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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements --------------------------------------- 5

Preface: What to expect from this book ---------------------------- 6

Recommendation ---------------------------------------- 8

Introduction ------------------------------------------- 9

Chapter 1: How to guarantee career success ------------------------- 11

Chapter 2: Being the unstoppable Business Analyst --------------------- 19

Chapter 3: What every Business Analyst must know -------------------- 53

Chapter 4: Secrets of strong stakeholder relationships -------------------- 78

Chapter 5: The road to achieve Business Analysis mastery ----------------- 96

Chapter 6: Closing Reflections --------------------------------- 110

About the Author ---------------------------------------- 112

Career success stories from students ---------------------------- 114

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“
If you do what you’ve apways done you’pp get

what you’ve apways gotten!

____________

Anthony Robbins

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DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Tim, my husband and the

most dedicated Business Analyst I know. He is

also my greatest supporter in everything I do.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I hereby acknowledge the many business analysts and other wonderful people who I have
learned from in so many different ways during my career as a Business Analyst. It is all these
people who motivated and inspired me to start this book. There have been others who
challenged my will about who I am and what I want that has helped me to continue to write this
book and finally, the one person who made sure I finish this book. You know who you are.

Thank you to all.

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PREFACE
What to expect from „Success Secrets for the Business Analyst‟s Mind‟

This book shows you the path to follow to reach all you Business Analysis career goals with
great success. It is even more than that; it covers the steps from when you decided to become a
Business Analyst right through to achieving extraordinary Business Analysis career results.

It is a must read for all Business Analysts because it enables you to be a dynamic and high
achieving Business Analyst regardless of your experience level. It focuses on your individual
Business Analysis career and guides you step by step in how you can reach the next level of
your career quickly and effectively.

To be a Business Analyst takes someone with a great sense of adventure for challenges and
personal development. We are all on a journey to achieve our dreams and our highest career
aspirations and ultimately want to be happy and fulfilled.

The journey you are about to embark on when you read this book is one of learning how you can
optimize your Business Analysis career by following these career success principles. This book
enables you to define your career goals and learn how to implement the Business Analysis

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success strategies to reach them. As part of your journey you will also learn the foundation
concepts of Business Analysis and receive practical advice on how to find that next great
Business Analysis role! You are guided on which courses and certifications will be most
appropriate for you to work towards to reach Business Analysis mastery.

LESSON LEARNED
A secret I learned about Business Analysis many years ago is that this profession may have a
lot of tools and techniques associated with it but it is very far from a „cookie cutter‟ type of
profession.

What I mean with this is that Business Analysis mastery is all about learning the foundation skills
and then to apply these skills in a slightly different way every time. Every project we work on will
be slightly different and our stakeholders will be different in what they need too. We must be
flexible and comfortable with change to be successful as Business Analysts. Don‟t look for a
right way and a wrong way when it comes to Business Analysis - simply embrace the gray scale
that comes with this job!

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RECOMMENDATION

“…Esta has amazing dedication and is an excellent motivator who can motivate a
low confidence student into a "can do" Business Analyst. She takes ownership of
one's career such that having her as a trainer takes education to a higher level than
learning. I highly recommend Esta to anyone who is looking for advancement in the
career of Business Analysis...

____________

Blessings Chakupa,
Telstra Business Analyst

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INTRODUCTION
There are really just three components of your career that you need to pay attention to. If you do
this you can be sure you will achieve a successful outcome. Make sure you give all three the key
principles the attention it needs and you will be well on your way to Business Analysis career
success!

PRINCIPLE 1: Think and feel goals

Do everything with the end goal in mind. It is imperative for any successful business analyst or
any business professional to start their career with the end goal in mind. Where do you want to
get to? What would you love to achieve? If you haven‟t created your end goal yet, then today is
a good day to do that!

PRINCIPLE 2: The right knowledge

Building a Business Analysis knowledge foundation with every opportunity you find would stand
you in good stead. You would have heard the saying that „knowledge is power‟, this is also very
true in your role as a business analyst. Always learn and be a sponge for more information and
you will be surprised how far that takes you.

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PRINCIPLE 3: Power of personal leadership

People around you determine your success. As an ambitious business analyst you must always
surround yourself with individuals you can learn from. Make sure you find someone or a few
more experienced people in your organization who you can model. All highly successful people
models themselves on someone that is even more successful.

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CHAPTER 1

The Road To Achieve Business Analysis Mastery

The importance of having a career vision
How to create your career goals for success
Why it is vital to reward your goal achievements

PAT‟S STORY
Have you ever been on the freeway driving in
the slow lane because you were not quite sure
Success breeds success
where you are supposed to turn off? Well that
By Mia Hamm
is what happened to a young guy called Pat
when he was on his way to go fix a customer‟s
printer. He had a rough idea of where he was going but he was not too clear on the exact
distance, turn off or name of the company he needed to visit. After a while Pat realized that he
will probably never get there unless he actually knows the exact address! He then decided to
find a safe place to stop next to the freeway and looked at his map. He also found the
appointment details and then realized that he actually knew where this place was just by taking
the time to check.

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What happened to Pat would have happened to all of us at least once, right?

When you know exactly where you are going and you know the details clearly you tend to drive
in the fast lane until you know it is time to turn off. This is the same with people who know their
goals and ultimate outcomes. They are focused and driven to achieve that outcome because
they know where they are heading. They do not hesitate or reconsider or even stop one moment
to look around – they are the ones who achieve results efficiently and successfully!

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Do everything with the end goal in mind

You know all those really successful people that we read about, hear about and even see within
our own organizations? They all have got one important thing in common. They all have an end
goal they are working towards. They have a vision of where they want to end up and what they
want to achieve along the way. They also have a clear plan of how they will achieve that
outcome or end goal.

To have a successful Business Analysis career you must do what they do. So let‟s have a look
at how you go about when creating your vision or end goal and what other steps you need to
take to get there.

Creating a vision

Spend some time to formulate your vision or what I refer to as you end goal. An end goal is a
goal that you would just love to achieve, it is an outcome that you will make your heart beat
faster, it is a vision of what you would like to see yourself one day achieve. The key point with
defining your end goal or vision is that you can feel inside of you how it stirs your heart if you
think of achieving it!

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So how do you create a vision?

Simply start thinking about what you want to achieve by the end of your career or ultimately your
life.

Start writing down vision or end goals for yourself as you think of them. Once you have a vision
written down (or a few potentially) you have to ensure you phrase it to be a statement that will
mean something on a deep level to you. You do this by using a technique called: “chunking
up”. Chunking up simply means you read your vision statement to yourself and then ask yourself
this question: “So what?”. This question will prompt you to rephrase your vision to something
that has real meaning to you and it will help you write your statement so that it resembles how
you feel about this vision. You write down the meaning this vision has to you if you achieve it.

An example

I might say that my end goal is to be a Business Analysis Practice Manager with 100 Business
Analysts in the Practice. This in itself is not something I can „feel‟ inside my heart and therefore
not my vision or end goal for my career. However, if I reformulate my end goal by asking myself
the question: „So what?”, I might rewrite it as: I am helping business analysts achieve their
career goals and this makes my heart feel full of love and contentment because I am making a
difference in people‟s lives. This is an end goal.

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The reason you want your end goal to be a feeling inside of your heart is because this is
ultimately what motivates all of us. We are all made up of emotions and we live by our emotions
and that is precisely why it is imperative for you to define your end goal or life vision based on
how achieving it will make you feel.

If you don‟t set an end goal that stirs your heart, you will not be motivated to reach that goal.

So now that you have set your end goal or your vision for your life, let‟s look at the next steps we
need to take to reach your end goal!

Your career goals

Your goals are the „map‟ for reaching your outcome or vision. It lays out the milestones or „cities‟
you need to get to on your „map‟ to be moving closer to your vision or end goal.

You must set your goals with the end goal in mind. The goals you define can be short term (next
week, next month or in 3 months), medium term (6 months to 2 years) and longer term goals (2
to 5 years). Also you must revisit your goals every week initially and then every month when you
are in the habit of focused on your goals. Remember that your goals will change and you must
therefore revisit your goals very often, re-evaluate them and redefine them. You will gain more
information as you progress and refine your direction as you work on achieving them. This is
why it is alright to also update, refine or even rewrite goals periodically. The key here is for you
to revisit the goals often and to always keep them aligned with your overall outcome or vision.

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When you define your goals, you must ensure you define them to be S-M-A-R-T goals.

What is an S-M-A-R-T Goal?

S-M-A-R-T is an acronym for your goals attributes. Each goal definition must have these
attributes to ensure that they are clear and achievable. Have a look at the description of each
letter below and then apply it when you do your goal definitions:

Example goal: “I have completed reading this book in 7 days from today.”

S - Specific

An example of a “Specific” attribute would be that you are specific about what it is that
you want to achieve, i.e. finish reading this book. You are not saying you want to have
looked at this book (that could mean anything from looking at the cover to scanning the
pages, who knows?). In this example we use the word “completed reading the book”
which is a very specific statement describing what the goal is.

M - Measurable

If we continue with the example above, that goal is measurable because you are saying
you want to complete reading the whole book. So you will be able to measure whether

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you finished reading this book or not by simply looking at which page you are up to in 7
days from today.

A – As if it‟s already happened

The goal definition must be written in a way that it sounds like it has already been
achieved; it is already a fact and completed. In our example above it states the goal as if
it has already been completed.

R - Realistic

Also remember that you want to set goals that will stretch you but at the same time you
must be able to achieve your goals. It must be feasible and realistic. For example, to
finish reading the book in 1 day is not feasible because you have many other things you
must do, but finish reading it in 7 days means you stretch yourself in that you must
commit a little time every day in order to achieve this goal.

T - Time

The time attribute is important because you need to know by when this goal should be
met by you. In our example it says in 7 days from today. In your real life goal definition
you will include a date.

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Finally, your action plan

You now know what your end goal as well as all your goals to reach that end goal is. What you
need to do next is to make a list of all the actions and steps you need to take to achieve each of
your goals.

You simply take each goal individually and make a list of tasks or actions you need to perform.
You revisit this list every week (or every day if it is a short term goal) and ensure you stay on
track for reaching your goal. As you progress through your actions, you will progress through
achieving your goals.
Remember that no goal will ever be reached without you taking ACTION.

