Are you preparing for a job interview for an entry-level Business Analyst position? Are you new to business analysis, and is this going to be your first Business Analyst job?
Then you have reached the right place. In this blog post, we have provided the top 20 entry-level business analyst interview questions and answers.
Read the answers and prepare yourself in such a way that you can answer the questions in your own words.
These questions are taken from the book Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers: with Scenario-based questions
Business Analyst Interview Preparation Course
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Top Entry level BA Questions with answers
Here are the 20 questions
1. Why should we consider you for this profile? What do you bring to the table?
This question can be unnerving for you, if you are not prepared for it. This question requires some preparation.
Firstly, you should know about the key responsibilities areas and skills expected for this profile. This can be found in the job description (JD).
Secondly, map your existing skills and/or experience to the required skills and responsibility areas. Let’s take an example to understand the approach to answer this question.
Key Skill: UML Modelling
UML Modelling is used to model requirements. Use cases, Activity diagrams and scenario development are specific skills.
If you have used these in any of your projects, brief the interviewer about the project and the models you have used. It’s possible that you may have used it in more than one project. Be ready for creating one during the interview. So, practice it well.
If you have not used it in your project but are familiar with the skill, you can say so. Prepare well with the concepts and examples if possible from your project.
2. What is Business Analysis?
As per IIBA business analysis is the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to the stakeholders. Now this definition has three key elements:
- Number one is defining the needs, which is about why a customer wants a solution, what's the problem or what's the opportunity.
- The second element is about the solution, this solution fits the solution could be a software solution, it could be a non-software solution or a combination of the both.
- The third element is delivering value.
At the end of the day, every organization will look at the benefits like is there any benefit in going for this solution because the solution requires an investment. So these three elements: defining needs, recommending solutions and delivering value are what constitute business analysis practice.
3. What are the key skills of a Business Analyst?
We have developed a framework to encapsulate four key skills for a business analyst. This is applicable for entry-level as well as senior business analysts.
- The first one is about soft skills. As a business analyst one of the important skills to have is the soft skill, which is about communication, interaction, and behavioral. This is important because as a business analyst, you work as an intermediary between the business and the technology side so in order to be effective in communication which includes how to present, what to present, how to negotiate. All this will help you in being effective.
- The second core skill is the BA skills. These are actually your day-to-day practical skills which you are using to work on a project which includes knowing about agile, knowing about waterfall, knowing about various business analysis techniques like use cases, process modeling, user stories and also knowing about certain tools like JIRA, Ms Visual and so and so forth
- The third key skill is about functional knowledge. This is the domain knowledge or knowing about the business. If you're going to work on an investment banking project, it's very important that you understand the key terms and certain processes of that domain, so that you'll be able to understand what the customer is looking for.
- The last but not least is functional testing. It's the ability to test a solution before it is handed over to the customer. This skill is important because at the end of the day you have captured the requirements, so only you can validate before it is given to the customer.
4. What is the role of a Business Analyst?
An IT Business Analyst works with customers and the technology team on a day-to-day basis. The diagram below shows a high-level view of an IT Business Analyst role:
![Role-of-BA]()
Here is the summary of the role of an IT business analyst:
- To interact with customers to understand their requirements
- To convert the business requirements into detailed technical requirements for the technology team
- To co-ordinate with the technology team to explain the requirements
- To validate the developed solution before handing it over to the customer for User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
- To co-ordinate with the customer team and the technology team to facilitate UAT
Read our blog on Roles & Responsibilities of a Business Analyst for an in-depth understanding.
5. As a Business Analyst, which are the documents, you are expected to prepare?
A BA prepares a number of documents. Some of the commonly prepared documents are as follows:
- System Requirement Specification or SRS document, which is also known as FRS or FRD document
- Use case Specifications Document
- Business Requirements Document(BRD)
- Change Request Log and Change Request Documentation
- RACI Matrix
- Gap Analysis Document
- Requirements Traceability Matrix
- Impact Analysis Document
This is not a comprehensive list but this is something which is very common.
Check out our detailed blog article on Documents Prepared by a Business Analyst.
6. What are the key elements of an SRS?
Key elements of an SRS are shown below:
- Scope of Work
- Assumptions, Constraints, and Dependencies
- References used.
- Functional Requirements
- Process Diagrams and Prototypes
- Non-Functional Requirements
- Acceptance Criteria
7. What’s the difference between needs and requirements?
Requirements are a useful representation of the needs. Needs are a high level description of the customer needs. Requirements are the expanded and detailed out description of the customer needs.
Let’s take an example of a need:
Only authenticated users can enter the system to access the member only features.
Let’s detail out customer needs as requirements:
Create a login screen which will allow the members to enter login ID and password and click on submit button to access the member only area. In case of a wrong login ID and/or password, the system throws an error.
8. What are functional Requirements?
Functional requirements represent what does the system do primarily? These requirements represent what does a system do? We can also say that functional requirements represent the behavior of the system.
E.g. Registering to become a member of a website is an example of the functional requirement of the website.
9. What are non-functional requirements? Did you capture them in SRS? Why are they important?
Non-functional requirements represent the characteristics of the application under development (AUD) rather than the behaviour of the system.
These requirements are related to performance, user interfaces, security, auditing etc. We do capture them in the SRS document along with functional requirements, but in a different section.
