As defined by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Business Analysis is the practice of “enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders”. Business Analysts are the essential change enablers and catalysts that play an important part in implementing a change that addresses an organization’s business goals.

• As a result, the importance of the business analyst role has increased over time and is becoming a lucrative career option for new entrants as well as mid-level professionals looking for a transition to advance their careers.
• Considering business analysis is performed at effectively every facet of an organization, every role more or less relates to it in some way or another.
• There is a strong possibility that you are probably doing some form of business analysis already in your current role, even though your job title does not have any reference to that of a Business Analysis Professional.

In case you are looking to move into a full-time position as a business analyst, your past experience will definitely be an advantage in some manner. Regardless of how limited your training has been in business analysis, you still have some experience with it in some form which can serve as the foundation for becoming a full-fledged business analyst.

This article will provide an answer to the fundamental question – How to become a Business Analyst? This is the first question every BA aspirant has or should be having? Let me answer this with a Step-by-Step Road Map.

Who is a Business Analyst?

A business analyst deals with the various data sets, analyze the data, transform the data and convert it into a beautiful visualizations. A BA also coordinates between teams. Business analyst are professionals who are responsible for requirements gathering, problem solving, data visualization and much more.

Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA) is an IIBA Certification to help you become a business analyst. We are an Endorsed Education Provider (EEP) offering ECBA Training to help you meet the Eligibility Criteria.

Role of a Business Analyst

Understanding the Role of BA in SDLC

The software development process is that it does start with planning like any other project whether it's building a factory or building a highway. It requires you to start with building a plan, then the next task which is possibly the most critical task is to understand what does the customer want and convert them into a set of details, which the tech team can then take it forward. Let’s take a look at the SDLC and the role that a business analyst has to play in SDLC.

Requirements Development

Requirements Development is the first step. This is basically about understanding everything about what is to be done. In this phase, the role of a BA is

• To capture the requirements correctly and represent them in a way that is easier for people to implement them.
• It is important to ensure that there is clarity and there is consistency as the chances of the software being the correct one is very high.

Systems Design

Then comes how it will be done, so deciding on how you can develop that solution using different kinds of technology platforms, tools, hardware and various other tech components so that it becomes the most efficient solution.

• In the Design Phase, the work is done by the Development Team and the Business Analyst works as a ‘Consultant’ who is responsible to provide clarifications if needed.

Coding

Then comes the final coding work where the coding and testing is conducted so that then the software application can be given to the customer.

• In the coding phase, the Business Analyst acts as a consultant and makes sure the technical architect or the solutions team is able to understand the briefs properly before they start initiating the work.

UAT (User Acceptance Test)

Finally, the Customer Testing - The Client itself has to test to understand whether the solution meets the requirement or not, this is called UAT or User Acceptance Test.

• In the UAT phase, the role of a BA is to act as a coordinator and ensure that all the questions of the client are answered.

Some Other Standard Responsibilities of a Business Analyst:

• Identify and understand the core business needs which may involve a business problem or an opportunity and recommend solution options.
• Elicit business, stakeholder, solution and transition requirements specific to the solution to be created to address the business need.
• Create requirement documents in the formats as stipulated by the required authorities.
• Communicate requirements to all pertinent stakeholders getting a buy-in from them and ensuring that the business & technical team is on the same page. Also, ensuring that there are no gaps and any issues are dealt with by liaising among all stakeholder groups.
• Playing an active part during the implementation phase by clarifying any issues/concerns from the implementation team and holding discussions with business teams as required.
• Managing the requirements life cycle by maintaining, prioritizing and tracing and assessing any changes to requirements. Ensuring that requirements are accurate, complete and up-to-date.
• Carrying out solution assessment to ensure that the implemented solution features are in line with the requirements and underlying business needs.
• Creating user manuals/guides and fulfilling any training needs for the end users.

Skills needed to become a Business Analyst

Now the question is: What do you need to be a business analyst? or to be able to perform these activities. There are several skills needed to become a BA.

