Understanding the Role of an IT Business Analyst & How to Become One
Functional Business Analyst Job Description
Functional business analyst provides support of SAP applications, including integration points between SAP modules and non-SAP applications to ensure business processes are maintained in a non-disruptive manner.
To write an effective functional business analyst job description, begin by listing detailed duties, responsibilities and expectations. We have included functional business analyst job description templates that you can modify and use.
Controlling the seasonal planning process both content wise and systemically, including document management, definition of seasonal calendar as it relates to Business Units (BU’s), product minimums management & seasonal drop process, cross-functional review and KPI management
Role of an IT Business Analyst
The Business Analyst must work in close coordination with multiple teams within the organization. The Business Analyst must interact with diverse teams and groups to understand the business more efficiently while providing innovative solutions to the many challenges faced by the business.
Apart from this, the Business Analyst roles and responsibilities in IT companies also include understanding the regulatory and reporting requirements. The IT Business Analyst must have experience in creating various functional specifications by defining the business’s needs. Some of the typical roles and responsibilities of an IT Business Analyst are:
- To understand business requirements from multiple stakeholders and prioritize them.
- Interpret business requirements and simplify them for easy analysis of top management to make strategic business decisions.
- Create solutions based on the requirements identified, create change management proposals, and work towards achieving the organization’s long-term goals.
- Review specifications for required change management, while efficiently organizing business needs.
- Work in close collaboration with the Technical Architect and Development team to ensure the team understands the requirements.
- Facilitating the right design sessions with the project implementation team.
- Delivering the correct elements of system design, business rules, and other relevant deliverables.
- Pull information from multiple sources from within the organization while analyzing and reporting the relevant data trends for informed decision making.
- Breaking down the technical and architectural requirements so that the entire team understands the infrastructure and technical requirements.
- A Business Analyst is not directly involved in the implementation of a software project. However, the Business Analyst is actively involved in capturing new business requirements and communicating them with the development team.
- A Business Analyst directly communicates with the relevant stakeholders and is responsible for transferring this knowledge to the project development teams.
- A Business Analyst also helps the management envision future needs among changing business processes and models.
Free Course: Business Analysis Basics
Skills Required to Become an IT Business Analyst
An IT Business Analyst must have excellent soft skills apart from the domain and technical knowledge requirements. He/she must be able to pull reports and analyze data streams to identify useful trends. An IT Business Analyst must ideally be from a technical background with a basic understanding of the necessary tools and technologies. And some of the useful skills a Business Analyst must have to be successful in this role are:
- A Business Analyst must have excellent verbal and written skills.
- The right mix of program management and project management expertise.
- Having the right interpersonal and consultative skillsets is an advantage.
- Working on high-level detail and being able to interpret accurate results.
- The right organizational skills are also important for a Business Analyst’s career, as he/she needs to be very efficient in working with diverse teams within the organization.
- A good understanding of the business and the respective functional domain.
- Capability to position the right solutions that are cost-effective and actionable, while addressing the business requirements and challenges identified.
- Good problem-solving skills, while applying the right methodologies such as Unified Modeling Language.
- In-depth knowledge of requirement specifications and development, process flows, and developing business use case scenarios.
- An understanding of process modeling, agile, and waterfall software development methodologies.
11. Problem Solving
Pro business analysts perceive problems as opportunities that can be leveraged to give value to businesses and customers. To solve a problem, a BA breaks it down into its primary components. Following this, each constituent is analyzed carefully to identify the component with a problem. Critical thinking is among the skills employed by business analysts in examining a problem.
Besides thinking critically, problem-solving encompasses the application of analytical and logical techniques to recognize underlying causes. In doing so, a business analyst is able to propose solutions that guarantee the elimination of identified problems. Problem-solving process encompasses defining a problem scope, which helps a business analyst to establish whether the issue can be addressed satisfactorily.
Any possible solution is dependent on the scope. Eliciting information from stakeholders and resolving ambiguities are critical processes that business analysts undertake to determine a viable solution.
Sources:
https://www.velvetjobs.com/job-descriptions/functional-business-analyst
https://www.simplilearn.com/it-business-analyst-roles-article
https://www.projectpractical.com/roles-and-responsibilities-of-business-analyst-in-project-management/