Rewarding yourself

A secret of achieving real and continuous success in your career and also your life is this:
Success breeds more success. What does this actually mean? This means that every success
you recognize for yourself starts to build a habit for more success. You are therefore by
recognizing and celebrating successes, instilling a new behaviour and inherent ability for
success for yourself. This is why it is imperative for you to celebrate each success you achieve.
So when you achieve one of your goals, make it a celebration and before you know it you will be
celebrating your next success!

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CHAPTER 2

Being the unstoppable Business Analyst

PAT‟S STORY
Before we go any further, let me tell you more
about our young friend Pat. He took the brave
You can’t cross a sea by
decision to become a Business Analyst. merely staring into the water
By Rabindranath Tagore

Pat was working as a customer services

representative in a consulting company that supplied printers to other companies right over the
city. Pat was often out of the office visiting clients to ensure printers are still functioning as it
should. This job was alright but Pat didn‟t feel like he was really challenged anymore and wanted
to find a career where he can learn and grow as an individual. He was also of course interested
in being paid more and ideally didn‟t want to travel from company to company all day long!

One day Pat was busy with one of the printers when he overheard a conversation between two
people. He couldn‟t help hearing the man say to the woman he was speaking to that the
company really don‟t have enough good business analysts. He was talking something about a
project and about requirements that needed to be collected urgently for the project. He also said

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that they should consider getting some of their existing people converted to become business
analysts. Pat wasn‟t sure what a business analyst was all about but it sounded good and what
really excited him was that it sounded like something you can convert to or learn how to
become.

Pat rushed off that night when he got home and started to „Google‟ the term „Business
Analyst‟....

To be continued…

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So what does a Business Analyst actually do?

Let‟s start right at the beginning...what does Business Analysis mean?

There are many different meanings attached to what Business Analysis really is in the corporate
world and very often even project managers are not quite clear on the scope of what they are
actually there to do.

So what do they do then?

In a very simplified definition a business analyst translates business needs into business
solutions.

We can also compare ourselves with bricks and mortar builders, architects or even sales people.
We meet the person or family who wants to build something. We then determine they need
somewhere to live because they have been set up in a hotel for the last 3 months, it is too
expensive, small and the family is under huge stress. After talking to them further we understand
it is a house they need (not a flat, tent or farm!) and after more discussion we gather it is a 4
bedroom place with 2 stories and should be painted yellow. In between they decide they also
need a bungalow outside for grandparents and if we are lucky we hear they want to change the
house colour to be blue before the painting starts! We put our builder‟s hats on and know this is
our job in a nutshell.

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The role of the Business Analyst in the workplace

The role of the Business Analyst is best described in terms of the Systems Development Life

Cycle (SDLC).

The SDLC is a process or methodology that is widely applied to all projects. It is a series of
phases that each project will go through and everything about that project is planned for in terms
of this methodology. It can also be compared to anything we do which has a “start, do the work
and an end” phase with a key difference that the SDLC has predefined phases. The SDLC
consists of a set of specific activities that must be performed during each of the phases. The
SDLC is applied more or less in the same way where ever you go.

As a business analyst you will always (if you are in a project environment) be doing your role as
part of the SDLC. Your role changes as the SDLC goes through the life cycle. Let‟s have a look
here at what you will typically be doing in each phase.

TASK
It is a great idea for you to look up some further information around the SDLC so that you can
have a good understanding of what this is all about. It is a fundamental concept to understand to
fully grasp the role of the Business Analyst.

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Planning for the SDLC

Strictly speaking „Planning for the SDLC‟ is not a phase of the SDLC, however this is a crucial
activity that is always done. The Project Manager will typically create a project plan for the
overall project and the Business Analyst will contribute by planning requirements activities for
each of the SDLC phases.

You will get involved with the following activities in this planning stage:

Plan for the requirements management approach

Plan the Business Analysis roles & responsibilities
Identify who will be involved, who will be your stakeholders
Plan for the requirements activities that need to be done to achieve the completion of
all requirements deliverables. Examples include a business requirements document
or traceability matrix.

Evaluation phase

This phase is sometimes called the Initiation Stage but essentially, this is where the cycle starts.
An idea or concept is evaluated and a proposal is put forward.

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The more senior business analysts tend to get involved during this stage where the „business
need‟ or „business problem‟ is evaluated at a high level. Your role as a Business Analyst here
can include:
Developing a concept statement
Perform a feasibility study
Prepare options analysis
Prepare an impact analysis
Prepare a cost benefit analysis

Analysis phase

During the analysis phase most of the typical business analysis requirements related activities
take place. You will be heavily involved in:

Requirements gathering - workshop facilitation, interviews, observation, research

Requirements documentation – business requirements document, requirements
traceability document, functional & non-functional requirements documents.
This is where you will also use your modelling skills to document business
requirements.
Requirements validation & prioritization activities
Start the stakeholder engagement. You will use a lot of your Business Analysis soft
skills during this phase!

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Design phase

The Design phase is when your requirements are being interpreted by the solution design teams
/ evaluated by the software vendors.
You role here is typically to:
Review the solution documents
Work closely with solution designer and architects to ensure requirements are clear
Keep the stakeholders engaged to reassure them their requirements are
implemented as specified in the business requirement artefacts. In some projects,
such as agile projects, this part of the iteration will have close involvement of
stakeholder‟s right through the SDLC.
Manage the changes to requirements both from the business and from your solution
designer‟s point of view through a change control process. It is a great time to
actively start using the requirements traceability matrix!

Implementation phase

The term implementation can be slightly confusing but in terms of what it means here is that this
is the “build” phase of the project. The requirements have been designed into a solution which
is now being implemented. In some case this is via a packaged software solution and in some
cases it is built from scratch. The Business Analyst doesn‟t have much to do in this phase.

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In small teams it can happen that the Business Analyst is asked to clarify requirements or in
Agile projects the Business Analyst will be asked to review prototypes. Take note that in Agile
projects, there are basically many short SDLCs in one larger project which makes the role of the
BA condensed doing all the different tasks in smaller chunks but parallel with each other. Very
action packed!

Testing phase

During the testing phase the Business Analyst can assist with reviewing test scripts to ensure all
functional requirements are being tested. The Business Analyst can assist with requirements
clarifications if required but the role of a Business Analyst is not to actually execute the testing!
The testers do all test executions.

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PAT‟S STORY...
Pat found a lot of good information on the Internet about Business Analysis and after a lot of
reading and researching he felt comfortable that this sounded like the type of job for him!

Now he faced the challenge of becoming a Business Analyst. That isn‟t clearly described in
some book about exactly what to do or how to go about it. So he decided to jump in at the deep
end and start looking for Business Analyst jobs! He thought, he might get lucky and find a junior
entry level no experience required role. He was unfortunately wrong! Pat realised that a
Business Analysis role is not going to fall into his lap and he will need to work on some other
strategies to pull this off!

Pat was determined and started reading job descriptions on the job websites to get a feeling for
what skills they were asking for when Business Analyst roles were advertised. He made a point
of learning what these terms meant and he discovered that some of his printer testing skills is
transferable! For example, he realised that he has to talk to lots of clients every single day to
diagnose the problems they are experiencing with their printers and try to understand what it is
they need to fix their printers! Doing requirements elicitation sounds like pretty much the same
skill! It was like a whole new option burst open to Pat, he was so glad about this small
achievement! He went out and celebrated that he is making such great progress! He felt great
again and ready for this Business Analysis challenge of finding his first role!

To be continued…

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Starting out as a Business Analyst

Lots of people are now thinking of becoming Business Analysts and you may be one of them.
The great news for new Business Analysts is it is completely achievable! Most corporate careers
can be transferred into becoming a Business Analysis career with relative ease. This is possible
because Business Analysts can work within any subject matter area using their pure Business
Analysis skills.

How do you change career?

It is important that you realize that although changing your career to become a Business Analyst
is very achievable you should also keep in mind that as with everything new, there will be some
effort and learning required. You will find some ideas on what you should start doing to get the
career change ball rolling!

Get the foundation business analysis concepts understood

You should start reading up on Business Analysis (yes, this book is a great place to start!) and
get yourself familiar with the overall role and purpose of the Business Analyst.
If you are able to sign up for a classroom based, digital or online course in one of the foundation
type course, then that is a great next step. It is sometimes better to get some exposure to
business analysis in the workplace before going for course, but it is not that important.

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Attend Business Analysis networking events, mingle with the right people!

Go to local and international Business Analysis seminars and conferences.

Get some practical experience in perform business analysis tasks.

There are various avenues for you to follow to get yourself into a situation where you can get
some practical business analysis experience.

Some people use their existing career subject matter expertise to go onto projects as a subject
matter expert who will work closely with a business analyst. This is a great way to get into it
hands-on because you are effectively „job shadowing‟ someone.

There are opportunities out there for Business Analysts who have a strong knowledge in a
specific subject area. Once you have done some courses and research you could try apply for a
junior BA role where your subject matter expertise is in high demand.

Start telling people around you that this is what you would like to do with your career – the word
will spread and an opportunity might come up.

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If you are lucky enough to be on a project already, start volunteering to partake in business
requirements gathering and documentation activities. This is a great way to get your hands dirty
and gaining credible practical experience.

Finding that perfect Business Analysis role

In the previous section we covered how you should set up your career success plan with a
vision, goals and actions. In this chapter we are looking at how you would go about finding a
great Business Analysis role! This might be one of your goals and this section will provide great
information on how you can go about putting your goal into action!

Your Business Analysis resume

All successful business analysts have an up to date resume. They keep it ready and relevant so
that should an opportunity come their way which fits in well with the career goals, they can act
fast. Another good reason to keep your resume relevant and up to date is because you don‟t run
the risk of forgetting about some really key important achievements and skills you are gaining in
your current role.

Making your Business Analysis Resume work for you...

You get only one opportunity to impress someone with your business analyst resume, so try
your best to make that count. Remember that when your potential future employer or recruiter

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sees your resume or CV, they only see the piece of paper. They don't meet you at the same
time (most of the time they don't!) and therefore they must 'judge' whether it is worth meeting
you based on that document.

It's true what they say about first impressions...

You would realize that first impressions are crucial in any situation but even more so with your
business analyst resume. You are probably one in a couple of hundred people applying for a
particular BA job and this makes first impressions even more important. Pay attention to these
tips!

