Duties of a business analyst may vary depending on the type of organization or industry they are working in, however there will be some commonalities across roles: Gathering, validating and documenting business requirements. Analysing commercial data such as budgets, sales results and forecasts Modelling business processes and identifying opportunities for process improvements. Identifying issues, risks and benefits of existing and proposed solutions and outlining business impacts. Creating functional specifications for solutions. Estimating costs and identifying business savings. Simplifying information and deciphering technical jargon so it is easily understood by the whole team. Implementing and testing solutions. Supporting business transition and helping to establish change.
The following are some of the specific skills a business analyst needs in order to be successful: Business analysts are likely to deal with stakeholders at all levels of an organisation right up to the CEO The ability to understand and analyze problems and find solutions The ability to think creatively and work collaboratively with teams to solve business challenges The ability to make decisions around things such as requirement prioritisation, scope, assessing viability of solutions etc Requirement gathering is a key part of the role so the ability to ask the right questions and correctly understand the information received is essential Business analysts will find themselves creating documents such as use cases and business requirement documents The ability to present findings and recommendations to senior leaders and to manage stakeholder meetings