In the other two blog entries in this series, I gave hints and tips for the agile Business Analyst up to the stage of documenting business requirements. In this entry, I will address the follow-up to that phase of the project life cycle with a few more tips.

• Once the requirements document is approved and signed-off, assist the team with the next step – System Design and Test Script/Test Case development work.
     • Be prepared to answer questions regarding the requirements.
• Take the role as liaison between the user community and the technical team.
     • The BA is the communication broker between the users and the IT team. As an ambassador of business and functional knowledge, you must be able to convey the business requirements clearly to both the Developers and the Quality Assurance Analyst.
• Participate in Change Management Board Meetings.
     • Document and track all the changes taking place.
• Participate in User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
     • In many cases, BAs don’t get involved in UAT sessions. However, from my experience, BAs must be prepared to play an important role in UAT to address the user testing phase.

Remember, Business Analysts do not merely document business requirements, but they also serve as liaisons and communication brokers between the technical team and the user community. Doing things right from the beginning will reduce the likelihood of making wrong steps during project development.

I wish luck to all the Business Analysts out there. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog entries.

Tags: business analyst, business requirements

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.