Many people would like to have a clear understanding of who a Business Analyst is and what they do.
The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines business analysis in the BABOK as the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to the stakeholders.
It also defines a Business Analyst as anybody who performs business analysis tasks, no matter their job title or organizational role.
This means that anybody who facilitates beneficial changes in an organization by understanding the stakeholder’s needs and recommending solutions that would fulfill those needs is a Business Analyst.
Some of the main responsibilities of a Business Analyst include the following :
- Elicitation : a Business Analyst has to identify the business need that needs to be fulfilled in order to fulfill that need. This business need is identified using numerous techniques such as interviews, workshops, brain storming and focus groups.
- Requirements Analysis : once the Business Analyst has identified the business need they need to document, specify and model those requirements in order to understand them.
- Requirements validation and verification : once the requirements have been documented then they have to be validated and verified by the stakeholders to ensure that they are really what the stakeholders need.
- Design : once the requirements are verified then they can be used in the solution design.
There are numerous other tasks that a Business Analyst is responsible for but they may differ based on their role in the organization.
While there are guidelines on how to perform the tasks and techniques that a business analyst might perform there are numerous different approaches to the role.