You only need to set up your resume once from scratch, so do it properly! It pays in the long run
over and over again. Follow these handy tips and look at the sample Business Analyst resume
to make this even easier. One last reason why you should pay attention to building an awesome
resume is that you will most probably half the number of Business Analysis jobs you need to
apply for in the first place!

Tips for a great Business Analyst resume...

The first half of your first page is crucial. Make sure you capture the message of professionally
'who you are' on the first half. If you like a sample resume, fill out the form below and this will
help a lot with ideas on how to do this. It's completely FREE.

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Don't make spelling or grammar mistakes. It is an obvious thing to many but I have reviewed my
fair share of resumes with some careless mistakes. This doesn‟t reflect well on the reviewer‟s
opinion of what your work output might look like!

Terminology is very important. Use the terms used by the job advertisement. If this means you
need to tweak your resume a little to suit this, then do it. It is important and makes it easier for
the recruiter.

Make it easy for the recruiter to pick your resume! Again, use the same terms and provide all the
information in summary on your first page. Many recruiters never get to the 2nd page, so make
that first page count!

You must have a good cover letter. It is easy, effective and can save you a lot of time!

While you create your resume remember to put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. Will you
actually hire this person? Will the first page of this resume attack you enough to read further?
Ask these questions and you will be amazed at how much it helps you increase the quality of
your resume.

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Also keep in mind that if you don't mention a particular project, skill or technique you have used
before, then the recruiter will not know this. It sounds simple, but again we assume things
sometimes without being explicit enough! You know you well, but they don't know you at all!

Your Business Analysis cover letter

Are you applying for a lot more jobs than you actually need to?
People don‟t realize how important the cover letter or cover email is to your job application. They
don‟t really even realize how important the whole resume is! I have looked through many
resumes and have read many resume cover letters and have been astounded at how people
throw away great opportunities by not presenting themselves well on paper.

Spend a little, save a lot!

If you spend a little time to write a proper cover letter for each job application, you will most likely
end up saving a lot of time by applying for a lot less jobs. Follow these very simple but powerful
cover letter writing tips and you are set for a much more fruitful and productive job hunting
experience.

Tip 1: Tailor your cover letter to each job

Don‟t complain or discard this one! It is important that you write or tweak your cover letter to be
read for that specific job you are applying for. This means you will address the person who is

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advertising the role by name (if you know it), you will use the same terminology as what is being
used in the job advertisement and you will mention the specific job title and reference exactly as
it appears on the job advertisement.

Tip 2: Make it as easy as possible for the recruiter

Write the specific role title (as advertised) with its reference number and the date you saw the
advertisement in the title of your cover letter or cover letter email. Do the exact same thing in the
first sentence of your cover letter; see the cover letter sample for an idea of how to do this.
Doing these two simple things will already make it easy for the recruiter because they will know
exactly which role you are writing about.

Tip 3: Keep it short, sharp and focused

You should not write more than one paragraph which summarizes your profile and relevant
experience to the recruiter. Again, use the same terminology as what is being used in the job
advertisement, this is what is familiar to the recruiter and therefore you meet his needs to
understand your skills. Remember, a recruiter advertises thousands of jobs and writes lots of job
role ads and often they don‟t know all the relevant terminology for each profession. In the case
of Business Analysis, this is no exception. To them a systems analyst, business systems
analyst, IT analyst or business analyst are interchangeable.

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So if they choose to describe the role as for a business systems analyst, then you phrase you
response using the term business systems analyst too. Get it?

Tip 4: Start your profile from the top

This simply means that you need to write your professional profile in a way which tells the
recruiter the most important things about you first and then you drill down to the detail. You will
therefore state in your profile paragraph what qualification you have, how many years
experience in that type of role and which industries you have worked in. See the sample resume
cover letter to see how this is done all in one sentence. Now the recruiter knows whether you
would potentially be suitable by just reading the first sentence of your profile paragraph. Cool
hey?

Tip 5: Drilling down more

After that powerful first sentence you need to keep the recruiter interested. So he / she are
searching for „key words‟ that matches the job advertisement. Use the keywords in the next
sentence. If they are looking for a business analyst with requirements gathering and workshop
facilitation experience, then you say that next. Again, look at my example resume cover letter to
see how this could be done. The most important tip here is to use as many of the job
advertisement‟s key words in the next 2-4 sentences.

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Tip 6: Close on a positive, confident note

You have managed to get the recruiter to read this far which means they would most likely be
interested to talk to you. You start the closing sentence with saying that you have attached or
included your resume for their reference. You can then perhaps add a line something saying
along the lines of that you believe this opportunity sounds like it matches your skills and
experience very well. This last closing paragraph should be 1 or 2 lines tops!

Tip 7: Make it really easy for the recruiter

Ensure you include your contact phone number and email address in the signature of your
resume cover letter. Again, your focus is to make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to know
who you are, why your skills and experience match (by making it match in words!) and how to
get hold of you.

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PAT‟S STORY...
Pat was a man on a mission. He has now spent a lot of time reading about Business Analysis
and finding similarities between what he is doing in his current job and how he can transfer
these skills to Business Analysis.

Pat even went to see a Recruitment agent called Jennie. He went to talk to her about the best
way he can approach finding a Business Analyst job and she gave him some great resume and
cover letter tips to use for his applications. She said that she wished all Business Analysts would
follow these basic resume and cover letter guidelines because they will all benefit from it and
spend half as much time looking for new roles! She also promised to keep an ear out for any
junior Business Analyst roles that she might hear of.

It was a rainy day and a cold morning when Pat got a call from Jennie. It has been about 3
months since he started this quest to become a Business Analyst and finally there was a
company looking for an entry level Business Analyst!

Now Pat needed to get polished and ready for the job interview! He was very nervous and
because Jennie thought that he was a really determined and keen guy, she offered to help
prepare him for his job interview.

To be continued…

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Preparing for the job interview

So you have now applied for some roles with your great looking resume and specifically tailored
cover letter and the job interviews are starting to flow in! Congratulations, you have reached the
next step towards reaching your goal of landing the next great job in your career!

With job interviews, it is important to realize there is an established format to the interview and
the better you are able to respond to the format, the more quickly you‟ll be successful. This is
true in most cases and therefore it is a very good idea to conform.

You can compare the format of an interview invitation a little to a dinner invitation. You know
there is a format to the dinner invitation and we all conform quite automatically to it. You dress
nicely, you follow the etiquette of the house hold or restaurant by eating things in a specific order
(entree, main, dessert) and you converse with the host or hostess in a certain way. A job
interview works like this too. You are expected to know some basic things in relation to the
interview and the better you know these things the more comfortable you will be once you are in
the interview.

Before we start talking about the job interview format more, I would like to explain to you how
you should answer each interview question that comes your way. I am explaining to you here
how to use the knife and fork at the dinner table!

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Perfecting answering interview questions

Apart from having a great open body language beaming out of you, you should also structure
your answers back to the interviewer. This job interview questions and answers format applies
mostly when you are asked to elaborate on specific experiences you have in doing a particular
type of task.

So let‟s say someone asks you to tell them about a project you worked on where you had to
arrange a requirements workshop.

Be a STAR interviewee

Use the S-T-A-R format for answering job interview questions. For each question you are asked
you simply answer it by starting with the situation, describe your task, which actions you took
and finally what the results were. Have a closer look at each step below:

S - Situation

You use a few sentences to describe the situation and brief background (if relevant) of
the specific project. So you start by setting the scene briefly. I literally mean you only use
3-4 sentences to state what the situation was.

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 T- Task

You then describe to the interviewer what the task was that was given to you to execute.
Again, be specific and clear about what it was you had to do. Remember to stay relevant
to what the question was when you answer the question. Don‟t get distracted from that
with unnecessary detail which may be irrelevant to the question.

A - Actions

This part of the answer is all about what and how you performed the execution of the
assigned task. Focus on your specific actions (and not the group's actions) and describe
it using good, positive adjectives. This is your most important part of the answer and you
should therefore spend the most time on this part of your answer.

R-Result

Always remember to have an outcome or result associated with what you specifically did.
Again, you are able to mention the group's result here too but put all the focus on the part
of the outcome or result that you were specifically responsible for.

If you practice this S-T-A-R format with answering a few questions prior to walking into the
interview, you will be much more comfortable to answer questions and you wouldn‟t be too

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worried about remembering the format. It becomes second nature quite quickly, so make sure
you practice!

Another example of how to implement the S-T-A-R for your job interview questions and
answers follows below.

Sample job interview question: “Tell us about a project where you had to plan for the
requirement activities on a project.”

S - Situation

"I was working on an Asia Pacific Project for Company XYZ to implement a new payroll system."

T - Task

"I was responsible to prepare a requirements plan for the entire project and had to ensure all
business analysts across Asia were included."

A - Actions

"The way I went about preparing this plan was to start by understanding the number of
stakeholders who would be involved in each country and the timeframes I needed to work within.
This enabled me to define requirements gathering approach based on a geographically

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dispersed stakeholder group. Requirements gathering were done via requirements validation
sessions via country-by-country conference calls. Other parts of my plan included describing
roles and responsibilities and requirements documentation approach."

R - Results

"I presented the requirements management plan to the project management board and obtained
sign off right away. My requirements management plan has since been re-used as a baseline on
other Asia Pacific initiatives."

Take note of these points

Note how brief I was in answering the first two aspects of the question, situation and task. This
information is very important to „set the scene‟ but essentially not what the interviewer is really
after. The actions part of the question is framed in terms of what I did specifically. Although it
gives some detail, I am focusing on answering the most important aspects of this part of the
question. I am saying enough to cover off the answer well without going on and on about it.
Finally, in the results part of the answer I focus on the main outcome of my actions which is the
re-use of my requirements management plan. There may have been other outcomes too but in
this context this is the most important one.

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HANDY HINT
Don‟t give too much or too little detail during the job interview questions and answers, try and
strike that good balance. In general, spend about 2-3 minutes on answering any question unless
it is a big question where the expectation is to elaborate. Remember that the interviewer can ask
further questions if they want more detail about a particular aspect of your answer.

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 Sample Business Analysis job interview questions
It is a great idea to prepare for a job interview by walking through some answers you might give
in a business analysis job interview! Remember to follow the S-T-A-R answering model when
you do rehearse answers to these questions! Good luck!

