The Community Blog for Business Analysts

"Business Requirement" is a maligned phrase. Different people have different interpretations for what it means. The worst interpretation that I have come across is, “hey, if the requirement comes from a business stakeholder, then it is a business requirement”. Requirement from business is NOT business requirement. For God's sake, every ...

Years ago, I was consulting as a Principal Business Analyst for the second largest company in the world in the money transfer business. One fine morning, I was engrossed in my work when my business stakeholder, (let's call him Tom) arrived at my desk.  Tom: Praveen, I have a change request for you. Well, this is a new business requiremen...

We saw about the problems and the ways of defining a solution to those problems in the last article. Also, I had mentioned that when a problem arises, there is a need for the business to resolve that problem. So, what would be business needs? It again depends on the problems which they face.  By definition, Needs are desires of the project cus...

Now when I am already a successful BA since many years, I would like to share few moments with everyone. During my first months as a business analyst, life was filled with a sort of inner turmoil. Even though I had books on how to write requirements documents, had received individual mentoring on putting together use cases, and had a trus...

Till now whatever we have seen was more from a bank point of view on few of the roles and responsibilities of a business analyst. Let us see on day-today what a business analyst might be doing!!!   Before understanding what business analyst do, let us understand why any business need an analyst. By definition, an analyst is the individual wh...

Now, I am a BA. My role of doing the routine operational work is no more there. Now I am in to the mode of asking questions. So, what are the questions I should be asking? How am I supposed to interpret the answers? How do I build my knowledge on the process based on these answers? How can I contribute to the improvement of the process? These are f...

  Knowledge can be explicit as well as tacit. Explicit knowledge is something that can be easily documented, studied and transferred from one individual to another. On the other hand, tacit knowledge is knowledge that cannot be easily documented, taught and transferred from one individual to another. It includes the beliefs, attitudes,...

Business Analyst – First time when I heard this word while working for banking operations, I was really curious to know more about the role behind this word. One fine day, I was introduced to a person by my senior manager and was told that I need to explain him on the processes which we were doing in the banking operations. I initially though...

Decision model and notation (DMN) is a nice way to model policies and make sure your business rules are implemented properly. Opposite to traditional approach in business rules which was the focus on the rules them selves, in DMN we start from decisions. Let’s work on a tangible example. In an employees benefits and entitlement system, you...

Prepared by MindMeister tool   Have you ever planned a project or brainstormed an idea? It takes a lot of effort to manage the collected information in a way you can easily traverse through. On occasions you find yourself occupied with a lot of questions and confusion in scenarios such as You have a lot of details to get started with...