IT Business Analysts: What They Do and How to Succeed

Lean business analysis is a method that can be used in software development to deliver features and functional details at the right time. A Lean business analysis process is not about delivering the whole product in a short period of time, but it focuses on the parts of the project that are important to customers.

In lean and agile approaches, IT Business Analysts and/or Product Owners perform requirements elicitation and analysis at the last responsible moment. This helps reduce waste and increase customer satisfaction. To accomplish this, the IT BA analyzes, splits, and prioritizes new features or user stories to be ready for changing requirements needs that the technical team might have. 

The goal of business analysis is to understand the problems, stakeholders, and user needs in a business. This includes understanding the situation objectively and discussing solutions with stakeholders. Keeping all stakeholders engaged necessitates collaboration, so it's vital for IT Business Analysts to employ a wide range of business analysis techniques.

The phrase “lean and agile” is often used in software development to describe a process that responds quickly and effectively to change. User stories are a tool for writing business and stakeholder requirements. They are one of the most popular methods of writing business requirements. It is an easy way to break down a project into its components and it also helps determine what needs to be done and why.

The functional or user story drill-down is a technique that involves breaking down a user story into smaller stories (aka "right-sizing user stories"). The purpose of this technique is to better understand and prioritize the work for each story.

When a user story is too large, it becomes difficult to scope and the chances are low that it will deliver a value proposition to the customer. The solution is story splitting. You can break down each part of the user stories into smaller stories that are easier to manage and understand by your team as well as stakeholders. You can split by events, workflows, business rules, data types, etc. to break down your user stories into smaller chunks of functionality which you can then prioritize and assign tasks accordingly.

Acceptance Criteria are a critical component of the User Story. They help testers and IT Business Analysts to determine if a feature or user story is working as expected. There are many different kinds of Acceptance Criteria that can be used in a User Story, but they all function the same way: they define what the user needs to accomplish. For developers, the different forms of Acceptance Criteria such as Given-When-Then Scenarios, function lists, and business rules often represent the “real” requirements.

In software development, non-functional requirements are important aspects of requirements definition. Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are the qualities and constraints of the software, which have already been decided by the stakeholders or the technical teams. NFRs are becoming more important because they can get in the way of your application. It is important to define what your NFRs are and make sure that you build them into your product or service.

Analysts play a critical role in business success. Not only do they provide a valuable perspective for decision-making, but they also help the company to keep on track by providing insights and tracking progress.

The role of the analyst is changing with the advent of lean business analysis. As IT Business Analyst or Product Owner, you should learn how to improve your skills by staying updated with new skills and adapting to the changing needs of your organization.

This bonus lecture lists other Udemy courses we offer for aspiring and practicing business analysts to improve your skills in a wide variety of areas you need to round out your toolkit.