Example theory / fact based questions below:

1. What is the purpose of the Business Analyst within an organisation?

2. What do you believe are good attributes of a Business Analyst?
3. What is the difference between a functional requirement and a non-functional
requirement?
4. What are the attributes of a good business requirement?
5. What is the purpose of requirements traceability?
6. When do you use a RACI or RASCI model?
7. How do you ensure your business requirements are of a high quality?
8. What is contained within a typical Requirements Management Plan?
9. Describe the phases of the SDLC. Which phases have you worked in?
10. Describe the difference between a Waterfall based methodology and an Agile
methodology.
11. What is a user story in an Agile context and how is it used?
12. What is a use case and when would you use it as a Business Analyst?

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 13. What is the difference between a functional specification and a business requirements
document? How are they related?

Most job interviews have straight theory based questions which are simply fact based and a test
to see that you know the important key facts about the Business Analysis profession. There are
not many of these questions and you don‟t need to use the S-T-A-R format with these types of
questions. Simply state the answer back in a clear and factual fashion.

Behavioural based questions

The behavioural based questions are the most popular questions in an interview and it is also
the type of question you will always use the S-T-A-R answering format for. Make sure you
practice some of these questions to ensure you feel comfortable to relay the answers back on
the day.

Example behavioural based questions:

1. Describe a time when you had to deal with a stakeholder that just didn‟t want to
participate in one of your requirements workshops and tried to sabotage it. What did you
do?
2. Describe a situation when you were unable to deliver one of your requirements
documents on time. What did you do?

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3. Describe a time when you had to win a difficult stakeholder over to accept the project
change that will affect his/her department. How did you do it?
4. Describe a time when you were in a project where change happened constantly without
any change control to requirements. How did you deal with this situation and how did you
overcome the associated challenges?
5. Describe a time when you had to deal with stakeholders at all levels of the organisation.
How was the message different?
6. Tell us about a time when you needed to gain approval for one of your business
requirements documents but a stakeholder kept on delaying or postponing meeting with
you. How did you go about obtaining sign off in this type of scenario?
7. As a business analyst, describe your ideal project environment. If you have a specific
example, please include that in your description.
8. Describe a time when you introduced a new idea or process into a project or department
and how it improved the process or situation.
9. Describe a situation where you had to mentor a colleague on any tool or concept. How
did you approach this?
10. Describe a time when you had to facilitate a requirements gathering activity where your
stakeholders were not located in the same city. If you haven‟t done this before, describe
to us how you will deal with this type of situation.

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 11. Describe a situation where you used business analysis techniques to gather business
requirements from stakeholders. Which techniques did you use and why did you choose
those techniques?
12. Describe a time when you were responsible to plan and facilitate a requirements
workshop. How did you go about it?

Another type of behavioural based questions is hypothetical scenarios that the interviewer would
sketch and request a response to. These scenario‟s are normally based on real life scenarios
within their company and they are testing whether you would fit or respond a way that would
work in that environment. Don‟t hesitate to request more details or ask questions of them to
clarify what exactly they mean in case the scenario sounds vague. The more you can
understand the real scenario, the better placed you would be to answer this type of question.

Example hypothetical scenario based questions:

1. Consider this scenario: You are faced with requirements set which was not clearly
defined and not signed off. You are expected to get these requirements into an
acceptable state and get it signed off. How would you tackle this problem?
2. You have 5 business analysts to manage on a large business program. They are all new
to the project. Describe what you will do as a business analysis lead to get them up to
speed and working productively quickly.

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During the job interview

You have got the job interview appointment all set up and now you should get yourself well
prepared. The good news is, most interviews follow the format described below and if you follow
a few basic guidelines you will do very well!

Be ready, before the interview!

You would have received the location, time and interviewer(s) names before the job interview
day. Remember to take all your contact information, including the recruiter‟s phone number with
you.

Make sure you pretend the interview started even before you walk into the interview room. Be
professional, neat and ready from the moment you step into the company offices where you will
be having the interview. First impressions are (almost) all you‟ve got!

What to expect during the interview...

Once you are called into the job interview room you will be facing the interviewers. In general
there are 2-3 people interviewing, but seldom more than that. Make sure you shake everyone‟s
hand, make eye contact and give each interviewer a friendly smile while you are being

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introduced. It is important that you give each interviewer equal attention when you start
answering their questions.

They will normally have a little bit of „chit chat‟ with you. They typically asked whether you found
them OK. Even if you got lost, you answer - Yes, thanks. It was easy to find. You sound
competent! Whatever they say in this first initial engagement, you must be positive and confident
in your response - do not sound doubtful or unsure of yourself even if something horrible
happened to you on the way to the interview! This is part of your first impressions and it only
takes a minute or two - make the most of it!

Some „warm up‟ topics are introduced

Then the lead interviewer will explain the format of the session. They will typically say that the
job interview will last approximately 40 minutes, they will provide you with company background
and then they will normally tell you what types of interview questions are coming up. In a formal
interview they will tell you who will be asking what types of questions.

They tend to ask you at this point whether you know much about the company. The expectation
here is that you just give a few high level points to show you do know what it is all about and you
can mention a few general statistics you may know. The idea is just to show interest without
necessarily knowing it all. No one expects you to know it all. They are expecting to be the ones
to give you more detail. They will then give a company overview and typically end up with where

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the role you are interviewing for fits into the organization. This part of the interview sometimes
happens at the end of the questions too.
The 'meaty' part of the interview

Typically before the actual questions start you will be asked to tell the panel a little about your
professional background. (They may refer to your resume or your cover letter at this point). They
would like to know where you have been and what you have done. You should keep this brief,
succinct and sequential.
Before you start this, you should tell the panel which sequence you will follow.
You can say something like:
“My career started in 1997 in Johannesburg when I worked for the Stock Exchange. Thereafter I
moved to a role at Andersen Consulting who transferred me to London in 2000........”

Keep your early experience very brief and say a bit more about your relevant experience and
your more recent experience.

Now the questions start! With each question you should follow the S-T-A-R format when you
answer. Make eye contact with the person asking first and then engage with the other
interviewers while providing your answer. Remember that most of an interview is people
deciding whether they like you and whether they think you can fit into their culture. The content
of answers are also important of course, but you manner and ability to build rapport counts for a
lot!

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Be prepared for the questions about where you see your career going as well.

Closing of the interview

At the end of the questions part of the interview, you will be asked whether you have any
questions. It is good to ask one or at most two questions about the role you are interviewing for.
Another suggestion is to ask them to tell you about the team you might be joining. These
questions should be short and sweet but nevertheless indicate an enthusiasm for joining the
team. Don't start talking salaries unless the interviewer brings it up and be vague and let them
start the specifics!

Finally, remember to thank every interviewer for giving you the opportunity to discuss the
opportunity with them.

Who should you work for?

Choices, choices!

It is great to be a Business Analyst with a Business Analysis career! We have so much variety
and choice when it comes to the industry or subject matter we choose to work in. As a true
Business Analyst we can really work within any industry, any project based on any subject
matter at any given time of our careers. There is hardly any reason why a Business Analyst
cannot do this. Do you feel that you can do this?

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If your answer is „no‟, I would say that you are standing in your own way, definitely not your
chosen career path.

Reality however is that we will at best work within a few industries during our business analysis
career. A combination of human nature and comfort zone causes us to choose our business
analysis jobs within an industry we have worked in before or which is fairly similar to previous
industry. I am talking for the general population of Business Analysts here, not for YOU of
course!

You are reading this book because you are passionate about your Business Analysis career and
this means you are not afraid to challenge yourself! My advice, make the most of your Business
Analysis career and “chop and change” industry every now and again. Ask me, it enhances
your business analysis skills and is so much more interesting than becoming a subject matter
expert in just one area.

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CHAPTER 3
What every Business Analyst must know
Key Business Analysis concepts
Requirements elicitation and analysis knowledge awareness
Project management skills for Business Analysts

PAT‟S STORY...
No, Pat was unfortunately not successful with
that first interview but he found a Business I look back on my life like a
Analyst role about 4 weeks later. The role was good day’s work; it is done
and I am satisfied with it.
with a small company looking for a Business
By Grandma Moses, an
Analyst with some printing background because it
American folk artist.
was a publishing house doing projects where this
prior knowledge Pat has will be very useful to
them.
Pat was over the moon to be in a real Business Analyst job after all his efforts and learning but
he did realise that he will need to work on his pure Business Analysis knowledge foundations
now if he ever wanted to progress to another more senior Business Analysis role.

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Pat was absolutely determined to make his new career a great success and vowed to learn a
new Business Analysis skill every day by spending at least 20 minutes reading up on a new tool
or technique! Pat kept doing this every day and he was gaining more and more confidence in
this ever-growing new career path.

One day Pat bumped into one of the other Business Analysts, Cathy, in the kitchen area of his
new company. She was talking to their Project Manager about things he didn‟t have a clue
about. It sounded like he should know what this stuff was all about but he suddenly felt quite
uninformed and everything sounded much harder and involved than anything he has learned so
far.

Instead of allowing the feeling of despair to take hold of Pat, he and walked up to Cathy and
asked her whether she would please explain to him what traceability meant. She was delighted
to and in the process Pat found himself his first ever mentor!

To be continued…

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Building a Business Analysis knowledge foundation
As a new or experienced Business Analyst it is very important that you lay a solid foundation of
Business Analysis knowledge. The reason this is important is because if you have a good
foundation in Business Analysis you can simply add more specific skills and tools to it as you
gain more experience. Although the Business Analysis profession is very accessible to people
who want to make a career change, it does require Business Analysis specific skills and
knowledge.

Business Analysis foundation knowledge

Systems development life cycle

You have learned in the previous pages of this book the basics of what the SDLC is all
about. It is worth me saying again here that you must understand the role of the SDLC
and how your Business Analysis role slots into this methodology. Everything you will
work on will be in the context of the SDLC, even if you work on agile projects.

Problem solving

An integral part of being a business analyst is to be faced with problem solving in some
shape or form. Most commonly it is the scenario where a problem or current situation is
described to you and most often than not the business will give you an idea of how they
believe the problem should be solved. So you might wonder what I am doing here then.

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 The business poses the problem and they provide the solution too, so what is the
purpose of the Business Analyst then?

Good question. This is what makes our jobs interesting and challenging and also multifaceted.
We have to analyse the problem the business states further to understand the root cause of the
problem. We then formulate their problem back to them in a more structured fashion and this
often changes the solution they came up with in the first instance.

A great methodology to use is the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). This is a problem solving
methodology that helps tremendously in identifying the root cause of the problem and also in
coming up with a structured problem statement which can be taken forward to determine the real
options to consider for the project or program of work.

