Topic

System Analyst

Skills

Role of system analyst

Analyst user differences

System Analyst:

A person who conducts study and evaluation of an activity to identify

its desired objectives in order to determine procedures by which these

objectives can be achieved. An analyst must possess various skills to

effectively carry out the job.

Required Skills:

1. Interpersonal Skills

2. Technical Skills

Interpersonal Skills: These include skills which are used in

establishing relationship, interface & communication of analyst with

people. These skills include:

i.Communication: Ability to understand and speak language of user as

well as management. It is related to talking, listening, feeling & sharing.

ii.Understanding: Ability to identifying problems & accessing their

impact. Identifying company goals and objectives.

iii. Teaching: Educating people in use of computer system and giving

support when needed.

iv. Selling: Selling ideas and promoting innovations or implementing

new ideas in problem solving.

Technical Skills: These skills focus on procedure and techniques for

operation. These include

i. Creativity: Helping in converting user ideas into plans to develop

candidate system.

ii. Problem solving: Reducing level of problem, developing

alternative solutions and analysing benefits and limitations of

candidate system.

iii. Project Management: Scheduling, co-ordinating team effort and

managing cost & expenditure.

iv. Questioning Attitude and inquiring mind: Knowing what, when,

why, where, who and how.

v. Dynamic Interface: Combining technical and non-technical

considerations in functional specifications and general design.

The analyst must also have knowledge of computer, business functions,

system tools, experience of H/W and S/W specifications, working

knowledge of project management.

Role of System Analyst: Following roles are performed by system

analyst-

1.Change Agent-. The analyst may have various styles as change agent

to convince the user to accept the changes that are to be introduced by

new system. These styles may be

Persuader (Small intervention), Imposer(Small intervention) or in

between catalyst and confronter.

2. Investigator and Monitor-. In defining the problem the analyst

collects information to determine why the present system does not

work well. Here the analyst works as investigator. To successfully

complete a project, the analyst must monitor the system in relation

to time, cost and quality.

3. Architect- As architect system analyst creates a physical design of

candidate system to help user in implementing ideas to fulfil user’s

requirements.

4. Psychologist- As a psychologist the analyst approaches people,

interpret their thoughts, assesses their behaviour and then draws

conclusions from these interactions.

5. Salesperson- Sales skills of system analyst are crucial to the

success of the system. Selling the system take place at each step in

system life cycle.

6. Motivator- Proposed system must be well designed and acceptable

to the user. This can be achieved by user participation in

development. For this system analyst must motivate the user.

7. Politician- In implementing proposed system, analyst tries to satisfy

all the persons involved. Diplomacy in dealing with a person can

improve acceptance of the system. Like Politician analyst must have

the support of the user as well as the management.

Analyst User differences

The analyst and user can differ in education, experience and language.

The analyst may be impatient with the user’s ignorance about the terms

like chip, ram etc and user may be impatient with the analyst’s limited

understanding of the business functions.

These differences often leads to conflicts during system development

which cam create hindrance in the development process. So these

differences must be understood and removed. This can be achieved by

involvement of the user & support of the analyst.