BA role in driving projects to success shores

BA as a job, emerged in the 1980s with the booming of IT systems and the complete change in clients’ mindset and expectations driving many project managers to confusion and many projects to delivery failure the situation required a new hero in the project process called “Business Analyst”! capable of a deeper understanding of the business requirements and delivering satisfaction to all stakeholders leveraging experience and expertise in the market.

Ever wanted to become a BA and thought of what a BA actually does? Or Ever came in contact with BA for business requirements and thought how important can be their role in your project development?

This blog explains it all!

Who is a business analyst?

When you build a house the architect asks all about your requirements, budget, prepares documents, gives you the best suggestions and makes sure to meet corresponding deadlines flawlessly. Well just like building a house, a business analyst is the architect in developing projects.

General key roles of a BA :

In any business, the primary job responsibility of a Business Analyst is to analyze, understand profoundly the client’s needs and document it clearly. And so playing a major role in improving client satisfaction allowing his organization to move toward efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

In an IT company, a BA role is just Fatale for project success and crucial to address the client’s expectations as software development is a complex process that needs very detailed analysis in order to make the output flawlessly alive.

Required skills of a good BA

A business analyst  job is an application of both soft and technical skills mainly :

• Analytical skills
• Software and analytic tools capacities
• Negotiation and communication skills
• Planification and directing skills
• Deep understanding of the business domain

How does an IT  BA drive project development to success?

In an IT company, a BA  stands in the first row of understanding the project needs by analyzing the business proposal or demand, finding solutions for any gaps, then assisting the project managers and guiding them through the entire development process. The BA job can be summarized in the following bullet points:

• Understand the problem and identify solutions
• Improve client demand and determine features and technologies
• Visualize general view and function of the project
• Identify the steps, tasks, and milestones
• Guide development and implementation

As an example here is the BA role at IndiaNIC throughout the development process

BA job at IndiaNIC

At IndiaNIC projects are held in 3 consecutive phases: the discovery workshop,  the project execution, the project review, and delivery

And guess what! our BAs are present during the entire project development process!

“We are the easy-going cool people in the company because our job puts us in continuous coordination and confrontation with almost …everyone involved in the project!!”

Parth  Prapaji, Head of BAs at IndiaNIC

When a client reaches for software development services via different channels, the sales team take the briefing about the typology of  inquiries then  a BA is assigned accordingly to  takes the further steps starting from

1/Conducting the discovery workshop

BA’s first role in the process starts by building good communication links and professional trust with the client. oh yeah! our BA is supposed to become your best friend and represent our professional aim as your development business partner!

A very  planned strategic call is held  between the  client and BA in order to gather the needed information about the project :

• identifying the stakeholders
• discovering his business objectives
• Understanding aimed solution
• Fixing variables like budget
•  overall get an idea about the expected functions from the aimed product.
• Discuss both parties availability for further steps

According to the output of that  call, the BA  understands the mindset, vision, inquiries, and objective of the client and identifies clearly the initial stage of the project and go further with the following scenarios :

• If the client reaches for services at an early stage with an identified business need yet a little blurry idea about the suitable solution BA reshapes their idea, fills in its blanks, and evaluates possible options to build a robust digital solution.
• If the client’s project is at an advanced stage where they already know exactly what they want and the exact features they are looking for sometimes even having an already defected prototype then the BAs would work directly on suggesting the needed modifications and building a visible pathway for the project.

In both scenarios, our BA openly shares his knowledge and experience in the competitive market in order to advise the client properly and give them the best suggestions

The end of that deep brainstorming session is a mutual agreement that drives the BA’S next tasks

• setting a plan and a scope of work
• Identifying the needed features according to the client’s inquiries
• sketching of the skeleton of the app/website/software which is known as wireframing
• Creating a flowchart
• Delivering a project document to the respected technical team to fix the project estimations in the matter of budget and development time and mutually
•  Supporting the project onboarding  Through SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
• Making sure of the launching of the project into production successfully

2/ Closely assisting the project managers and technical  team through project execution

Through the second phase of the project onboarding the BA do arrange continuous Meetings with all Internal kick-off teams who will ensure the development phase from the project manager, the designer, assigned developers, and QA in order to exchange knowledge: agree on the UI/UX design and assist them through every milestone, so he/she makes sure the delivery plan is working as wished.

And of course, still ensures availability and keeping in touch with the client to answer any concerns or consider preferences in the design or opinions.

3/ Ensuring flawless project delivery

At the end of the development process, The BA makes sure to test the quality and efficiency of the solution, get the client’s confirmation about every detail delivered in that phase and ensure the validation of the User Acceptance Criteria.

Then manages the Beta Release and tadaaaa the Project is alive and flawlessly delivered! Good job BA!

Conclusion

If you are developing a project Don’t hesitate to approach BAs for any concerns and if you are aiming to become a BA go for it!  you will never get bored since you keep on meeting new people, managing different situations, and most of all a BA never stops learning through every different project experience!

At IndiaNIC, we are very grateful for our BA’s efforts behind every successful delivery we make!