What is requirement engineering?

Requirements engineering is a collective term which describes the activities included in

requirements gathering (or elicitation), requirements analysis, documentation, prioritization and
validation.

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Requirements tools & techniques

Are you doing your Business Requirements the right way?

During all my years of doing business requirements engineering and analysis on a wide variety
of projects I have always managed to find a new challenge and a fresh new topic to learn more
of. You may look at my Business Analysis education and think I follow lots of specific
methodologies and must be doing business analysis strictly according to the book - after all in
many Business Analyst courses that is what you get taught to do! It is however quite the
opposite with me. Sure, in the earlier years of being a business analyst I have wondered about
which tools to use for which purpose when doing business requirements work and often had
doubts about whether I was “doing it right”! These days I only apply what is required and often
it is only a fraction of what is prescribed by a tool or technique in a book.

One of the aims of the business requirements game is to learn when to apply a particular
methodology (such as Agile) or technique more based on professional intuition than any specific
prescribed process. It is important to remain very flexible in your working style but at the same
time stay focused on using the most appropriate tool or technique for any particular situation. As
much as we tend to think each project is different, they are all also very much the same. With
gaining more experience you will learn how to be flexible in your approach to meet the needs of
the stakeholders but also remain very effective. This is what makes this profession highly
rewarding and diverse.

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Understanding the business need

Before we jump into too much detail around specific tasks for us as Business Analysts lets
discuss the wider purpose of what we are here to do. Let‟s sketch a scenario where you are
placed on a large program of work which has just kicked off...

As a first step, we identify and engage with the key stakeholders. Have a talk with someone, a
formal stakeholder interview or even a problem definition workshop, but it is essential to start the
hunt for more information on „the business need‟. Find the people or person who raised this
need, talk to them first. The key stakeholders are those groups or individuals in the organization
that is affected by the current business problem and who will be affected by us introducing a
solution to this need or problem. We will use various requirements gathering techniques and
review many types of materials in a quest to understand their need or problem. Example
stakeholders often include: department heads, business area managers, operations staff and of
course your own project team members who may have information too!

Typical other sources of information of the business need or problem to find during this activity
can include business cases, process documents, existing systems and artefacts such as
invoices, application forms and so on. There are many different ways that we go about trying to
understand what the business need is. A lot of collateral (more specifically referring to the Soft
System Methodology as an example) will refer to this activity as the process of gathering

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information to understand the “unstructured” version of the business problem we are aiming to
fix.

Translate the business need into an objective, clear and specific language.
Once we have gained a grasp on what the business need is, we start to translate and interpret
that need into a more structured problem, need or description of our scope. Very importantly at
this stage we document the business need into a language (business requirements, software
requirements or functional requirements), which can be understood by the business. We don‟t
dive into any technical modelling or „analysis speak‟ but where appropriate we will use
techniques to illustrate the problem.

By now you would have used a decision making model to choose between methodologies and
decided which one will best fit your business requirements management on the project.

This key step of clarifying and drafting the business need can include diagrams such as use
case diagrams, activity flows or process models to express the problem. These are great tools to
use to demonstrate an understanding of a business problem‟s current state and assists you in
ensuring there is clarity around what the business need is that is being addressed. This step is
iterative and involves a lot of discussion, rewriting, redrawing and finalizing of what it is we are
trying to solve.

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HANDY TIP
A handy tip here is for you to always get to the bottom of WHY is something a problem.

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Determine where we are going

Once we clarified, expressed and agreed what the current business need is, we start the
process of brainstorming ideas of how we can address this need (really start to gather business
requirements in earnest). What is the stakeholder‟s nirvana, what do they believe they need to
address the problem. Again, this process involves you engaging with all the stakeholders and
getting people‟s views in the most appropriate way. This can include more business requirement
workshops, stakeholder interviews or even doing market research for relevant trends and
products.

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IMPORTANT NOTE
You will find that the business stakeholders will start with the solution and often start providing
software requirements way before stating and understanding the root of the problem of business
need. It is your job to get to the problem or business need first!

Another very important point related to this is that you must learn to steer the stakeholders away
from „how‟ (solution) they think problem should be solved and get them to articulate „what‟ they
need to improve or change to solve the business need or problem.

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Manage change of business needs in our project

Another very important part of the role of business analysis on any project is to manage the
change of requirements right from the very start of any business or technology project. It doesn‟t
matter whether you are on a waterfall based project, or whether you are on a closely managed
agile project the one thing that you will be managing is change. Change happens to business
problems, change happens to requirements for a solution and change happens just because. All
projects consist of a myriad of people and where there are people, there is constant change. It is
well worth your while to plan for how you will manage change to your business scope, your
requirements and once you start implementing a solution, how change will be managed then. If
you don‟t manage the change factor on your project, you may be swallowed whole now!

Build solid relationships with all stakeholders

Leaving this crucial point to last in this section is definitely not because it is least important. It is
in fact because it is most important! If you don‟t have good relationships with the business
stakeholders, your project team stakeholders and the supporting technical team stakeholders
you will most likely fail. You will not be able to do any of the above three important tasks
effectively and business requirements efforts will not be as good if you neglect building strong
relationships with everyone involved. This is a key factor – know who all your stakeholders are,
engage with them often, build strong rapport with primary stakeholders and keep

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communicating. You will build trust this way and it will make your work easy, rewarding and best
of all you will deliver high quality output.

Requirements elicitation techniques

Requirements elicitation is one of the business analyst‟s biggest and most important tasks. The
objective is to elicit the needs and requirements from stakeholders. You will find that you use a
mix of the requirements elicitation techniques described in this book and the mix will be different
for every project. Always consider what suits the project best before you choose a technique to
use. Below you will find a summary of each of the main requirements elicitation techniques to
provide some context on what each is about and when you should use it.

Technique 1: Requirement interviews

This requirement elicitation technique is probably the most common way of eliciting
requirements from your stakeholders. When you perform a requirements interview keep these
points in mind:

Introduction to the interview or meeting

Once you introduced yourself to the interviewee you should first provide them with background
on the project, the project scope and timeframes. It is also often useful to tell them who
suggested you talk to them and why you would like to talk to them. If you know they may feel

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threatened by the project's objective, find something positive to say which can put them at ease.
Building rapport with your stakeholders here will stand you in good stead during the rest of the
project.

Format of the meeting or interview

Now that you have set the scene, you should also highlight the scope of your requirements
elicitation questions. Tell them for example that you have some questions about the overall
purpose of their department, then you would like to talk about their most important business
processes and finally if they could discuss their current system with you. You must also tell them
that you are more than happy to answer their questions as you go. If they sound comfortable
with your approach, they will feel more at ease with you which means you will get great results.

Questions

There is a skill in asking requirement gathering questions the right way. A few tips here would
include:

Ask open ended type of questions. Try to avoid asking 'yes' or 'no' type questions.

Example questions could start like:

"Could you please describe your daily tasks you perform to prepare the salaries for month end?"

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If this question is too high level for them you could try:
 "How do you know what each person's salary will be each month?",
 "Where do you find that information?",
 "How long does it take you to do everyone's salary pay slips?",
 "Why does it take THAT long, what do you have to do?"

Drill down to detail or pull up to higher level questions. In general, some people tend to talk
specifics and focuses on exceptions. Other people talk contextually and in general and hardly
ever delve into specifics. Use questions such as: "So in general terms, would you say the
payroll system is inadequate?" if they tend to focus on a specific small aspect of the system
which might not do what they need once a year! This type of question will 'force' them to pull out
of divergence. The opposite also happens where you might need someone to be more specific.
An example question could be: "Is it the report processing specifically that causes the
system to fail?" and so on.

Talk to the right stakeholder to get the right outcome.

Depending on the level of stakeholder you are talking to, you will find that different people talk
about a problem in different terms. If you need to understand the overall business process from
a high level, it is probably not a great idea to interview the person performing a small part of that
process.

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It is a good idea to prepare more questions and plan your requirement gathering interviews well.
Be prepared for each interview!

Technique 2: Requirement workshops

I personally love using workshops to elicit requirements but I would never walk into a
requirement gathering workshop without some pre-written requirements or concepts at a
minimum! Why? There are several reasons why I would plan my workshop carefully:
1. The more structure you can give a workshop the more focused your session will be. If
you don't have an agenda or any pre-developed materials to run the session with you will
find that there might be a lot of ideas and activity in the session but it will most likely be of
a poor quality.
2. Know who is coming to your workshop. This is important because everyone who is
coming will have their own ideas of what they want to get out of it. If you don't have a clue
who they are, how will you be able to plan for meeting their expectations or ensure their
objectives are met? In an ideal world, meet everyone before the requirement gathering
workshop for a short chat and understand their views of where they see the project
going!

You as the facilitator can control the flow of a workshop with so much less effort if you are
prepared and have planned the session than if you walk in blind. You will also appear more
professional, in control and your stakeholders will trust you.

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Benefits of a running a requirements workshop

People have to justify their views in front of a larger group of stakeholders. This often helps with
eliminating nonsense type requirements you might get if you only do one on one interviews.
Discussion of each topic refines and clarifies the requirement. Your requirement quality is
typically much higher at the end of a workshop than a one on one interview.

Workshops are a great vehicle to strengthen stakeholder 'buy in'. Involving people in a group set
up to discuss a topic of common interest does wonders for stakeholder support in the project.

Disadvantages of a running a requirements workshop

It takes more effort to plan, co-ordinate and prepare for.

You don't always manage to get all the right people in the room at the same time. (Idea here:
Schedule more workshops and rerun the same session multiple times!)
You may need more time for requirements gathering activities but the upside is that your
requirement quality is typically higher.

Technique 3: Research and observation

I put these two techniques together because they walk hand in hand a lot of the time. As a
business analyst, it is a great idea to always include some of this technique into any requirement
gathering activity.

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To job shadow or observe someone means that you need to go sit with them for a few hours or
days and observe how they perform their jobs. There is nothing like experiencing the practicality
of someone's day-to-day job. It becomes 'real' to you and you will translate and write your
requirements with the people doing the actual jobs in mind.

