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 …
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 …
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
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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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Business Analysis And 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 Last week, we looked at the website of edX, which is a …
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What Is Agile?
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 …
Why Business Analysis Templates Are A Bad Idea For Beginners (and what you should do instead).
When I first started out my BA career, I tried to use requirements document templates to guide my requirements & specification work. But I quickly realized that the templates were limited in what they could provide me and that the BA profession was far too complicated to be boiled down into a …