In the previous post about the Business Analyst role introduction, BAs are a link between stakeholders and technical teams. But What is an IT Business Analyst? They primarily work on websites, software, mobile, and web application development companies.
Now, as I’m from India, my major experiences are with Indian outsourcing companies. I will share with you the details of a BA role in an Indian Software Development company. BAs are indispensable in Indian software development (or outsourcing) companies.
What does an IT Business Analyst do?
- Requirement Gathering and Analysis: What would happen if a client had a specific requirement, but provided a wrong solution due to misunderstanding? Well, it would go south really fast and can affect one or multiple team members. That is why our role as IT Business Analyst is to understand the business needs, analyze them, simplify them in layman’s terms, and translate them into functionality with the help of the Development team. It’s our job to make sure everything is crystal clear and share any doubts, queries, or feedback from technical teams to the Stakeholders and vice versa, making the project life cycle as smooth as possible.
- Manage Stakeholders: Clear and transparent communication for stakeholder management is a crucial aspect of a BA’s role. We must collaborate with one or multiple stakeholders including clients, business users, and technical teams to make sure that the project objectives are in alignment. There is also a possibility of managing multiple stakeholders from multiple projects simultaneously (especially in a service-based company) so juggling the project priorities and deadlines becomes an essential skill!
- Documentation: We must propose and design the feasibility of the solutions that address the requirements and create detailed documentation including business requirements documents (BRDs), functional specifications documents (FSDs), scope of work/statement of work (SOW), Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), user guides, and use cases to guide development efforts.
- Project Planning and Management: While there will (usually) be a Project or Product Manager to manage the projects, we must contribute to project planning by providing insights into resource requirements, timelines, and potential risks including assistance in prioritizing tasks, defining project scope, and monitoring progress to ensure successful project delivery. One can say that IT Business Analyst is also a (part-time) Assistant PM and honing this skill will help in the future career path.
- Quality Assurance and Testing: We also must work closely with Quality Analysts (QA)teams to ensure that software meets quality standards and functional requirements. This includes writing test cases, reviewing test cases from QAs, and participating in user acceptance testing (UAT) and feedback sessions, to validate that the delivered project meets business needs and is as error-free as possible.
- Ongoing Improvements: A business analyst constantly seeks different ways to enhance processes and optimize workflows for better productivity and optimization. Typically, post-implementation reviews are conducted to gather feedback, identifying lessons learned and areas for improvement (More on this in SCRUM introduction)
- Facilitating Innovation: Another buzzword from corporate! This means that we must identify the emerging technologies and trends that can drive business growth and explore the opportunities for process improvements and automation, improved analytics, and digital transformation to enhance organizational efficiency and competitiveness.
Summary
In summary, the role of an IT Business Analyst in Indian software development companies encompasses a wide range of responsibilities including requirement analysis, stakeholder management, documentation, project planning, quality assurance, continuous improvement, and much more depending on the size of the company.
BAs play a critical role in driving business success by ensuring that software solutions meet the needs of stakeholders and contribute to organizational growth and innovation. But how do they do it? Most companies currently use different project management tools and methodologies like Waterfall, Agile SCRUM, and KANBAN. We will talk about these in future posts. Until then, thank you for reading, and be the best version of yourself!