When you do choose to use 'observation' as a method of requirements elicitation, keep these
things in mind:

Build up a picture in your mind (or on paper) of the end-to-end process a person follows to
perform their average day in their job.
If they allow questions, be selective and careful not to delve into too much detail with your
questions or digress into a path of an exceptional circumstance.
People will focus on what doesn't work naturally, so you will get the picture fairly quickly once
you spent some time with someone performing a job function or executing a business
process.
Try and gather samples of forms, user training manuals and documented procedures that
they follow to perform the role.
Very important aspect of observation is to see what the system they are using is capable of,
watch them use it, which parts of the process is perform manually and if possible try and
understand the 'why' it is done that way.

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Always remember to thank people who spent time with you! Build rapport when you are with
them because you never know when you might need to get back to them with more questions or
observation requirements.

Documenting requirements

Requirements should always be documented. However, the method of documenting

requirements is changing depending on which type of project you are working on. Waterfall
based projects uses requirements documents (as it is described here) and agile (iterative)
projects use user stories to drive requirements. The requirements are still being fully
documented in both methodologies just using different methods!

The requirements document is the primary traditional artefact that a Business Analyst produces
on a project. It is in some companies being replaced with requirement management software
packages (or used in combination with a requirements management software package). Agile
projects do not produce requirements documents in the way it is described here, as they use
user stories to manage all the requirements on the project!

There are also still many organizations out there that use a requirements document as their
basis for capturing the business requirements and hence it is still relevant and very useful to
master the skill of creating high quality requirements documents.

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The perfect requirements document

The requirements document can never be perfect unfortunately. It is used in waterfall based
projects and therefore most requirements documents are out dated before someone actually
reads it! It is though a very valuable tool for documenting requirements in a lot of organizations.
It is also often pivotal to the project to both go to business case or progress into an analysis and
design phase, depending on their company methodology. This page will give you tips for how to
manage your requirements document in terms of feedback and approvals.

Who should review and approve the requirements document?

A good place to start when determining the readers (reviewers and approvers) of your project
requirements document will be your stakeholder list. Focus here on both the requirements
specific stakeholders but also some other high priority stakeholders for the project. Although it is
important to involve the correct people in providing feedback and approvals, you should really try
and keep this to a minimum number of people.

How do you gather feedback from reviewers?

A quick way is to do a walkthrough session. Send your requirements document out to all
reviewers a week before (if you have luxury of time) and schedule a couple of walkthrough
sessions. Ideally capture people‟s feedback there and then and update it online there and then!
This is ideal. If you need to send them an electronic copy, try and get them to use a

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requirements feedback form instead of making direct updates. Make it clear when you expect to
have all feedback in and if your stakeholders are tardy in responding (which they often are!) give
them a call and ask whether you could schedule time to walk them through or answer any
questions.

Getting that approval!

First talk to your project manager and determine which approvals are really critical for the project
to be able to progress. They normally have a sub set of key people that really need to approve
from a steering committee perspective. There are sometimes people on the approvals list that is
not that crucial to get approvals from or you could accept delegations. Once you know who the
key people are, rope your project manager in to help you chase approvals with more senior
people. I am of the strong belief that our requirements document is a project deliverable and not
technical our responsibility to chase! I am sure some Project Managers will disagree...you
decide.

Sometimes you need a few senior stakeholders‟ sign off too and they may not have been very
involved in the process of gathering and reviewing requirements during the documentation
phase. You deal with this situation by offering to provide them with a summary walkthrough of
the requirements document. You can present this summary in an executive style presentation
pack – talking their language. When you do the actual walk through session with them always
also have to complete requirements document handy. Ask whether they have any questions or

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concerns. If they can‟t commit to approval as an outcome of that walkthrough, ask them under
which conditions would they be ready to provide approval.

REQUIREMENTS TRACEABILITY

Why should you trace requirements?

There are a few reasons why it is necessary to trace requirements through the system
development life cycle regardless of what methodology you follow however the two key reasons
are:
Keeping track to of progress of requirements in the SDLC.
Helps you manage requirements change.

Let‟s look at each of these reasons a bit closer...

Keeping track of requirements during the SDLC

As a Business Analyst you are responsible for ensuring requirements are being delivered
as requested, it is important to use a requirements management tool which will link your
individual requirement to agreed scope items and the subsequent SDLC phases. This
way you will always know whether a requirement is on track to be successfully
implemented.

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 When you start having a lot of requirements, it becomes more difficult to manage and
track progress of each requirement, and this is when linking a requirement to the other
stages in the SDLC becomes really important. The business stakeholders love coming
back to the team and they want to know what happened to “their” requirement they
wanted. If you have all traced clearly, you can tell them exactly what is happening with
their requirement quite easily...

Helps you manage requirements change

The other reason for managing your requirements with a requirements management tool
for traceability is to manage and trace the changes made to requirements. For example,
you will find that as the SDLC progresses there will be some requirements that change.
This could be due to many reasons but often it is the business stakeholders‟ changing
their minds and sometimes it is a project decision based on more technical reasons. The
bottom line is, you need to keep track of what changes are made to each requirement.
You do this via your traceability management tool or a simple requirement management
matrix.

A few factors to consider when planning your requirements traceability approach:

Which tool will you use to manage your requirement traceability?

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 Sometimes people simply use a MS Excel traceability matrix template to capture the
tracking information. More sophisticated requirements management tools, such as
Calibre RM, could be used to manage this too.

Who will be responsible to manage the requirements traceability?

It needs a champion and central point. In some projects, you may be long gone (i.e. reassigned
to a different project) by the time requirements are being tested and therefore you are not there
to update the traceability matrix – You need to consider who can you hand this over too if you
are not around for the full SDLC.

When do you start the traceability process?

Depending on your method of capturing the traceability information, this could vary slightly. A
general accepted practice is for you to establish your traceability using the signed off business
requirements. Any changes post business requirement‟s sign off will be managed via the
traceability (and change request) process.

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PAT‟S STORY
Pat was spending about 2 hours a week with Cathy learning new skills and just asking her to
provide feedback on some of the work he has been doing. It has been great since he met Cathy
because he has learned some great practical skills and she is a wonderfully patient mentor.

One day Pat came up with this question to Cathy: “Cathy, I am still at a loss as to why you
sometimes speak to the project Manager in what at times sound like a complete different
language! What is that all about?”

Cathy then tells Pat that it is simply her way of communicating with the Project Manager in his
language using her knowledge of Project Management. She said to Pat not to worry, it isn‟t
strictly Business Analysis and therefore he can learn that one day when he has time.

Pat told Cathy: “I have time today! Please?”

To be continued…

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TASK
Find a buddy and create a mock project. Then practice these three techniques together using
your mock project topic. It is great fun to do and once you did it, you will find yourself using it on
every project.

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CHAPTER 4
Secrets of strong stakeholder relationships
Your inner personal leadership skills
Mastering interpersonal communication
Stakeholder management
Workshop facilitation skills

PAT‟S STORY
Pat has been a Business Analyst now for almost a year and he is currently working on the
biggest project of his short Business Analysis career thus far.

He has been working really hard and learning his tools and techniques really well but some days
he just feels like he is not getting through to people! Pat feels like he just hits a brick wall with
some of the stakeholders and now that he is on this bigger project he is really feeling it.

Pat went to Cathy recently (she has moved to another floor so they can‟t catch up as often
anymore) to ask her what else can he do to improve his outcomes. He explained to Cathy that
some people are hard to understand or they seem to simply always be a stick in the mud when it
comes to requirements sign off time!

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Cathy looked at Pat and said that it is time for Pat to move to the next level of his Business
Analysis career and work on his „soft skills‟. She explained that this is the invisible, intangible
skills that every Business Analyst must master. She told Pat that when he masters these skills
that he would have reached the pinnacle of being a truly successful Business Analyst.

Pat looked at her slightly confused and said: “Sure Cathy, I don‟t really know what you mean
exactly but I am all ears”

To be continued…

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The people around you determine your success

Truly extraordinary Business Analysts spend a lot of time developing their Business Analysis
soft skills. They work alongside extraordinary people who have a mindset for success. They
work on leadership skills, behavioural competencies and stakeholder relationship building to
name a few. Another term for behavioural competencies is really just simply „soft skills‟.

So what are soft skills?

Soft skills are simply the set of skills we use to communicate with people in a variety of different
types of situations. You may need to present a slide show to a group of people or you may need
to discuss a stakeholder‟s concerns around a particular set of requirements. In both these
cases, the soft skills are the skills you use to communicate effectively in both these scenarios.
There are many levels of soft skills and also an endless opportunity to keep on getting better at
it. The more you work on shaping and sharpening your soft skills, the more you will notice
fantastic results when you perform you role.

In order to really be the best you can be in both your soft skills and also your more technical
skills, you need to frame your mindset to achieve the successful results.

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Do you know how powerful your mindset is?

Most of us will say - yes I can imagine it is powerful but we will not truly understand or
consciously realize just how powerful it is. My suggestion to you is to stop for a second, think
about this, it is something which can have a huge impact and change your life for the better
easily...

So what is a mindset anyway?

Your mindset is the angle or view point you choose to see the world from. You will either be a
person who sees the world from a „reactive state‟ or a „pro-active state‟. In essence this means
that you will either blame the world for what it is doing to you or you will choose to learn from
what ever happened and take the best from it. Yes, it is a bit of glass half empty or glass half full
stuff.
Just hang in there and read these next few paragraphs, it is really worth “getting” it.

Above the line or below the line living

Below the line or being in a re-active state

To live below the line with your mindset means that you tend to focus on the past and past
events. You will often blame something that happened in the past for the way you feel towards
the future. This means you will react to anything that happens to you today in a way that blames

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the past. It also means that you do not take responsibility for your actions or feelings about
things that happen. You are blaming the outside world for the way you experience life. Lastly,
you don‟t take control of anything; you let the environment control you and your feelings.
An example of this could be:
„One of your colleague business analysts believes that the reason they are unhappy in their job
is because the people they work with are unfriendly and their deadlines are unachievable.‟

Above the line or being in a pro-active state

To live above the line with your mindset is to be proactive and live in the present moment. You
do not blame anything from the past for how you experience your life today. You are responsible
for your own actions and feelings and are in control of how you are feeling at any time. In
general, people who live above the line are much more light hearted and they deal with harder
things that happen much easier. They manage to see things for what they are and pro-actively
live their life from that perspective. When you live above the line you do not allow the
environment or outside world predict to you how you are going to react to a situation.

