Elicitation - Discovering the underlying business need to be addressed and information related to the product and project requirements, often through conversations with stakeholders. Analyzing Requirements – Organizing, specifying and modeling the requirements to ensure they are complete and unambiguous. Specifying Requirements – Documenting the requirements in a format that can be shared with stakeholders. Validating and Verifying Requirements – Ensuring the requirements map to the real business need, are approved by all relevant stakeholders, and meet essential quality standards.
Depending on the role, the BA professional may also take on more senior-level activities such as planning the business analysis activities or managing requirements. And they may do a whole host of things not formally part of the business analysis role, such as manage the project, test the solution, or write code.
The responsibility set of a business analyst would require him to fulfill different duties in different phases of a project and they are elucidated below : 1. Initiation phase This phase will mark the beginning of a new project and a business analyst will vary out the following responsibilities: · Assist in carrying out the cost-benefit analysis of the project. · Understand the business case. · Ascertain the feasibility of the solution/project/product. · Help in creating the project charter. · Identify the stakeholders in the project.
2. Planning phase This phase will involve gathering the requirements and planning how the project will be executed and managed. His responsibilities are : · Elicit requirements · Analyze, organize and document requirements. · Manage requirements by creating use cases, RTM, BRD, SRS, etc. · Assess proposed solutions. · Liaise and enhance communications with stakeholders. · Assist in formulating the project management plans. · Help in finding the project’s scope, constraints, assumptions and risks. · Assist in designing the user experience of the solution. 3. Executing phase This phase marks the development of the solution as per the requirements gathered. The responsibilities include : · Explain requirements to the development team. · Clarify doubts, concerns regarding the solution to be developed. · Discuss and prioritize project scope changes. · Create beta tests scripts for initial testing. · Share the developed modules with client and solicit their feedback. · Follow deadlines and manage stakeholder’s expectations. · Resolve conflicts and manage communications with the project team.
4. Monitoring and controlling phase In this phase, the project is measure and controlled for any deviations from the initial plans. This phase runs simultaneously to the execution phase. · Develop test scripts and conduct comprehensive module and integration testing. · Conduct UAT (use acceptance testing) and create testing reports. · Gain acceptance/approval of the deliverables from the client. · Explain the change requests to the development team. · Monitor the development of the change requests and verify their implementation as per the project’s objective. · Document the new changes, update project’s documentation and inform all the related stakeholders. · Measure the overall performance of the project and flag/highlight in case of any concerns. 5. Closing Phase This phase marks the closure of the project. The responsibilities are : · Present the complete project to the client and gain their acceptance. · Create user training manuals and other instructional guides. · Conduct elaborate integration testing in production environment. · Create final product documentations, achieve records and document project lessons learned.
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