Business Analyst

Some background

Business Analysts are multi-talented individuals that have a wide range of skills, tools and techniques at their disposal that they can utilise to solve challenging problems for our clients.

This role is usually carried out by those at career level CL9 Consultant and above.

Responsibilities

How you perform the role of Business Analyst will vary depending upon the structure of the team, who the stakeholders are and the type of work the team is delivering. Not every team will demand the responsibilities below, but gives a good overview of what may be expected.

Basics

Business Analysis specifics

Requirements gathering

• Utilise questioning skills to understand stakeholder requirements
• Deal with vague requirements e.g. increase customer volume
• Collaborate with the team to produce outputs to share an understanding of requirements

Recognise and drive business value

• Help the team and the client identify that they're building the right thing
• Challenge the team and the client on the value being delivered

Breakdown of problem

• Working with the team, be able to breakdown a problem into logical delivery steps

Collaborate within the team

• Collaborate with others in your team to drive a common understanding of the requirements
• Challenge the team to explore new ideas and choose a direction

Collaborate with stakeholders

• Able to build relationships with a variety of stakeholders
• Work with stakeholders to understand their requirements and distil this into something that can be delivered

Facilitate workshops

• Workshops are a key opportunity to understand requirements and build a shared understanding
• Ensure that a workshop works towards a clear outcome and stays on track

Team ways of working

• Contribute to how the team works; as a Business Analyst you play a key role in how work feeds into the team
• Work with other roles, e.g. product owner, to define how the backlog is shaped and managed

Understand team roles

• Understand the different roles within your team, the part that they play and how you can support them.

Advanced

Business Analyst specifics

Early engagement

• Be involved in the early engagement of a new piece of work / new client
• Help a client to understand their problem
• Help a client to explore possible options and challenge different ways of thinking

Strategy definition

• Work with clients to understand the longer-term view and define a strategic approach

Multiple projects

• Work across multiple projects and able to support multiple teams

Gain broader skills

• Deepen your understanding of other roles, showing an appreciation for how these different roles contribute to delivery and how you can support them

Bigger picture

• Consider the implication of the immediate work within the wider scope of the client
• What is the impact across the clients business, are their other teams to collaborate with

Build your toolbox

• Build up an array of tools that you can deploy in different situations
• Identify the best approach based upon the client and their needs

ISO

You'll carry out your role in accordance with the requirements of ISO9001 and ISO27001 as reflected in the Company's policies and procedures and the ISO9001 and ISO27001 organisational structure charts.