An example of this could be:

„This same colleague business analyst as above realizes that the reason that they can‟t meet
their deadlines is because they did not plan the requirements activity properly in their
requirements management plan. Instead of becoming unhappy and experiencing everyone as
unfriendly, this person will address the issue with a discussion with their project manager. This

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person takes full control and responsibility for the situation and do not react and blame other
things. Instead of being „unhappy‟ for days, the situation is rectified and the business analyst can
move on.‟

We are just human!

No one person can live above the line all the time, but you can learn to live above the line most
of the time. The beautiful thing of living above the line most of the time is that you will soon find it
more and more difficult to live (or allow yourself) to go below the line. Take this page seriously
and think about it - your daily job as a business analyst can even be more fulfilling if you start
living above the line much for often.

STAKEHOLDERS

Who are they and why do you need them?

We use our soft skills constantly when we interact with our stakeholders. It is therefore a great
idea to develop your soft skills just as often as you do your more Business Analysis specific
knowledge. You will understand by now that if you have really strong soft skills, the „hard skills‟
look after itself.
Stakeholders come in various shapes and sizes and they all have a slightly different role to play
on your project. As you would know they are sometimes quite hard to love, but trust me, it pays
in the long run.

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Follow these basic tips as a guideline when analysing your project allies and enemies!

Identify your stakeholders

Always make a list of all your stakeholders on your project. Anyone who is affected by the
project outcome or directly involved will be deemed a stakeholder. In some cases this could
mean people or companies outside your organization. Example stakeholders are the business
sponsor of your project, business managers and anyone who will use the system (if it is a
system you are implementing). Government bodies or suppliers can also be important
stakeholders.

Prioritize your stakeholders

It sounds a bit bad saying you should prioritize stakeholders but you need to understand which
stakeholders will have a high impact on your project‟s ability to succeed if they didn‟t feel „the
love‟ from the project. Other considerations when prioritizing is the number of stakeholders
involved in a particular stakeholder group. For example: If you were building a banking product
for consumers and you didn‟t include the call centre who will be servicing that product in your
project, you may end up with a large number of stakeholders not supporting the launch of the
new product because they have not been involved. This means the product may fail in the
market which will be disastrous to the project outcome!

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Determine your stakeholder‟s mood

Most of the time we have a good idea about whether a particular stakeholder or stakeholder
group is supporting the project or not. If we realize at this early stage that a stakeholder might be
difficult to manage and especially if they have high impact priority, we give them more attention!
Do not avoid them. Involve them early on and make a point of fully understanding the impact
your project will have on them, their role and their department. If you understand their point of
view fully you will be in a much stronger position to manage the relationship with them.

Engage with stakeholders

You will need to work out (at least in terms of requirements activities) how you will engage with
your stakeholders. It is imperative to your relationship with your stakeholders that you use
effective communication. You find out who you should approach to ensure you have the right
stakeholder representation within your requirements workshops and other requirement gathering
activities. Agree an engagement approach with your project manager prior to going out to see
stakeholders. A single uniform message coming from the project is critical for the „image‟ of the
project in the wider community of the business.

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Understand your stakeholders.

Now that you have a list of prioritized

stakeholders and you know how you will
A man is literally what he thinks
engage with them, you need to plan how to find
By James Allen
out what makes them tick! Why?
It is the simple concept of making people feel
as if they are „loved‟. You do this by demonstrating your soft skills in some way with your
understanding of their special interest on the project or their view on a certain topic. If you know
where they are coming from and you show that it matters, you will go a long way in gaining that
stakeholders buy-in with your requirements workshops, requirements document approvals or
simply just have some support in the business for your project.

Building great relationships

This soft skill is the one that will make your job seem easy and very enjoyable. Some people are
more natural „rapport builders‟ than others but the good news is that everyone can learn to be
great at this! As a business analyst you will communicate with a lot of stakeholders during your
career and this often involves getting their „buy in‟ into what you and your project team are trying
to achieve. So let‟s look at a great way you can ensure you get your stakeholder‟s buy in.

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The three times affirmation

This technique is a very easy rapport building technique and works a treat. What this one is all
about is simply you asking three consecutive questions which the stakeholder answers „yes‟ to.
You do this during your first few minutes of being with the stakeholder because it is all about you
setting up a warm engagement session with them.

So how do you do this in real life?

OK, let‟s say you are about to do a stakeholder requirements interview. You can do this when
you walk in the door (and some of it you do already anyway!). You ask the person whether they
are comfortable where they are sitting. You then ask them whether they are ready for the
interview session to start and finally you ask them whether it would be alright for you to ask
him/her some questions about their work practices. In all three these cases the stakeholder
would have answered „yes‟ and you would have a great start for great rapport! You will now see
you can ask other types of questions too, the bottom line being that you ask three different
questions consecutively where the answer is yes / good / well thanks every time.

Finally it is a fantastic tool to use when you know a stakeholder may be more resistant to
discuss certain things. By building rapport this way, you get them to agree with you essentially
three times before delving into the real topic for discussion. This will make them much more
likely to agree / accept your suggestions or requirements questions in a positive way.

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Benefits of using this simple technique

You are able to use this technique with an individual or with a group. This means it will work
really well in a requirements workshop set up too.

You can use this technique quite seamlessly when you are on a conference call too. You don‟t
need to see the person to build rapport.

You can use this technique in everyday conversation with anyone of your stakeholders. Next
step - go try this! This is just one of many great rapport building tips you can teach yourself in
minutes.

Understanding why stakeholders do the things they do

A few pages ago I talked about the fact that all of us see the world in a slightly different way. We
have noticed this during our lives in different scenarios of our lives and we tend to probably
notice people who have a more extreme variation from our own view of the world. In any case,
there is some very interesting information available which explains why we all see the world a bit
differently.

Before I tell you more, can you imagine a reason why it will be useful to know why your
stakeholder sees something in a different way? Or would it even just be useful to know that they
see it in a certain way? If you know someone sees things in a certain way then you can tune into
that and communicate with them in a way that makes most sense to them.

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THOUGHT

Do you think that this might make a difference in the results you get when talking to
someone by sharing and understanding their perspective?

Reasons why we are all seeing the world a bit differently

Each one of us has a variety of different „filter‟ we use to absorb all the bits of information, which
is streaming our way every millisecond of our lives. Just out of interest, there are 20 million bits
of information streaming towards you every millisecond and you need a way of filtering and
making sense of all the information!

As human beings we can merely absorb about 7 chunks of these millions of bits of information
and this means that we have to decide which bits of information are we seeing and which bits
are we discarding.

How do we filter all these bits?

We use a few different „filters‟, which includes our beliefs about life, our values, our 5 senses,
our memory and our experiences. Based on those „filters‟ we choose which „chunks‟ to see,
hear, feel, smell and taste. This means that if we don‟t know what something means based on
these filters we apply, we tend to not place it in our selected seven chunks and therefore simply
discard that information. Make sense?

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So each of us have a different set of beliefs, values, experiences and we also have different
preferred senses for absorbing information. Some people use their hearing much more acutely
than the next person and they respond really well to hearing information.

Someone else tends to „switch off‟ when there is a lot of information being spoken and they only
really respond well with pictures. They would probably not include a lot of noise or sounds into
their chunks of information they choose to accept in and therefore rather focus on more visual
pictures of things.

Your beliefs

Another key filter we all use is your belief system. We all have certain beliefs about everything.
This chapter will only touch on beliefs and what it means really briefly because it is a big topic,
which would be best suited for another day.

However, I will tell you in summary what a belief is. Beliefs are what people believe is true and
what is not true. For example: If a stakeholder is always sceptical and hard to deal with, it may
be that something happened once in the past which created a belief which he now believes is a
true fact in general terms. Perhaps this stakeholder had an experience of a similar project, which
cost him his promotion. He may now believe that every project is doomed and he will only loose
if he invests his time and effort in it. This might explain why he is so hard to deal with? If you can
uncover what a belief is someone carries with them, you have a chance in indirectly helping that

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person change that belief by demonstrating the contrary is true. This may assist you in
improving the relationship with this stakeholder. Another example of a belief could simply be that
you believe you have a great memory. That is a great belief to hang to!

Your experiences

Let‟s talk a bit more about how you use your experience to filter „chunks‟ of information. Have
you ever spoken to a stakeholder about some requirements and all they ever refer to is how they
do something in their job or in their company? They don‟t seem to see the bigger picture or
seem to care about anyone else‟s requirements? It is because they are choosing to only „filter in‟
the chunks of information which they have experience of. They are not including anyone else‟s
views or requirements because they simply don‟t have that experience and therefore the only
know what they have experience of. Does this make sense?

So coming back to why we all see the world a bit differently. It is a combination of our „filters‟ and
because we all have our own unique beliefs, values, preferred senses and experiences we will
always see the world differently to the next person.

Your senses

Tips to know which of the 5 senses people prefer!

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It is really only seeing, feeling, hearing and thinking that you need to start taking notice of. If
someone says: I see what you mean - guess where their preference lays? Or if someone tends
to say: “I hear you” or “That sounds great” you will know they have a strong sense of hearing.
Thinkers would often use the word “think”. They would say that “we need to think that through”
for example.

All of us use all our senses. We all relate to hearing, feeling and seeing but most of us have a
stronger preference for one of these main senses!

You will now see how it is possible for us as Business Analysts to develop a sense of what
someone else prefers or where they are coming from with their view points. This will help you
understand why someone is perhaps not responding to your documents very well (they don‟t like
reading lots of words, they prefer pictures) or why someone is always just referring to their
relevant requirement scenarios. This will assist you to adapt your communication style with
people and in this way achieve must stronger relationships and better results with your
requirements.

Workshop facilitation secrets

All workshop facilitators should keep all these points in mind when they do a workshop. It
applies to all types of workshops, not only requirement gathering workshops. Take these secrets
to heart and you will be surprised at your workshop attendees‟ positive responses.

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We all want to be loved

Building rapport even before the requirements workshop with each attendee will guarantee the
workshop has the best chance for success! Even before the requirement gathering workshop
takes place, make sure you as the facilitator meet or at least phone each attendee! Have a chat
to them about their understanding of what the session is all about, try and determine what is
important to them, gage how they feel about the content or simply about the fact that they are
expected to attend. You can even just simply call them to confirm they can make it and whether
they have any questions prior to the session. By doing this first very basic step of engaging with
each attendee individually you would have build good rapport that will take you a long way to
being received with an open engaging audience.