Some of them are needed at the Entry-Level and some of them are not needed at the Entry-Level. Functional knowledge is one that is something which is not mandatory at the entry-level but it's a mandatory skill for anybody at some point in time as you have to get into domain knowledge and without that, the scope of work will be very limited.

Business Analyst Skills Framework

So we have developed something called a craft framework which is basically four key skills which are needed to become a business analyst or needed to perform your responsibilities as a business analyst. Here are the 4 skills that are included in our BA skills framework.

1. Soft skills

Then comes your core BA skills - the fundamental skills of a business analyst. You can call them technical skills as here you need to learn UML user stories, agile waterfall, and JIRA MS ratio. These are the things which you need to learn as fundamental BA skills. Therefore, this framework includes the skills required for the following:

• Ability to work with stakeholders
• Communicating requirements
• Help customers learn
• Facilitate testing

2. Core BA skills

The first framework is soft skills as you can see the role of a BA involves connecting and interacting with a lot of people and a lot of stakeholders. Therefore, the soft skills for a business analyst include the following:

• Elicitation
• UML
• Process modelling
• Agile

3. Functional Knowledge

Functional knowledge is not necessarily an entry-level skill but you have to pick it up at some point in time in your business analysis career.

4. Functional Testing

Finally, in the testing part as you have seen we have a stage where the client conducts the UAT at that point in time. Before you go to your client for your software to be tested you also need to feel confident about it, you don't want to hear from the customer about surprises so you want to ensure that everything is in order. For this, you need to have some bit of skills to test things more like end-to-end testing more like process testing rather than an individual screen test. This framework includes:

• The ability to conduct system testing

Who Can Become A Business Analyst?

Why Should You Become A Business Analyst?

A career as a Business Analyst offers great opportunities and growth prospects. The growth forecasts make it worth your time, with the potential for high salaries at entry-level to draw you in even more.

• LinkedIn Learning ranked Business Analysis as one of the most in-demand hard skills in 2020. It specified that Business Analysis is one of the few hard skills every professional should have, as most roles require some level of business analysis to make decisions.
• As per International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®), the demand for business analysis professionals is expected to rise 14 percent by 2024.
• 14% of job vacancies from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 to 2028.
• According to PayScale, the average business analyst (IT) salary in the United States is $69,984 per year as of September 21, 2021 whereas the average salary stands at around INR 6,05,882 per year in India.
• According to Salary.com, the average Business Analyst salary in the United States is $77,995 per year as of September 27, 2021, but the salary range typically falls between $70,041 and $87,137.
• According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for Business Analysts is $77,218 per year in the United States as of October, 2021 whereas the average base pay stands at around INR 7,00,000 per year in India.

Step By Step Approach To Become a Business Analyst

Here are the steps you need to take to become a Business Analyst. Steps are similar for IT as well as non-IT professionals.
Note: This article is based on my book How to Become a Business Analyst: With Business analysis basics tutorial available on Amazon.

Step 1. Conduct Skills Gap Analysis

You need to evaluate your skills against the required skills for an entry-level Business Analyst. Which are these skills? We have created a CRAFT framework to map the top 4 skills for becoming a Business Analyst.

You can download this Competency Evaluation Matrix to conduct a Skills Gap Analysis.

Step 2. Plan to Upgrade your Skills

Once you have completed skills gap analysis, you would know the skills you need to acquire the skills. Now it’s time to determine the approach you would like to take to acquire these. What do you need to consider:

Acquiring the Business Analysis Skills

• Business Acumen: Good understanding of finance, accounting, and core business principles to better comprehend business issues.
• Industry Knowledge: Gaining industry’s business and functional knowledge through different means to analyze business needs better & devise most suited options.
• Requirements Analysis and Modeling: Learning tools & techniques for elicitation, requirements specifications, visual modelling and collaboration.
• Core IT methodologies (IT BA): Understand the various core software development methodologies like Agile, Waterfall, DevOps et al. to adapt business analysis activities within the specific methodology.
• Skills for Hybrid roles (BA cum Tester): Understand the fundamentals of software testing considering business analyst has a big role to play in system testing and user acceptance testing to validate the solution.

