven perspective
To be a good BA, you must always keep in mind what your customer needs
from you. That probably seems like a no-brainer, but keep in mind that we’re
not just talking about external customers who purchase your organization’s
products and services; we’re also referring to internal customers from other
departments and even to those on your project team. With any of these
customers, you have to make sure that whatever you produce provides value
to the customer and to the project you’re working on.
A large BA toolkit
Abraham Maslow, the famous psychologist, once said, “I suppose it is
tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it
were a nail.” This concept led to the law of the instrument, or overreliance on
one familiar tool.
As a business analysis professional, you need to avoid falling victim to this
law. By having a large toolkit, you can apply the right tool to the situation at
hand. You have to know which tools work best based on the context and the
situation. For instance, if you’re trying to model data, the best tool is to use
an entity relationship diagram, not a workflow (more on data modeling in
Chapter 13). If you need to show your stakeholders what your solution would
look like in real life, you use a prototype (Chapter 4). On the other hand, if
stakeholders just need the nuts and bolts and bottom line of the project, you
want to make sure you can write a strong business case (Chapter 9). If you’re
trying to make sure your project stays on track and doesn’t go out of bounds,
you use your scoping diagram (Chapter 10).
In addition to the business analysis techniques covered in the book,
you need to have a good grasp on the types of solutions specific to your
business or field. For example, if you work in an area that develops web
applications, you want to be familiar with and stay current on the
features and functions that technology can deliver.

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