What Does a Business Analyst Do?
Business analysts examine business processes, gather requirements, and identify areas for improvement. They leverage data to provide valuable insights, support decision-making, and enhance business performance.
These professionals use adept analytical skills to identify trends, patterns, and inconsistencies, which then guide strategic decision-making. Strong organizational abilities and business acumen are needed for success in this role. BAs must also be excellent communicators, as they often run meetings, present to senior leaders, and communicate complex, technical information to non-technical stakeholders.
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National Average Salary
BA salaries vary by experience, industry, organization size, and geography. To explore salary ranges by local market, please visit our sister site zengig.com.
The average U.S. salary for a Business Analyst is:
$87,315
Business Analyst Job Descriptions
Having the right business analyst job description can make a big difference in your recruiting efforts. Here are some real-world samples to use as templates for your next opening.
Junior Business Analyst
The junior business analyst will work with business managers and IT to drive requirements for improving business processes. This includes participating in every stage of the development life cycle, collaborating on feature prioritization, timelines, schedules, metrics, and reporting, and preparing communication to stakeholders and customers on new features added.
Duties and responsibilities
- Analyzes business processes, organizational structure, goals, and procedures to identify and develop strategies to improve efficiency and cross-functional collaboration within the business
- Partners with business users to identify areas of process improvements and recommends solutions through automation and applying lean concept
- Creates detailed business requirements by partnering with the business and translates the requirement into functional specifications
- Defines project requirements by identifying project milestones, tracking progress, resolving problems, communicating progress, and recommending actions
- Assists with implementation of the identified solutions by performing system testing, providing end-user training, documentation, and support as needed
Job requirements
- Three (3) years of product management, software development or similar analysis
- Ability to identify and implement process and technology improvements in conjunction with peers
Education
- Bachelor’s degree preferred.
Mid-level Business Analyst
We are looking for a proficient problem-solver who is adept at creating action plans based on business needs. This Business Analyst will work with multiple business units to elicit, document, and analyze business and technical needs. Proven ability to communicate technical and business requirements and exceptional communication skills are keys to success in this role.
Major responsibilities
- Extracts and documents requirements through user stories, use cases, process flow diagrams, etc.
- Checks that complex requirements are executable, testable, complete, and not ambiguous
- Collaborates and builds trusted relationships with business units, development teams, and other stakeholders to gather, analyze and, prioritize requests
Requirements
- 4+ years of business analysis experience
- Must be able to communicate to all levels in an organization, strong problem-solving skills, adaptable, flexible, proactive and willing to take ownership
- Experience with Agile methodology
- Ability to write basic to moderately complex SQL queries, as well as technical skills including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Jira (or similar tool)
- Experience on a variety of simple to complex projects
- Strong ability to elicit and document requirements in a clear and concise manner
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, Business Administration, or equivalent work experience
Principal Business Analyst
The Principal Business Analyst shall be part of an agile team and lead efforts to produce accurate business process documentation and user stories, negotiate with business partners in providing technical solutions that deliver business outcomes, and coordinate across teams to ensure alignment on requirements and solution needs.
Responsibilities
- Perform effective Business, Process, and Product Analysis to improve mean time between release cycles
- Execute proactive feature-story refinement and lead preparation activities for effective Sprint Planning
- Ensure stories are refined 1-2 sprints ahead of team
- Ensure story acceptance criteria is clearly defined for teams or suppliers to begin development on day 1 of each sprint cycle start
- Learn and apply Behavioral Driven Development (BDD) techniques
- Improve Planning and Communications skill sets across the teams to better align organizational delivery
- Define, socialize & maintain Product Roadmaps to ensure alignment of Product Owners, team members, business & IT stakeholders on the feature development plan
- Deliver on commitments and demonstrate a strong sense of urgency
- The Business Analyst will ensure team is meeting quarterly commitments by use of PI Planning, Agile team ceremonies, accurate estimating, and alignment of dependencies; Escalate team performance opportunities in the Retrospective ceremony
Requirements
- High School diploma/GED required
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
- 7+ years of experience
- 5+ years of experience in technology implementation for full lifecycle enterprise software projects preferred
- 3+ years of experience with Salesforce configuration and/or product implementations preferred
- Direct experience with SF Field Service, Community Portal, mobile features, Scheduling, Maps, and Mulesoft
Sample Interview Questions
- What experience do you have in business analysis?
- What methodologies do you follow for requirements gathering and documentation?
- How do you identify stakeholders and manage their expectations?
- How do you handle stakeholder conflicts when gathering requirements?
- How do you prioritize and manage requirements?
- Describe a situation where you had to prioritize one business requirement over another. What was your decision-making process?
- What are the most important skills for a business analyst to have?
- Can you explain the difference between data analysis and business analysis?
- How do you communicate technical information to non-technical stakeholders?
- Can you walk me through your process for identifying and solving a business problem?
- How do you stay up-to-date on industry trends and emerging technologies?
- Can you explain the significance of a SWOT analysis?
- Explain the role of a use case, and share an example of your previous usage.
- How do you approach risk management when working on a new project?
