What Is Business Analyst?

Business Analyst

A business analyst is someone who analyzes an organization or business domain (real or hypothetical) and documents its business or processes or systems, assessing the business model or its integration with technology.

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) describes the role as "a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals."^[1]
The role of a systems analyst can also be defined as a bridge between the business problems and the technology solutions. Here business problems can be anything about business systems, for example the model, process, or method. The technology solutions can be the use of technology architecture, tools, or software application. So System Analysts are required to analyze, transform and ultimately resolve the business problems with the help of technology.

Areas of business analysis

There are at least four types of business analysis:

1. Strategic planning — to identify the organization's business needs
2. Business model analysis — to define the organization's policies and market approaches
3. Process design — to standardize the organization’s workflows
4. Systems analysis — the interpretation of business rules and requirements for technical systems (generally within IT)

The Business Analyst, sometimes, is someone who is a part of the business operation and works with Information Technology to improve the quality of the services being delivered, sometimes assisting in Integration and Testing of new solutions.
The BA may also support the development of training material, participates in the implementation, and provides post-implementation support. This may involve the development of project plans and often requires project management skills.

Typical Deliverables

1. Business requirements, i.e. business plan, key performance indicator, project plan...
2. Functional requirements, i.e. data models, technical specifications, use case scenarios, work instructions, reports...
3. Non-functional requirements
4. As-Is processes, eg dataflow diagrams, flowcharts
5. To-Be processes, eg dataflow diagrams, flowcharts
6. Data models, i.e. data requirements expressed as a documented data model of some sort
7. Business case, a strategic plan containing shareholders' risk and return

The BA records requirements in some form of requirements management tool, whether a simple spreadsheet or a complex application. Within the systems development life cycle, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of IT services.

Prerequisites

There is no defined way to become a business analyst. Often the BA has a technical background, either having worked as a programmer or engineer, or completing a Computer Science degree. Others may move into a BA role from a business role – their status as a subject matter expert and their analytical skills make them suitable for the role.
Business analysts may overlap into roles such as project manager or consultant. When focused on specific systems, the term Business Systems Analyst may be used.
A BA does not always work in IT-related projects, as BA skills are often required in marketing and financial roles as well.

Industries

BAs work in different industries such as finance, banking, insurance, telecoms, utilities, software services, government and so on. Due to working on projects at a fairly high level of abstraction, BAs can switch between any and all industries.
The business domain subject areas BAs may work in include workflow, billing, mediation, provisioning and customer relationship management. The telecom industry has mapped these funcional areas in their Telecommunications Operational Map (eTOM) model, Banking in the Information Framework (IFW) and Emergency agencies in the Prevention Preparation Response and Recovery model (PPRR).
Finally, Business Analysts do not have a predefined and fixed role, as they can take a shape in operations scaling, sales planning, strategy devising or even in developmental process.