Life Cycle of a Business Analyst : Business Analysts and System Analysts FAQ

The Business Analysts are the ones who have the comprehensive picture of a project in the real world environment. They deal with the business perspective as well as the developmental perspective. The skills that they should possess thus should be really wide. The basic understanding in every aspect of the product is necessary. Th life cycle of the project in the eyes of a BA is the one that can depict the success/failure in business as well as practically technical areas of operation. Here is how the BA goes through the life cycle of a project.

1. Scoping out of the prospects:

To start with, it is the responsibility of the Business Analyst to scope out and analyse the business areas associated with the project/system that is proposed for development. This includes analysis of the market and the prospects for a particular system. Project scope should also be discussed with all others who might be involved with the development in the future. A general agreement and consent on the base principle is thus required.

2. Requirements gathering phase:

This is where skills of the BA as a perfectly interactive and “to-the-point” person comes into play. By asking the customer or client, the right questions and analyzing/figuring out what exactly is in the customer’s mind the BA is expected to get the best possible, categorized and clear-cut requirements from the customer. This is then documented properly as textual and pictorial representations. The understanding of the various methodologies can give this phase a real boost, for there can be a chance to have a hypothetical prototyped version for the “System-to-be-built”.

3. Transfer of the requirements to the team:

The team which is going to be involved in the development of the system has to get the best possible representations of the Use cases and requirements on the whole. Technical inputs from the team can come in too. The organization of effective, all-involved meetings is the responsibility of the Business Analyst. The review of the requirements and feasibility/alternatives should be discussed very clearly and in-depth from the requirements satisfaction point of view. This phase can clear the path in the future off the unwanted clumsiness in business layers.

4. Finally arriving at the solution:

With the continuation from the previous phase, the entire team would have acquired a very good knowledge of what is being expected from the system. Now it is the Business Analyst is the one who coordinates the entire team and gathers the input from every person in the team to formalize the final solution that will be aimed for. This can require some technical analysis from the BA side too. This ensures effective interaction between the team and BA during the solution generation phase.

5. Testing/Verification/Validation:

Having the best team for development and periodically organising review meetings can do the project a lot of good. But to keep the tab on the proceedings is in the hands of the Business Analyst. He tracks the proceedings with the traceability tools & QA tools. It cannot be better for anyone to keep this check on, for the BA is the one who has the complete info on what is required of the entire system as an entity in the business/practical world of operations.

As the life cycle depicts, the BA sure has a very busy schedule to keep up with throughout the project. But rather than the quantity of work, it is more the impact of the quality of his work that would eventually show up as the outcome of the project.