Business Analyst Skills (The 3 Core BA Skills)

You must have a base level of skills to become a BA, and you should be focusing on different skills depending on the type of BA you are aiming to become. In this video, we discuss the 3 core skills that business analysts should strive for.
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Using the framework set out in this video and the next video (3 Types Of Business Analysts), you'll have a much better idea of which skills you should focus your time and energy on, and clear answers to these questions:
What skills does a business analyst need?
What are the technical skills a business analyst needs?
What is a business process analyst?
What's the difference between a Business Requirements Document (BRD) and software requirements specifications (SRS)? (detailed)
What's the difference between Process Design skills and Process Analysis skills?
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Episode Transcript:
Business Analysts should possess the ability to Produce Business Requirements and Software Requirements Specifications (BRD and SRS) - A Core BA Skill
That's the defining characteristic of analysts in business analysis and successful business analysts.
Whether you want to become a business process analyst (BPA) or a business systems analyst (BSA), the one core skill that every business analyst needs to have is the ability to produce business requirements documents (BRD) and functional specifications or software requirements specifications (SRS), as some companies call them.
But I'll circle back to BRD / SRS's and you'll see why. Let's talk about the BPA skill set...
BUSINESS PROCESS ANALYST SKILL SET
What Are The Two Core Business Process Analysis Skill Sets:
1 - the ability to perform Process Mapping and Process Design
2 - the ability to Influence without Authority for business objectives
Process mapping is the ability to document business processes and is a subset of business process design. Process Design is the ability to help the company build out new business processes. It's a core skill set of BPA's to deliver a solution.
The distinction is very important because sometimes you'll see 'Process Mapping' on job applications..
Some companies just need process mapping skills, but other companies in their job postings will say 'Process Mapping' skills when they actually do mean 'Process Design' skills.
Process design skills are a lot more involved than just mapping.
What you need to make sure is that whatever methodology you choose to learn is not disconnected from Business Requirements. The way you learn how to do process design has to be requirements oriented, which means your business requirements have to be infused in the process design activities that you do.
You Don't Have Authority To Tell Anyone What To Do As a BPA
Yet, as part of your job, you have to make sure that the business process works a certain way in order for the whole solution to hold together. As somebody who doesn't have any kind of authority, How do you actually go about doing that?
The key to that is knowing how to influence people without having any authority. That's the second broad and important skill set that you want to focus on as a business process analyst in information technology environment. Work improving communication skills with members of your project, and communicate effectively with management.
BUSINESS SYSTEMS ANALYST SKILL SET
Business systems analyst skill number one SQL. This technical skill involves the BSA to perform two main activities. I've said it many times and I'll say it many times more,
You want to learn SQL if you want to be a BSA...
But the BSA can be expected to do a lot, a whole variety of different types of work, now what does the BSA use SQL for?
The two main things that the BSA uses SQL for are what I like to call data discovery for data migration.
Now data discovery is a very general description of the set of activities that the BSA does to figure out what the table structure of a database looks like. Your ability to query a database is an essential skill for you to be able to do data discovery.
Example
1 - If you're starting to learn a new application as a BSA, what you want to do is understand the Table Structure in that application very well.
2 - The way you do that is by running a whole host of queries on different tables to figure out what kind of data is in there.
3 - Then, figure out how to reverse engineer that back into what's called an entity model.
Data discovery is the first main activity that the BSA does using SQL.
View the Full Transcript: learn.ba/three-core-business-...
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#businessanalysis #businessanalystskills #BRD #ProcessDesign #SQL

[@BABLOCKS]

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[@winstonwayne9270]

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[@alexandraqu]

Thank You so much. Your videos are so helpful to me.

[@OluwatosinOladipo-pj4ue]

Thank you so much for this, it s very insightful. I would like to learn more about how to produce business requirements and how to go about Process Design.

[@nigeriancompany1922]

Very insightful video

[@MiNiKi71]

Really enjoying your videos. I work in the Learning and Development industry, but feel we can learn alot from your field. Thank you.

[@emalbariali9824]

Great to hear that Nick.

[@MiNiKi71]

Hi @@emalbariali9824. Continue to learn a lot from your videos and I've subscribed to Learn.BA. I'm trying to look at how I mould myself into some kind of Digital L&D/BA hybrid. I have an Agile Foundation certificate and an extensive background in L&D - from facilitation to training design. I've been looking at BA qualifications (UK), specifically BCS International Diploma In Business Analysis, but I'm just not convinced that this is current for the digital age. Am I being shortsighted? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[@alexandraqu]

@@MiNiKi71 OMG! It's so coincidental to see this message. So I am navigating a Career Transition and I am drawn to L&D as well as Business Analytics. I thought to myself and even wrote it down in my journal: Is it possible to be a L&D/BA Super Hybrid? How does it work? I see you asked this question 2 years ago. Have you found your answers? Would you be willing to provide some form of guidance for me? I have no experience in either field and I am really interested in both fields. I would be so enthused to connect with you. Kind Regards.

[@o266242]

Thanks for your videos

[@BABLOCKS]

You're welcome Steven. Glad you're finding them useful.

[@ugonwamara7778]

thats a great breakdown of the Functional requirements specification documents. i want to ask , in agile scrum methodology, does the User story , which is detailed, take the space of FRSD ? or u have to produce the 2 ?

[@emalbariali9824]

Hi Ugo, generally speaking, the developers you work with in agile projects will take your user stories and ask you the follow-up questions that they need answered. If you're in an agile environment where the developers need more detail from you than normal, then you will have to produce more detailed functional requirements. This video elaborates further on this - kzbin.info/www/bejne/hIq6ZaGdhrRlZqs

[@BABLOCKS]

Hi Ugo, the user story is just a replacement for the use case component of your specifications. There are still many other elements that must be produced as part of the specificaiton.

[@miloublu9799]

You try to give the video more brightness it will be great if you do

[@user-fm5fc8ig4l]

Like what your saying but your going to fast one point at a time slowly so can take notes and still comprehend or analyze what you said

[@robertovaldez2380]

Has anyone took any of the course from this website?

[@BABLOCKS]

Hi Roberto, I can refer you to a few of our students if you'd like. Get in touch with me inside our community.