As a business analyst, here are a couple of things you can consider in doing in order to increase your skills:

• If you are dealing with a given business process, consider creating a process flow diagram which documents the process,
• Ask business domain experts to review your diagram and validate that your understanding of the business process is correct,
• If you come across business terms that you do not understand, write them down and look them up.  Create yourself a glossary of terms which are specific to your industry,
• If one does not exist, create a business entity model (using a class diagram or E-R diagram) to model the relationships among the various things your specific business deals with,
• Learn to document problem statements in a concise and accurate manner by volunteering to do so when problems arise,
• Find out more about the various analysis patterns which can help you solve problems down the line,
• Continue to increase your communication skills (both verbal and written) by joining a pubic speaking group such as toastmasters and by asking your colleagues and friends to review your written work and provide you with feedback,
• When you are about a new analysis method/technique/concept (ex: BPMN, function point, workflow pattern, etc) try to find out more resources such as articles, books, etc. to help you understand the new concept.

These are just some ideas.

- Adrian

Priyankadt

Business analysts managing software requiremets are recommended to steer clear of deining the solution.  It's best to let the solution design team work with a few constrainst as possible to allow them to get to the best answer to the problem.

In process improvement projects you are probably defining the solution as well as the problem.  In this case there are a number of techniques you can use to help you get to the best solution.  A few of them are listed below;

1. Define the problem first.  Create a document that says what the problem is, what it is caused by and the impact to the business (eg cost, regulatory breaches, risks, customer churn, etc)  Don't address the solution at ll in this document.  Have the project sponsor or project manager approve your problem statement befre moving on to solutions.  This gets your head focused specificaly on the prbem and amkes sure others have agreed with your interpretation of it.
2. Develop more than one solution proposal.  (People often come up with 3)  By doing this you are making sure you look atthe problem from a couple of different perspectives.  You can give each solution it's own theme or strategy.  Examples can be
   • Fully automated, partly automated, totally manual
   • Very expensive, small budget, skunkworks/no budget
   • Head office controls the project, project is managed locally to the problem, problem is managed jointly
3. Use a "logical" process map.  By defining a logical process map you are removing the physical aspects of the existing process.  That frees you up to see what are the pure process requirements and not just the constrainst of the existing environment.