BA’S ROLE IN

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

(Professional Business Analyst Training

organisation)

It is an accepted fact that software projects succeed or fail purely based on the quality of the requirements being elicited from the client by the software organization.

It means software projects rate of success or failure depends on competent / incompetent business analysts,

Business Analyst’s major responsibilities in a Software Development

1. Develop the Scope of system - BA works with

various stakeholders – project and business and

involves in formulating and communicating the

business vision and specifically involve in translating

the initial from high-level vision to low-level vision,

which is nothing but something realistic.

Right interpretation of business needs - Translation

of requirements into the specifications that technical

team can understand better as well the stakeholders

can understand. Here, the Business Analyst’s ability

to distil the differing needs of stakeholders into a

single and consistent vision.

Traditional BA (Waterfall) Agile BA

Requirements are documented in Use Cases,Business Requirements, Functional requirements, UI Specifications, Business Rules.

Requirements are documented in Epics, User Stories and optionally Business (or Essential) Use cases.

   

Focuses on completeness of requirement and spends time in ensuring the requirement is unambiguous and has all the details.

Focuses on understanding the problem and being the domain expert so that s/he can answer questions from the development team swiftly and decisively.

Focuses on getting a ‘sign off’ on the requirements.

Focuses on ensuring the requirements meet the currentbusiness needs, even if it requires updating them.

Often there is a wall between the BA/Business and the Development team.

Agile BA (Often called as Product Owner) is part of the team.

Tends to dictate solutions.Has to remain in the problem domain, leaving the development team ‘space’ to explore different solutions.

Long turnaround. Quick turnaround.

Focus on what the requirements document said. In other words, output (Artifact) is a well written thorough requirements document.

Focus on the functionality of the developed software. In other words, output (Artifact) is the software that meets thebusiness needs.

   

Spell out the project details and requirements - It

is the core responsibility of any Business analyst to

identify, model and then document in proper

format to suit the specifications of the project as

well as business stakeholders.

Coordinating Testing phase with validation -

Business Analysts work with stakeholders, specifically

with project stakeholders to test the software and to

validate the requirements being identified and

documented with right approach.

5. Face of the project from end to end –

Business Analyst acts as the face of the project where

acts as bridge between business stakeholders and

project stakeholders who work for single vision –

development of right solution to the client’s pain area.

Face of the project from end to end –

Business Analyst acts as the face of the project where

acts as bridge between business stakeholders and

project stakeholders who work for single vision –

development of right solution to the client’s pain area.