Hi Nettle,

Wow - that's a tall order!

My gut feeling tells me you can't create such a list - at least, I have never seen or heard of one.  If life was only that simple - everybody would become a business analyst.

Having said that, it is possible to create checklists of various types which a more junior analyst could use to ensure they cover with the client key areas.  However - the danger of checklists (especially for jr. BAs) is that it gives the business analyst a false sense of security aka they think that if they asked all the questions on the list they should be fine.  But that is not the case!

In some ways, business analysis is not unlike driving.  One can have a goal in mind (e.g. get to a given address by 5 pm to meet a blind date) and arm themselves with a Google maps directions yet still miss the goal. How come?  Because a map is just a guide which cannot always be followed exactly - unexpected things can "come up".

Here's what could happen while driving:

• On a Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, a route which Google says it should only take 30 minutes might take 3 hours,
• Google says "turn left on Maple street" yet when you get there Maple street is closed because of a water main break,
• When you get to Wilshire Blvd., sections are closed due to protests in front of the Federal building,
• A brush fire on the side of the 405 freeway has caused the closure of the entire freeway.

Same goes with business analysis!  The client could make a request which is not on the checklist - what does the Jr. BA do in that case?  They should "think/analyze/evaluate aka analyze!

Checklists and list of questions can be helpful to recall data but they cannot do the thinking for your.

Again, checklists could be useful, for example if the client says "I need a report which does ..." having a checklist to remember key things to ask about a report would be great (header, footer, font size, font style, how often, delivery method, logos, calculated fields, source of data, etc.)

Three of my favorite questions are: "Why?", "Why?", "Why?".

BTW: if you must develop a list of questions make sure they focus on requirements (what does the business want to accomplish and why).  Your sample categories seem to be design centric.  If the business tells the junior business analyst that they want the "submit" button to be red and the BA documents just that, then you might be missing some critical need since doing exactly what the client asks might not solve their problem.

Unless you already know that the CEO really, really loves red buttons then you should be asking "Why?" a number of times.

Example:

• BA: Why should the submit button be red? 
• Client: Because we really want the user to press it?
• BA: Why do you think that the user will press it if it's red?
• Client: Because it will stand out on the page?
• BA: What if the user is color blind?
• Client: Hmm... I didn't think of that!  Let's just make the text bold?
• BA: (thinking: we are getting nowhere) Why is it so important that the user clicks the submit button?
• Client: Because currently it does important things and some users don't click it.
• BA: What is so important?
• Client: (getting annoyed, of course): Because it has logic which submits the new lead to the marketing department which provides us lots of value.  Many users click the cancel button by mistake.
• BA: (a-ha) So the problem is that when the user clicks the cancel button my mistake they lose their data right away and they probably don't want to re-enter all the info.
• Client: Exactly!  Now can we just make the button bold!
• BA: What if we put a message box when clicking the "Cancel" button which asks the user something like "Are you sure you want to cancel and lose all the data you just entered?"
• Client: Wow... that would be great!

I realize I'm rambling on but you get the point aka I'm not sure what type of list of questions could have been developed to help a junior BA have even such a simple conversation without doing some thinking on their own.

Hope this helps!

- Adrian