The Quick Start Guide to Business Analysis

Name: The Quick Start Guide to Business Analysis
Rating: 4.5 (24 reviews)

Learn the very basics of Business analysis

Created byIskra Botcheva

Last updated 2/2025

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

The right questions to ask
Represent the information - using text, diagrams and mock-ups
Manage your requirements
Collaborate successfully with the stakeholders

Course content

7 sections • 52 lectures • 1h 12m total length

Introduction0:26
Explore practical tutorials on questions, diagrams, wireframes, and user stories to learn the daily basics of business analysis.
Learning Objectives0:29
Learn to interact with the business, ask high level and detailed questions, and break requirements into user stories. Build workflow diagrams and prepare wireframes to represent the future UI.
The Importance of Business Analysis0:40
Clarify requirements before implementation to align business expectations with developers' needs, reduce change costs, and identify blockers early, guided by a dedicated business analyst.

Learning objectives0:23
Learn to prepare high level questions to provide context for new functionality and craft detailed questions to clarify implementation and extract business requirements.
High level questions1:16
Understand the purpose of the high level questions and what topics to cover
Tutorial: High level questions - add voucher functionality to the online shop2:19
An easy example on how to prepare high level questions
Detailed questions1:59
Understand the purpose of the detailed questions and how to prepare them
Tips and tricks0:55
Apply tips and tricks for efficient discussions by improvising questions, proposing options, and sharing considerations to clarify requirements, such as whether a voucher should be implemented this generation.
Tutorial: Detailed questions - add voucher functionality to the online shop2:19
An easy example on detailed questions

Learning objectives0:26
A simple workflow diagram0:37
You will learn how to easily represent a process
Tips and tricks1:12
Tutorial: Simple workflow diagram - purchase and redeem a voucher6:53
Learn how to represent a process from the high level point of view
Example: Redeem a voucher1:37
Represent part of the process in a detailed way
Workflow diagram with several parties1:05
Represent the interaction between several parties
Example: Purchase and redeem a voucher1:13
Trace the purchase and redemption of a voucher in an online shop, identifying participants, voucher display, order creation, payment validation, email with voucher ID, and final redemption.

Learning objectives0:24
Wireframes, mockups, prototypes0:42
Understand the difference between wireframes, mock-ups and prototypes
Importance of wireframes0:23
Learn why it is important to add wireframes to our requirements
Usability rules2:15
Understand how to design the UI to be convenient for the end user
Tips and tricks1:12
Learn practical tips for documenting wireframes: use call outs, copy from steps, export to PNG or JPEG, name files clearly, align labels with user stories, update requirements after stakeholder feedback.
Tutorial: Build a wireframe - redeem a voucher5:07
More examples0:46
Review wireframes showing error messages for invalid voucher numbers and a callout, a pop-up for vouchers exceeding the total, and clear the input after applying a valid voucher.

Learning objectives0:39
Describe the project context, outline high level requirements, break them into detailed requirements and acceptance criteria as user stories, and validate the requirements with business and development teams for correctness.
High level requirements1:56
Learn about the business objectives, scope, project constraints etc.
Confluence tutorial: High level requirements using Product requirements template8:43
Break down the requirements1:12
Learn how to break down the scope into smaller development tasks
Requirements quality2:17
Make sure that your requirements are a proper input for implementation
Requirement name0:51
Give a proper name to each implementation task
Requirement description (acceptance criteria)1:08
Learn how to describe the processing logic
Example: Free form text - select a voucher0:20
Explore how a free form text requirement describes selecting a voucher, viewing vouchers with prices among online shop products, and revealing a purchase button after a voucher is chosen.
Example: GIVEN WHEN THEN - select a voucher0:33
Examine the given-when-then requirements description for vouchers in an online shop, where a customer browses, reviews products, sees voucher types in section gifts, and buys a selected voucher.
Tips and tricks0:34

Learning objectives0:25
Learn how to represent each user story on JIRA, enter it, and manage the requirements lifecycle with JIRA to monitor status and interact with the development team.
Organize into epics and user stories0:49
Learn how to organize the user stories in Jira
Main properties of epics and user stories1:21
Understand the most important fields to populate when creating epics and user stories on Jira
Tips and tricks1:21
Requirements lifecycle1:57
Learn how to manage the requirements

Learning objectives0:28
Identify and engage stakeholders, learn effective communication, and plan meetings to verify requirements. Establish trusted connections and elicit accurate requirements without neglecting anyone.
Who are the stakeholders1:23
Understand the main stakeholder roles
Organizational chart0:32
Why do we need an org chart?
Tips and tricks2:36
Situation 1: Organize a call0:24
Organize a call with a department manager to discuss new requirements, and draft an email requesting a suitable time slot for the discussion on vouchers functionality.
Situation 2: Notify about a delay0:42
Notify stakeholders of a delay, explain the reasons, and share progress; vouchers won’t be ready by next week due to limited capacity; plan a call to demo voucher redemption flow.
Situation 3: The client has complained0:27
Talk to the client to understand the issue and calm tensions by organizing a call. Apologize for the voucher issue and discuss technical reasons with the development team.
Situation 4: The dev team tells you that something cannot be implemented0:48
Question the dev team in the meeting to understand why implementation is not possible, and discuss similar functionality with stakeholders; ensure voucher IDs are long enough to prevent brute-force redemption.
Types of communication1:39
Understand the best way to approach someone depending on the situation
Types of meetings to elicit the requirements1:01
Learn about different types of meetings and which one is appropriate
Separate the elicitation meetings from meetings with the dev team1:15
Learn how to organize your meetings with the business and the dev team
Situation 5: The client would like a new section “Recently viewed products"0:44
Coordinate with online shop's business stakeholders to define criteria for a recently viewed products section, decide ordering and count (most recent, last ten), then discuss requirements with the dev team.
Situation 6: The client wants a new order management system to be implemented0:47
Discuss and validate the requirements0:46
Learn how to validate your requirements with the business stakeholders

Requirements

No prior experience with Business Analysis is needed

Description

A quick and easy guide to Business analysis for beginners - understand the tasks a BA does every day. The course contains many examples and tricks.

The following topics are covered:

The right questions to ask - high level questions to understand the big picture and detailed questions to figure out the processing logic
How to represent the information - using text, diagrams and wireframes. Use workflow diagrams to represent the process. Create wireframes to discuss the UI for the new features. Understand different formats to describe the processing logic
How to manage your requirements - create tasks on Jira and manage them. Understand the requirements quality criteria and break down the tasks properly.
Collaborate successfully with the stakeholders - understand who the stakeholders are and various ways to approach them. Organize various types of meetings and use different communication channels depending on the context. The most common situations are represented with examples. Learn how to validate your requirements with the business stakeholders

More than 1 hour of video content, 5 tutorials, 5 additional examples with downloadable resources

Are you curious what GIVEN WHEN THEN means, or what the difference between a wireframe and a mock-up is? Can you guess what brainstorming actually means?

Then let's get started!

Who this course is for:

Beginner Business Analysts who would like to understand the basics, to streamline their work

The Quick Start Guide to Business Analysis

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction3 lectures • 2min

Prepare your questions6 lectures • 9min

Workflow diagrams7 lectures • 13min

Wireframes and usability7 lectures • 11min

How to describe requirements10 lectures • 18min

Jira tutorial5 lectures • 6min

Work with the stakeholders14 lectures • 14min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: