What are some scenario based and logical questions that are asked in a Business Analyst interview?
Are you going to appear for the business analyst interview? If yes, then you should be ready for scenario based and behavioral questions also. In a business analyst interview, scenario-based and logical questions are commonly asked to assess the candidate's ability to think critically and solve problems in a structured and analytical way.
These questions are designed to simulate real-world situations that the candidate may encounter in the role of a business analyst. By answering these questions, the interviewer can evaluate the candidate's communication skill and business analysis skill, among other things.
What are some scenario-based and logical questions that are asked in a Business Analyst interview? In this post, we will look at the top commonly asked scenario-based and behavioural questions. We will also provide answers/guidelines to a few questions, which will enable you to prepare answers for other similar questions.
Types of Business Analyst interview questions
As a business analyst, you will be asked multiple types of questions in the interview. Let's understand these types:
Core business analysis skills
Core business analysis refers to the business analysis skills like requirements gathering, elicitation techniques, business analysis, UML modelling, Agile, user stories, SQL etc. Some examples are as follows:
Scenario-based questions
These questions are asked to check your knowledge in a given situation. They are mostly related to business analysis skills and would test your BA skills in a given situation. Some of the questions could be as follows:
Behaviour / Problem-solving questions
This is becoming an integral part of every BA interview and most of our students have confirmed this trend. These questions are asked to check the following:
- How do you react to the unfamiliar situation (out of your comfort zone)?
- How do you approach a problem and how good is your Problem-solving ability?
There may not be a unique answer to these questions. The interviewer is looking to check your approach to solving the situation. Some of the questions could be as follows:
- If you have started a franchisee of a retail pharma chain, how will you go about it?
- You are supposed to implement an automatic traffic controller on a 6-directional road. What are the factors you will keep in your mind designing this? What questions will ask your clients regarding this?
Questions with answers
1. 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:
i) Number one is defining the needs, which is about why a customer wants a solution, what's the problem or what's the opportunity.
ii) 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.
iii) 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.
2. 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.
i) 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.
ii) 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
iii) 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.
iv) 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.
3. What are some of the challenges a Business Analyst faces and what are the strategies to overcome those?
Business analysts interact with stakeholders of different types. These poses challenges for the business analyst as stakeholders are human beings and every human being is different, however the three most important and common challenges are-
i) Facing a difficult stakeholder - Stakeholders could be very difficult, negative or resistant to change. To manage these stakeholders, the best way is to find out the reason for that particular behavior and then create a stakeholder engagement and management strategy for each of these stakeholders because each of these stakeholders are different. There is no one rule for all the stakeholders but it depends on individual stakeholders and the best way is to create a strategy for each one of them who are important for the project.
ii) Not able to understand implicit requirements - There are a lot of situations where customers tend to tell you some information where they don't give you complete information not intentionally but because many a times as an individual if I am working on something,I tend to ignore that and feel that this is so common, why do I need to express it. These are the things which become implicit requirements. You need to find out those hidden and implicit requirements, otherwise, they may result in rework. The simplest way to find it is to on a continuous basis analyze the requirements, that is break down the requirements, ask follow-up questions and brainstorm with your team so that you can listen to different views and come up with all the questions or all the missing requirements.
iii) Frequently changing requirements - This is something which you cannot avoid because changes are so common in today's world. Everywhere situation is dynamic so new requirements keep on coming. So instead of trying to bind the customer into a contract that they can't make any changes, find out ways to handle the changes elegantly. So agile methodology allows you to handle the changes in a much more efficient manner.
4. As a Business Analyst, which documents have you prepared?
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.
5. What are the key elements of an SRS?
The System Requirement Specification(SRS) document is basically written to capture the details of the requirements. The key sections are scope of work section that includes what is to be done in the project and what is not to be done in the project meaning what is in the scope and what is out of the scope in the assumptions constraints and dependencies.
We capture the project related assumptions, constraints, and dependencies. This also helps in identifying the risks, which needs to be mitigated. So if a customer promises you that they will be able to give you all the report formats by the 15th of the month is an assumption because you need to evaluate whether there will be a serious impact if the customer does not provide you the report for months by 15. If the impact is severe then it has to be treated as a risk, otherwise it needs to be monitored and then taken forward.
Functional and non-functional requirements capture the details of the requirements they are segregated because they need to be attended to by different professions because for example if it is about availability and load balancing it has to be handled by a server specialist team but if it is about functional requirement, for example registration of users, then can be handled by the developers and the technology team. So they are segregated in different sections.
