Career in outsourcing - Business Analyst

The basic quality of a good IT system, whether it deals with business or administrative processes, is that it presents an adequate model of the part of reality it aims at describing. For a model to be efficient and useful, it has to contain simplifications smart enough so that they would adequately represent the most important elements of the described business activity, and skip on the unimportant ones. In IT projects, the person responsible for the preparation of such models is the business analyst.

Job description

The job of a Business Analyst is, first of all, to acquire requirements pertaining to the expectations of the client with regard to the planned IT system, and then to model and document these requirements well enough, so as to enable efficient and correct implementation of the application. According to the BABOK guide (A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge), prepared by IIBA (International Institute of Business Analyst), that constitutes a source of knowledge for business analysts – an equivalent of PMBOK (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge), prepared by PMI (Project Management Institute) and describing good practices for project managers – a business analysis comprises the following elements:

1. Business Analysis – identification and understanding of the needs of a business (sector),

2. Requirements acquisition – identification of the client's expectations, both the direct and hidden ones, i.e. those that are not necessarily connected with the direct purpose of the application,

3. Requirements planning and management – planning the process of documenting the requirements, along with specification of the priorities for the implementation of different requirements and change control mechanisms,

4. Requirements documentation – preparation of a list of requirements in such a from and such detail so that they could be designed and implemented correctly by the designers / programmers,

5. Requirements communication, i.e. the sharing of the analytical documentation with the project shareholders. Business analysis also includes informing about any changes in the requirements, content of the requirements, etc.

6. Assessment and validation of the solution, i.e. the assessment of the proposed solution and provision of analytical support and testing.

Growth perspectives

In many cases the position of a Business Analyst is perceived as the career-crowning achievement for those who started in the department of functional testing or implementations, where they had the chance to learn about the business aspects of the work, as well as the technological limitations and possibilities of the execution of the client's needs. The professional development of a Business Analyst should be multi-dimensional.

First of all, a business analyst has to have a clear understanding of the business sector to which the analysis pertains. In order to describe the business well, the analyst has to be in good contact with those who run the business and be fluent in the sector-specific language and vocabulary. On the other hand, the analyst also has to have sufficient understanding of the technology used in order to address the client's needs correctly and be able to put them in technological context.

Qualifications

Apart from the basic knowledge of the business described, used design patterns, data modelling principles and the language used in business modelling (unified modelling language, UML), a qualified Business Analyst need also develop the so-called soft skills. Business Analysts work as liaisons between people from the fields of business and technology, so they also have to be interested in communications, psychology and negotiations techniques. The IIBA or GWU (George Washington University) certificates are most welcome.

Monthly remuneration (median) of a Business Analyst depends on the professional experience of the employee and equals:

• up to 2 years of experience: PLN 6,500 gross,
• from 2 to 4 years of experience: PLN 8,000 gross,
• over 5 years of experience: PLN 10,000 gross.

One should remember that the remuneration presented above may differ depending on the location of the company or form of employment.

Janusz Krzemiński IT Director Connectis