Become an IT Business Analyst: Learn, Apply, Succeed!

This lecture provides overview of all the essential technical skills that an IT Business Analyst should have. If you want to learn more about these technical skills and master them, click on the link given in the Resources.

Revision of the important topics learned in this chapter.

This lecture explains the importance of understanding business domain, different ways to acquire business domain knowledge and business case document of a software project with example.

This lecture explains how and what all information you should collect in order to understand the scope of the project (i.e. internal systems, end users, external systems) and the nature of changes requested to various systems of the project. This topic is explained with a real-world example and a downloadable resource to help you document this important project information.

This lecture explains how you can understand the entire Business and IT Landscape of the organization to succeed as an IT Business Analyst. This topic is explained with a real-world example to demonstrate various business units of the organization, products/services offered and the IT systems involved in offering those products/services along with their technical stack, interfaces to the external systems and regulatory bodies if applicable.

This lecture explains what is a Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Main types of SDLC (Waterfall, Agile), Scrum framework of Agile method and how they are implemented in an organization to develop software. This knowledge is helpful in planning business analysis activities according to the SDLC being followed in the project.

This lecture explains what is Stakeholder Analysis, it's importance, different kinds of stakeholders and how you can perform Stakeholder Analysis effectively for your project to understand and manage stakeholders to make the project successful.

Revision of the important topics learned in this chapter.

This lecture helps you in understanding a typical Business Analysis Process of an IT Project i.e. various stages (phases) of Business Analysis and the activities of each stage. This knowledge will help you in planning business analysis activities.

This lecture explains how to approach and plan your business analysis activities depending on the SDLC being followed in the organization i.e. Waterfall or Agile. This topic is explained with a real-world scenario and step-by-step guidance to plan business analysis activities.

Revision of important topics learned in this chapter.

This lecture explains what exactly is a Requirement for any IT system (software application) with real-world examples.

This lecture helps you understand the Requirement Classification Scheme i.e. Types of Requirements with real-world examples. It includes 4 types of Requirements: Business Requirements, Stakeholder Requirements, Solution Requirements (Functional and Non-functional Requirements) and Transition Requirements.

This lecture helps you in understanding and applying the SMART technique while Eliciting and Defining requirements. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bounded.

This lecture helps you in understanding what is a Business Rule, Types of Business Rules (Structural, Behavioral), Basic Principles of Business Rules and the Analysis of Business Rules with real-world examples.

This lecture helps you in understanding the Lifecyle of a Requirement and the tasks that need to be performed during the lifecycle to manage and maintain requirements and design information: Trace Requirements, Maintain Requirements, Prioritize Requirements, Assess Requirement Changes and Approve Requirements.

Revision of important topics learned in this chapter

This lecture helps you in understanding the sources of Requirements: Business Case and Business Requirement Document (BRD) with real-world examples and downloadable resources to be able to interpret these documents, understand what exactly is needed by the business stakeholders and to form a basis to elicit requirements.

This lecture provides and overview of Requirement Elicitation phase, Requirement Elicitation Techniques and process to elicit requirements. It also includes a helpful resource on the Requirement Elicitation Techniques.

Revision of important topics learned in this chapter.

This lecture explains what is Requirement Analysis and provides an overview of all the activities that should be done as part of this phase to make the requirements and their solutions ready to implement by the software development team.

This lecture explains What is Requirement Traceability, it's importance, benefits and how you can trace requirements using Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) or Product Backlog in JIRA. This topic is explained with a real-world example and downloadable resources to help you apply your learning.

This lecture explains Why it is required to Prioritize Requirements with a real-world example, criteria to prioritize requirements and how you can prioritize a set of requirements effectively using the proven Requirement Prioritization Techniques such as Grouping, Ranking, Time-Boxing, etc.

This lecture explains What is Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and how you can perform Root Cause Analysis to identify root cause of the given problem using the proven RCA techniques - Fishbone Diagram and Five Whys with step-by-step guidance and real-world examples.

