There are many risks in career development, but no risk is greater than spending thousands of dollars with the wrong training provider. This article gives you 5 things to look for when choosing a BA training program. I Learned the Hard Way, But You Dont Have To I've purchased and taken a BA …
25 Tasks Business Analysts Perform During a Digital Transformation
Supporting your stakeholders' evolution from the current state to the future state requires you to perform activities across all the stages of a digital transformation initiative. This article arms you with the knowledge you need to support the full digital transformation lifecycle. The Business …
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How Business Analysis Consulting Multiplied My Income and Changed My Life
Business analysis consulting may not be for everyone, but I made the jump in 2013 and it changed my life forever. I spent about 8 years doing business analysis work on many types of projects as a permanent employee before I was ready to jump into business analysis consulting. The two years I spent …
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My Strategic Decision to Take a $10K Pay Cut as a Business Analyst
Taking a voluntary $10K pay cut isn't easy, but I did it, and it turned out to be one of the best career decisions I've ever made for my business analysis career. It was mid-2006, I'd just spent $90,000 on my education, and I was making $50,000/year in a relatively easy job. My decision might …
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The Essential Role of Business Analysts in Digital Transformation: A Comprehensive Guide
Business analysis is an important profession with much bigger responsibilities than just "looking after software". This article explains what those responsibilities are, and what skills you need to embrace the additional responsibilities to grow your BA career. Table of Contents ► The 3 Phases of …
Business Analysis Consulting: 3 Things to Consider Before Making the Leap into BA Consulting
Becoming a freelance business analysis consultant can greatly increase your income, but there are many other factors to consider when making this important decision. As a business analyst, you might be tempted to look at the 2x to 3x income potential of becoming a freelance business analysis …
Blog Post
What Is Agile? Secondary Title Agile is a software development philosophy that encourages the team to release the solution in increments throughout the project instead of delivering the solution all in one release at the end of the project. Software projects are …
Prepare for Your Next Business Analysis Job Interview Using ChatGPT
#1 Rebuild your resume with the help of ChatGPT I used ChatGPT to reduce my resume from 4 pages down to 2 pages. Here are the specific prompts that I used to do this. NOTE: I've written all my interactions with ChatGPT in a use-case format to help you get acquainted with the format of a use …
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Functional Scope
A list of screens, features, functions, interfaces, and business logic that is in-scope for the project as well as explicitly out of scope for the project. The functional scope of the solution describes the basic features & functions that the project team is expected to deliver for the …
Business Analyst Interview With A Senior Business Analyst
As a senior business analyst, you should be having a fluid conversation with your interviewer like this example. Transcript Emal – All right. So this is a mock interview with Rishi Pani. Rishi has close to 10 years of experience working in the capital markets domain as a programmer analyst and …
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Future State Process Mapping
Future state process mapping is one of the most important activities that you should be performing. Transcript Future state process mapping is one of the most important activities that you should be performing while you’re trying to scope out a certain solution for your customers, or when you …
Impact Assessment
A business analysis activity that helps identify the full scope of a solution by determining the full impact of implementing the requirements produced for the project. There is a difference between requirements and scope. Requirements give the project a sense of what the customer requires from the …
Business Case
A business analysis deliverable that provides management with the information they need to make an investment decision for a given solution. Projects cannot exist without a financial investment and time/resource commitments from the management of the company. The business case document gives …
Activities
The work that a business analyst performs usually with the end goal of producing some deliverable. Business analysts can be expected to perform any number of activities to help their project or organization achieve its goals. Some of the most common activities that business analysts are expected …
Change Request
A customer request to modify some element of the solution after the scope and funding of the solution have been approved and the project has been initiated. It can be nearly impossible for the customers and the project team to determine the entire scope and characteristics of a solution during the …
Vendor Assessment
The due diligence process that an organization undertakes to determine if the vendor they are considering is a good fit for their needs. Many organizations will bring in third-party vendors to provide a product or service, but the organisation needs to ensure that the vendor can provide the …
Product