Acquiring the Soft Skills

• Communication Skills: Strong verbal & written communication and listening skills to communicate effectively with stakeholders.
• Analytical Thinking & Problem Solving Skills: Ability to absorb the core problem and analyze deeply to identify the most fitted solution that delivers the desired value to stakeholders.
• Facilitation & Negotiation Skills: Act as effective facilitators & negotiators to ensure desired participation and avoid/resolve any conflicts among stakeholders.
• Inquisitive and Detail oriented: Natural inquisitiveness to probe all possible aspects and analyze fine details to ensure clarity and completeness of information.
• Getting a Business Analysis certification

Step 3. Skills Acquisition plan

Your skills acquisition plan must include a certification. The most reputed entry-level Business Analyst certification is IIBA ECBA Certification. You can plan to go for a self-learning approach or an instructor-led training approach. Do keep in mind the gaps in your skills. Your learning approach must include those specific gaps. You can also read about the ECBA Preparation approach.

Timelines: Our experience suggests that you should plan for 100-110 hours of study to achieve your goal. So if you are working or having an extra workload you need to plan accordingly. A 7-10 weeks plan works for most people.

Step 4. Action Time

The next step is obviously to get started and start learning. Focus on learning the concepts first and then apply them to your area of work. That will help you in relating to the concepts better and will also lay the foundation for the interview.

Also, do practice and visualize. For example, Once you have learned use cases, create use cases for your projects/area of work and get it checked. That will give you a lot of confidence.

Communication and presentation skills are also important. If you feel you need to improve in that area, it’s a good time to work on that as well. Join a course.

Basically, you need to put in the effort for all the skills to reach the desired level.

As specified previously, earning a certification can help you acquire & enhance these skills and potentially increase your eligibility for business analyst positions. Below are some highly recognized certifications in the field of business analysis offered by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) –

Certifications

Moreover, attaining a bachelor’s or master’s degree or any other form of advanced education not only helps in acquiring some essential skills. It also helps meet the mandatory eligibility criterion of business analysis openings. Bachelor's degree in fields like finance, computer science, information management, or a similar field. For instance, It can prepare you for business analysis-specific job openings. So, a Master's degree in business administration, computer science, information management, or a similar field could help enhance your skills & knowledge, and give you a competitive advantage in the job market.

Step 5. Work On Projects to Gain Practical Business Analysis Skills

While you are in the process of acquiring skills or have already put in the best of your efforts. There is no better way to apply the learnings and even enhance the acquired skills than working on a practical project initiative. If you are already a working professional, try in order to explore the possibilities of gaining useful experience by performing a business analysis role or assisting a full-fledged business analyst. Hence, as you work on a real project, you are learning and practicing essential soft skills and hard skills that are required to perform business analysis in an effective manner.

Step 6. Reshape Your Resume

Resumes are windows to you and your personality. Make it count. An employer looks at the resume first in order to evaluate you. A good resume will help you in getting shortlisted for the interviews.

What Should Your Resume Include?

• Business analysis core skills (Refer to step 3)
• Customer management/handling skills
• Problem solving skills
• Certifications
• Instances/projects where you have used these skills

Build your LinkedIn profile as well. Employers look at your LinkedIn profile these days. Why should you have a LinkedIn profile?Don’t forget to provide the link for your LinkedIn profile in your resume. Upload your resume to the job sites and start applying.

Step 7. Prepare For The Interviews

In the software industry, we use the term Dry Run. A dry run is used to refer to trials before the actual go-live day. You should also use a dry run of interviews. Use a couple of interviews as dry runs. Use the experience to assess your preparedness.

I always used these strategies while searching for jobs. Believe me, it is very effective to prepare you for your best day.

All the best for your Business Analyst journey.

About Techcanvass

We are an Information Technology Certifications training Organization for professionals. It offers internationally recognized certifications in the fields of Project Management and Business Analysis. It is a premier Authorized training partner (ATP) of Project Management Institute (PMI), USA and a premier Endorsed Education Provider (EEP) of International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Canada.

About Author