Business Analyst is the one who should speak all languages of people who are involved in the project in a way or another. It isn’t just a matter of understanding and explaining business, it also involves resolving conflicts of interest that may appear.
We can say that the Business Analyst, is like a Translator, to a language that (s)he may not be necessary aware of, but her/ his edge is the art of learning and eliciting till (s)he masters the area being analyzed, then (s)he can fluently talk this language with the business owner, and then translates it to the Technical team, in a language that they can understand.
Analyze the business in a way that keeps the chaos away. This is one of the main mottos of the successful Business Analysts.
Put first thing first.
One of the ways in which a Business Analyst keeps things organized is that (s)he puts first thing first, priority where importance and criticality are not its only keys, the keychain has other keys, like business value, and dependency.
To be able to make this prioritization, the Business Analyst should have a helicopter view on the whole picture of the system, and where initial analysis and scoping are also important, to empower the Business Analyst with the view and the knowledge, that will allow her/him to plan how the analysis should be conducted and in which order.
In that early stage of planning and initial elicitation, the Business Analyst will be able to detect any expected conflict of interest, between different stakeholders, that will be planned for solving with the appropriate elicitation technique.
A requirement is being discovered from different stakeholders, with the different operational languages and managerial levels. C Level managers may think of “What” is needed, so, whenever it is a question of the “what”, it is their call. but the “How” it is being done, may be better taken from the operational people, who are doing it, in their everyday job.
Business Analyst with the understanding of the complete picture is supposed to suggest how a Business Process could be improved and be able to detect any unnecessary, duplicate effort, or different sources for the same info, that may have different values.
The Business Analyst Tool kit, has at its core the passion for business discovery, by examining, every way that may help for a better understanding. A Business Analyst, should master the art of questioning, to be able to pull all the business facts available, requirements are not ready to be gathered, but rather hidden and should be brilliantly seeked.