An enterprise-class system designed to meet a specific business need and/or support a particular business process. For business analysts, the term product is often synonymous with “system” or “enterprise system”. This relatively recent shift in the language in the enterprise software …
Business Analyst
A business analyst is a professional that helps their employer design, deliver, and support the solutions that the organization needs. Organizations are constantly evolving. This constant evolution requires the organization to regularly assess its current operations, and make investments into …
Feasibility
A project’s ability to deliver a requested feature, function, or capability. Often times, your customer or end-user will request a feature or a function that cannot be supported by your project’s budget or by the constraints that exist within your organization. As a business analyst, you may be …
Customer
The stakeholder who’s business needs must be addressed by the solution that the business analyst is helping deliver, The customer is normally the person on the business side of the organization who is sponsoring the initiative you’re working on. They are often at the leadership level and may not …
End-User
The stakeholder who represents the needs of the people at the operational level that will use the solution that is delivered. The end-user is the person who will actually be using the solution on a regular basis as part of their day to day work, once it has been released the project team. The …
Agile
A software development philosophy that encourages the team to release the solution in increments throughout the project instead of delivering the solution all in one release at the end of the project. Software projects have traditionally taken a waterfall approach. The restrictive nature of …
Constraint
A condition or event that prevents the project from fully delivering the ideal solution to customers and end-users. Customers and end-users will request an ideal version of a solution from the project team. This ideal solution can only be achievable under ideal conditions where the organization and …
Business Constraint
A business-related condition or event that prevents the project from fully delivering the ideal solution to customers and end-users. The business analyst must ensure that they are on the lookout for constraints that will prevent the project team from delivering the ideal solution. Many of these …
Technical Constraint
A technology-related condition or event that prevents the project from fully delivering the ideal solution to customers and end-users. The business analyst must ensure that they are on the lookout for technology-related constraints that will prevent the project team from delivering the ideal …
Current State Analysis
The activities that the business analyst performs in order to understand the business and technical circumstances that exist before a solution is designed and implemented. On larger initiatives, it becomes very important to establish a baseline of the business operations and systems that exist in …
Product Backlog
The list of requested features and functions that remain for the project team to deliver to the customer. In agile software development, features and functions are bundled up into an MVP and subsequent releases. The product backlog is the list of customer requests that have not yet been …
July 2020 Community Recap
Interviews, estimating, change management, business process management, and more. July was another great month in our community. We covered interviewing, estimating, change management, business process management, and much more. Please note that our Visio For Business Analysts enrollment …
June 2020 Community Recap
Agile, Business Analytics, Working Better With Developers June was a very active month in our community. We discussed many topics that are important to our members including Agile, Analytics, the IIBA, and Certifications. Here is a brief recap of the community highlights from June. 1. The …
Minimum Viable Product
The bare minimum set of functions and features that the customer needs to have a useful product delivered to them. The purpose of going agile is to make sure the project team can get a product out to the customer as early as possible. At this early stage, the product is nowhere near being …
Business Analysis Certificates: Benefits And Drawbacks Of Getting Certified
Many aspiring business analysts automatically assume that they need to get certified by the IIBA or by the PMI to be considered a business analyst in the industry. Business Analysis Certificates Are Not Mandatory Business analysts do not need a business analysis certificate to become a be …
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We’re researching AI adoption for business analysis and publishing the results. Artificial intelligence tools have reached the level of maturity that makes them useful for business analysts in their day-to-day work. The AI Playbook for Business Analysts will provide the business analysis community …
Business Analysis vs. Business Analytics
Business analysis and business analytics might sound the same, but they are two completely different professions. This article and video describe the difference between these two professions. The Educational Provider edX Makes A Mistake Largest, well-established training companies like edX can …
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Benefits & Drawbacks of the Agile Methodology for Business Analysts
Agile is a software development philosophy that encourages the team to release the solution in increments throughout the project instead of delivering the solution all in one release at the end of the project. Software projects are resource-intensive operations that can take a long time to execute …
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