Finally we have acceptance criteria which is yet another important section of an SRS because this allows objective criteria to be defined which then can be used to mark the end of the UAT phase or mark the start of the go-live phase. If you have defined it correctly then we can easily say that now the UAT is over and we can take the system live.
6. What are Functional Requirements?
Functional requirements represent what the system does. It represents the functionality of a system, for example registering to become a member of a website is an example of functional requirement. Placing an order for food items on a mobile food app is also an example of functional requirement.
7. What are Non-functional Requirements?
Non-functional requirements or quality of service requirements do not relate directly to the behavior or the functionality of a software but rather describe the conditions under which a solution must remain effective or it describes the quality that a solution must have.
Typically non-functional requirements relate to security availability performance and reliability, for example if a system is expected to be available 24x7. This is an example of a non-functional requirement.
8. What are the different techniques to capture requirements early on?
So there are two techniques which are used, there could be more but these are two of the most important and popular techniques that are use cases and user stories.
Use case is a type of UML diagram and it's a visual way of capturing requirements. Use cases comprise a factor and a use case actor is an external entity, who can be a user of a software system or even an organization but it must be external to the system.The use case is for a system to be put together in a use case model. There could be multiple actors, there could be multiple use cases. For example a user can search and compare products, place an order and even view the order history.
User stories are a format or a structure to represent a feature of a software system from the end user perspective. It's not a visual format but rather it's a textual format. There's no standard format for user stories.
9. What are the differences between use cases and user stories?
Both of these techniques are used to capture requirements at a high level and early on in the project. Both of these capture the system requirements from user perspectives, but there are some differences.
To start with, use cases are visual diagrams whereas user stories are textual format. User stories capture the purpose of doing a task in a project or in a software. It allows us to understand the actual reason why a user is doing something in the software.
10. What is the 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. The acceptance criteria can be written for the entire system or for one requirement as well. The example of an acceptance criteria for the entire system could be that all the unit test cases should be run successfully by the development team, this can be easily checked and approved.
11. Are you aware of the Agile approach? What are the key aspects of this approach?
As per Agile Manifesto there are four key aspects of this approach.
i) Number one is individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Here the focus is on the team and Team Dynamics. It makes the team more important than just the processes and tools.
ii) Second one is working software over comprehensive documentation. Here the focus is on delivering software which is useful for the customer. It could be one module or one feature or the entire software
iii) Third one is about customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Here the focus is on frequent collaboration with the stakeholders to minimize errors and to also capture changing and evolving requirements.
iv) Last one is responding to change over following a plan that is responding to change in an efficient manner or effective manner. The frequent and the rapid delivery cycles and collaboration with the customer helps in responding to change effectively
So these are the four key aspects of agile approach and I believe that in the changing environment of today's world, a lot of projects can be executed better by using agile approach. However it is not something which can be used in hundred percent of the cases, some of the projects can still use hybrid or to an extent waterfall approach
12. Do you think agile is the best approach to execute software projects?
Not in absolute terms or not in hundred percent of the cases. Agile methodologies are more suited for modern day projects as it allows you to cater to changing requirements and changing dynamics of the business. It has been designed with the ability to handle such frequent changes. However, it is not something which is easy to come by, it's not an easy approach to implement.
There are certain cases where a hybrid approach suits much better for a project, which is a combination of waterfall in agile. It is suitable for projects where requirements are pretty much standard. For example, financial accounting software where a lot of outputs are statutory requirements, so they are fixed. For example profit and loss statements, balance sheet etc.
13. Are you familiar with process modelling? If your customer is not familiar with either DFD or UML diagrams, will you still use process modelling? What would be your approach?
Process Modelling is the technique of visually representing the system processes. A top-level diagram shows high-level processes and it is further detailed in the next few levels. Typically 3 levels of detail are good enough for every project. Process modelling helps in analyzing the processes better and also helps in optimizing them, if needed.
Data Flow Diagrams (DFD) and UML diagrams are more powerful modelling techniques but require a learning curve to understand them. In case, the customer or technical team is not familiar with these two techniques, we can use flow charts which is probably one of the simplest techniques. It’s simple to understand.
More interview preparation resources
We keep publishing useful videos and articles, which are based on our experience of conducting interviews in our corporate lives. Here are the top resources:
Conclusion
It is important for candidates to prepare for these types of questions in advance and provide clear and concise answers that demonstrate their skills and experience. Overall, scenario-based and logical questions are an important part of the business analyst interview process and can help identify the best candidates for the role.
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These interview preparation sessions are conducted by industry experts with extensive experience in hiring Business Analysts. They will provide you with invaluable insights and tips on how to showcase your skills and experience during the interview process, including resume preparation, answering common interview questions, and demonstrating your problem-solving abilities.
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