They are important because they allow us to identify the need for skills/resources outside the project team.
- There are 50 MCQs
- Each question will have four options
- Every question will have one correct answer
- There are no negative marking
You can check the FAQ section on the PSI website for more details on – how the exam is conducted and other requirements. The natural question is to know about the passing criteria for this exam. To know more, visit our article on ECBA Passing score.
10. What are the key elements of an SRS?
Key elements of an SRS are shown below:
- Scope of Work
- Assumptions, Constraints and Dependencies
- Functional Requirements
- Data Model
- Non-Functional Requirements
- Acceptance Criteria
11. What are assumptions & constraints. Why are they important and what’s the difference?
Assumptions, Constraints, and Dependencies are important aspects of any software project as they represent the context and constraints within which the project has to be executed.
The schedule is created considering the assumptions and constraints and if any of the assumptions become invalid, it might have an adverse impact on the project. So, identifying them in the Requirements specifications document becomes important.
Difference between Assumptions & Constraints
- Assumptions are scenarios and situations that are facts for the project under development. E.g. The customer will provide access to a test PayPal system for testing the payment process.
- Constraints are restrictions that are agreed upon and recognised by all the stakeholders. E.g. A software will not be compatible with all the versions of all the browsers.
12. How did you make sure that requirements were good to go for the next stage?
This is generally a two-pronged approach.
Firstly, we conduct reviews on the requirements. In one of the projects, the review was conducted by another business analyst, who had worked on similar projects in the past.
He reviewed the documents and pointed out gaps about logical errors, missing requirements, subjectivity etc.
Secondly, the requirements were validated by the customer. We created a prototype to demonstrate the system to the customer and discussed each and every screen diligently.
13. What is requirements prioritisation and why is it important?
As per IIBA BABOK Guide:
Prioritisation provides a framework for business analysts to facilitate stakeholder decisions and to understand the relative importance of business analysis information.
Requirements prioritisation is the process or stage, where we allocate requirements to different phases or iterations, based on business urgency, schedule, cost etc.
Creating a prioritised requirements list helps in handling requirements in order of their importance to the customer.
There are multiple techniques, which are used for requirements prioritisation like:
14. What is UML?
UML or Unified Modelling Language is a modelling standard in the field of object-oriented software systems. It has been standardized by OMG (Object Management Group) after being developed by Rational Corp (Booch Group). UML is a Modeling Language which puts together several diagrammatic views which can be used for any stage of the software development life cycle. UML was designed basically, to provide a common platform for all the stakeholders in a project starting from the end users, analysts, designer, developers etc who are vital to the success of the project. So, in a way it cut down the miscommunication of the requirements and the display of the design in one common language which is understandable by everyone concerned.
15. What are use cases?
Use cases are one of the ways to represent requirements from the user perspective.
A use case comprises of an actor and the use case. An actor is essentially a role, and the user case represents the way, in which the actor interacts with the system.
A use case model is a diagrammatic representation of all the use cases and actors of a complete system or a module (logically grouped). A use case model may also show Include and extend relationship amongst the actors.
In a recent project, I created the use case model for an airport check-in system.
16. Describe the importance of a process diagram like activity diagram.
This is the diagram used in a business system to show the workflow involved, activities happening as well as the completed actions. In a company comprising of several departments e.g. the medical department, accounting department, and even the human resource department, usually each department has its own peculiar privileges to the system, for instance the medical department can only be allowed to access the screens related to their activities such as medical records while the human resource department will be allowed to view only the screens which are relevant to them too, thus these activity diagrams assist in showing the relationship between particular activities with their relevant and related departments so that during coding, the coders may refer to them to implement the discrepancies accordingly. Designers too can be guided by these activity diagrams.
17. What’s the difference between use cases and user stories?
Even though both of them are used to represent system requirements from user perspectives, user stories way of user requirements is more meaningful. In addition to user and the requirements, it also captures the goal or the objective.
Detailed specifications of a use case is captured in a use case specifications, whereas one of the way to capture user story details is user story card.
18. What is a user story?
A User story is used to define the requirement of the software. It is used for representing high-level requirements. The typical format of a user story includes ‘who', 'what' and 'why' of a requirement. There is no standard on the syntax, but we usually use a format like,
As a <business traveller>
I want <to book a flight>
So that I can <attend a business conference>
19. What are an acceptance criteria?
Acceptance criteria are the set of conditions or requirements that must be met for a solution to be accepted by the stakeholders. The acceptance criteria are defined during the requirements gathering phase and should be agreed upon by the stakeholders. For example, one of the acceptance criteria for a system could be - All the unit test cases should be run successfully by the development team and the results are submitted.
20. What makes a user story of good quality?
INVEST is an acronym describing the characteristics of a good user story:
Independent – The user story should not have any dependency on any other user story.
Negotiable – They could be changed and reframed.
Valuable – They can add value to the end product.
Estimable – It should be possible to estimate the size appropriately and prioritize better.
Small – They should be small-sized and manageable.
Testable – The tester should be able to verify the end result of the user story.
More Interview Preparation Resources
We keep publishing useful videos and articles on Interview preparation for Business Analysts. Here is the list:
If you like to read printed material, you can purchase Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers: with Scenario based questions from Amazon. This book is written by our Founder, Abhishek Srivastava.
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