This lecture explains What is Strategy Analysis, the Role of IT Business Analyst in performing Strategy Analysis in an Organization and how you can perform the Strategy Analysis of a given business requirement using 4-Step process: Analyze Current State, Define Future State, Assess Risks, Define Change Strategy. This topic is explained with a real-world example to help you apply your learning and be able to perform Strategy Analysis effectively.

This lecture explains What is Requirement Modeling, the benefits of creating visual models (diagrams, matrices) and provides an overview of all the Requirement Modeling Techniques: Scope Modeling, Business Process Modeling, Data Modeling, Decision Modeling and State Modeling with real-world examples and tools to create models. It also guides you on how you can learn and master all the requirement modeling techniques explained in this lecture.

This lecture provides a quick recap of all the business analysis activities learned so far in the course and explains the next step "Design Solution" with a real-world example to help you understand and be able to design a solution for a given requirement using the step-by-step process: Define Solution Approach, Identify Improvement Opportunities, Requirement Allocation and Define Solution Performance Measures.

This lecture explains the Estimation and Scoping Process done at the Project Level by the IT Team (Project Manager & Developers) and the Role of IT Business Analyst in this process. It also explains the Estimation approach depending on the In-house development or Outsourced development with Fixed Price or Hourly contracts. This topic is explained with a real-world example of estimating and scoping a solution to help you understand and apply your learning to the project's estimation process.

Revision of important topics learned in this chapter.

This lecture explains what is SRS (Software Requirement Specification) Document, the structure of an SRS Document with a standard SRS Template and how you can create an SRS document using the analysis and modeling information. This topic is explained with the SRS document of a Real software application so that you can relate the learning and apply it in your work practice.

This lecture explains What are User Stories in Agile Method, Anatomy of a User Story, INVEST Quality model to validate user stories and how you can write effective user stories to specify requirements from the end user's perspective using the proven user story templates.

This lecture explains Why it is required to Organize Requirements and various Analysis Artefacts (Documents), benefits of organizing requirements, best-practices and how you can organize requirements in the organization's shared repository and/or using Project management tool such as JIRA.

This lecture explains What is the Verify Requirements Activity, how to verify (self-review) a requirement specification by ensuring that it has all the necessary quality attributes and a step-by-step guidance to help you verify a requirement by performing as set of verification activities. The purpose of verification is to ensure that the requirement specifications are of high quality before submitting it to the review to the business stakeholders.

This lecture explains the "Validate Requirements" activity, Important Elements related to the Validation of Requirements, and the steps to validate requirement specification with business stakeholders to ensure that the specification meets the business objectives through the acceptance criteria, key performance indicators (KPIs) and risk analysis.

Revision of important concepts learned in this chapter.

This lecture explains the process of explaining requirement specification (SRS Document  / User Stories) to the Development and QA (Testing) teams with examples to help you understand the process and be able to explain the specifications effectively to these teams with important tips to handle their queries.

This lecture explains a proven method to support Development & QA (Testing) teams to ensure that the development and testing runs smoothly without any gaps or hurdles. It also guides you on the common problems that can happen during the development/testing phase and how you can solve them effectively.

This lecture explains how you can collaborate with the stakeholders for the demo of developed features and/or UAT (User Acceptance Test). It guides you through the whole process with important tips to make it successful.

This lecture explains the typical Go-Live or Production Release or Production Rollout process which is a coordinated effort from the Development Team, DevOps Team, Production Support Team and the IT Business Analyst to deploy the developed changes/features into the Production Environment. It explains the role of IT BA into the Go-live process to help you understand the activities and support that need to be provided from your end to ensure the successful Production Release.

This lecture explains how to prepare Release Notes and communicate with end users once a set of features/changes are Live in the Production. This topic is explained with a real-world example and best practices to help you prepare effective release notes and communicate it with the end users through the designated channels.

This lecture explains how the production issues and change requests are communicated to the IT Business Analyst and how to manage them effectively to ensure that they are prioritized and addressed for resolution.