We all want to belong

An easy way to make someone feel they belong is to recognize each individual in front of
everyone else during the workshop facilitation session. We all love feeling special and especially
so if we are recognized for something positive in front of a larger group. As part of your pre-
workshop rapport building you would know what is important to each individual. Make sure you
use this during the session – the earlier in the session you can do it, the better. Ideas for doing
this would be to point out something good or constructive about each attendee‟s input they may
provide.

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We all want to learn

Stretch people by choosing a format for the requirements workshop, which will require them to
participate in some way. Use posters, small group tasks, report back to the group – even just let
them get out of their seats to do something. If people feel that they were contributing actively,
they will also feel they got value for their time spent! This will have a great impact on how they
feel about your requirements and it will build confidence in them that all requirements were
considered thoroughly.

It is not about you

You may be the one standing up and leading the workshop, but guess what – it is actually not
about you for anyone in the workshop. When you run the requirements gathering workshop
remember that it is about your attendees or requirement stakeholders. It is not about you, your
nerves or what you can get out of it. It is all about the value you can deliver for the people
attending the workshop. Focus on delivering as much value to the attendees by ensuring you
are very well prepared, the workshop is structured, you use different tools to stimulate
conversation and you keep on track with your objectives for the session.

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PAT‟S STORY...
Pat came into work feeling a bit sad this morning. He has been working hard on his personal
leadership skills and also the very key interpersonal communication skills that Cathy has
explained to him. He has seen great results and it has certainly paid off for him especially lately.
So he should really feel very proud and excited because today is the day that Pat is moving on
to a new job.

The reason Pat is feeling a bit sad is because he has formed such strong relationships in these
last months at the publishing company. He feels he must stay loyal to them because of all the
opportunities they gave him but at the same time he has fire of career passion burning which is
now leading him to a new place.

Not only did Pat get a new role as a Business Analyst in a large corporation but they have
offered to send him on formal training courses with a view to get certified as a Professional
Business Analyst. It is a fantastic opportunity and he can hardly believe he has come all this way
in just 2 years.

Cathy is on her way up to his floor to come and say her goodbye. It is going to be hard to say
goodbye to his first fantastic mentor but he is ready and open to meet his next mentor. His only
hope is that he or she is as wonderful and patient as Cathy.

The End.

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CHAPTER 5
The road to achieve Business Analysis Mastery
Business Analysis further education paths
Business Analysis professional certification routes

Which Business Analysis course is right for you?

Lots of people ask the question, which course is a good business analysis course to get started
with when learning business analysis?

This seems to be a common question among new business analysts or experienced business
analysts who haven‟t done a lot of formal training before. It is a very good question because it is
not obvious. There are many Business Analysis courses out in the market but only few courses
covers the overall foundation concepts of business analysis. If you are looking for a good solid
foundations course in business analysis, I would suggest you look at the course content before
signing up.

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The Foundation Business Analysis Course

The course content of a good Business Analysis foundation course should include the following
types of topics:
Problem Analysis - the Soft Systems Methodology is a foundation methodology for being
able to recognize a business need or problem, it guides you to break it into 'root cause'
statements and builds a structured problem to take to your next stage of your analysis.
Stakeholder Analysis - The course content must also cover stakeholder analysis
techniques. Ideally it will cover how to identify and manage your stakeholders.

Business basics will be included, such as learning how to formulate a mission statement, goals
and key performance indicators. This is a key factor for any business analyst to understand
because this sets context for any future analysis work you will do. Other business tools you will
learn about include PESTLE and SWOT Analysis.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

This forms the backbone of a foundation business analysis course and is the framework for
explaining not only the SDLC itself but how business analysis fits into this life cycle.

An overview of requirements elicitation and management should be covered too but the focus of
this course is not to delve into too many of the details around requirements elicitation and
management.

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Finally, a good foundation Business Analysis course will also touch on the main modelling
techniques. These include data modelling and process modelling primarily. Again, don‟t expect
to become an expert modeller at the end of this type of course.

So you may notice that a good foundation course in Business Analysis doesn't necessarily
include much about requirements or modelling techniques yet! It is important that this course
covers all the foundation concepts of Business Analysis and touch on every major topic that you
can expect to come across in your career as a Business Analyst.

The Requirements Engineering Course

Other good courses to start with include Requirements Engineering courses. These courses will
teach you about requirements elicitation techniques such as workshop facilitation, requirement
interviews and observation. It will teach you about writing good requirements, managing all your
requirements, requirements traceability and managing change to requirements. It is a great type
of course to attend either after you've done the foundation business analysis course or you can
do these two types of courses in close succession.

The Modelling courses - when do they become useful?

Once you have started doing more requirements related tasks on a project you will develop the
need to learn some core modelling techniques. You will start to find that your stakeholders will

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need to see workflow, use case type diagrams or data related diagrams when talking to you
about the finer details of their requirements. Having said this, as a Business Analyst you need to
keep in mind when presenting stakeholders with diagrams that they will most likely not want to
see highly technical diagrams either! You will learn with experience how to judge what level of
diagram your stakeholders feel comfortable with. Remember, although a picture says a
thousand words, there will be stakeholders who doesn‟t want to look at any formal Business
Analysis diagrams. You do however need to master the skills around modelling to ensure you
are able to document your requirements in a way that the more technical teams can understand
too.

Unified modelling language or UML

A good place to start these days for a Business Analysis modelling course topic is at the Unified
Modelling Language or more widely known as UML. It is important to note that this is not a
methodology but a unified language using different models. The great thing about UML is that
you can choose what you learn about first because it consists of a suite of different models with
clearly defined purposes. There are some very good business focused models to start with when
you learn UML such as use case diagrams and activity diagrams. In all my experience as a
Business Analyst those are probably the two most important UML diagrams from a business
analysis perspective to learn about when dealing with your non-technical audience. The fantastic
thing is that the more technically minded architects and developers all understand UML really

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well and can translate your diagrams into their technical models seamlessly. Other good UML
modelling to understand is the object or class model and also the sequence diagram.

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN)

BPMN based courses are good to do if you are planning to work on large business process
transformation programs or if you would like to specialize and become a Business Process
Analyst. This is the industry standard and an accepted business process methodology to follow.
Lots of companies use this standard and therefore it is great course to put on your resume.

Specialized Courses

You may be shouting - but what about agile? Yes, agile. That is a great specialization to
consider when you develop your skills as a Business Analyst. Agile courses are in high demand
and lots of people are very interested to develop their skills in this. That is absolutely fantastic
and should be pursued. Something to keep in mind though is that at the moment (and this might
change in future) there are two camps of projects: Those who are agile (or aspiring to be) and
those who are more traditionally waterfall based. If you like to work at highly interactive and
shorter bursts of activity on a project or program, go with agile! It essentially uses the SDLC but
manages the cycles in a highly controlled but really short and sharply fashion which allows very
good response times with business requirement change. People, who go onto true Agile

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projects, will not easily return to other more traditional ones. There is however still a huge
market for more traditional project which has lots of other highly rewarding attributes as well.

Soft skills courses

As business analysts we really must remember to include soft skill courses into our development
plans. We depend heavily on our relationship building skills to perform our jobs and the better
we can get our interpersonal communication skills, the more rewarding our outcome will be.
Consider doing a presentation skills course, a rapport building course and it is always a good
idea to include a leadership skills course too.

The truth about face to face training

You don‟t need to be in a classroom based training course to be able to do your required
Business Analysis training. Don‟t get me wrong, it is great if you have the money or your
company is willing to pay for a classroom based training course but these days there are many
alternative ways to also develop your Business Analysis knowledge.

So what else can you do for training then?

Well, I would like to start by saying that I have been lucky with classroom based Business
Analyst training. I had my university degree and multiple ISEB and other classroom based
courses to attend and covered the whole classroom based training thing from every possible

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angle. Now this enables me to tell you that it is not strictly necessary for you to attend a
classroom training to be able to be trained as a Business Analyst. It makes things easier
because you are presented with all the learning on a platter, but it not a requirement to be
successful when gaining your Business Analysis education.

Great, let‟s look at some alternatives to Business Analysis classroom based training:

Reading books and online articles

Some really good books are available on Business Analysis which can assist you in
getting to grips with Business Analysis or specific interest areas of Business Analysis.
Attend webinars and Business Analysis talks in your city.
If your city doesn‟t have talks you can attend regularly then there is always the online
webinars to attend.
Learn „on the job‟ from an experienced Business Analyst
This is a great practical way to learn new skills. Start by reviewing their documents and
then have a go yourself to either write the requirements or to draw the diagrams!
Ask questions in online forums
There are some really good BA forums out there. I recommend LinkedIn; they have a
very strong Business Analysis group community! Find a group that suits your needs,
and join them. Make sure you follow the group etiquette when you start a discussion!

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 Do online courses or buy “How to” DVD‟s on specific topics.
There are some good online courses starting up which is also a nice flexible way of
being trained. These courses gives you the flexibility to do them when you have time
(unless it is real time online course of course!) and you can be based anywhere in the
world! Again, as with everything, this may require some research before you invest
money in these courses.

Which Business Analysis certification is right for you?

There are a few business analysis

certifications in the industry now which have
developed during the last 10 years or so. It is “None of us can change our
great for Business Analysts because it is yesterdays, but all of us can
change our tomorrows”
developing our profession in the industry and
it‟s bringing it up to par with Project By Colin Powell

Management and other professional careers.

Every year that goes by, these certifications
are becoming more prominent and better known. It is great idea to get certified as a professional
Business Analyst. Let me explain the main certifications out there and give you a clue as to what
they are, where they come from and what they can mean to you in your market place. Just so
you know, I hold the CBAP® certification and also hold 5 ISEB Business Analysis certifications.
I was also part of the CCBA® exam review committee, so have some insights there too.

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ISEB Business Analysis Certifications

These certifications are developed by the educational stream of the British Computer
Society‟s (BCS) ISEB. They have a good variety of Business Analysis courses and you can roll
it up into a Diploma if you so choose or you simply do the individual certifications if this is what
you want. This Business Analysis certification is well known in the United Kingdom (UK) and
hence a good solid path to follow in terms of certifications if you live in the UK. A good idea is to
search your local country‟s job search websites and see whether they ask for ISEB certifications
and therefore know about the ISEB certifications in your industry. I do know that there are other
countries that also support the ISEB stream of certifications and therefore it is a good idea to do
your research locally to see whether your country is one of them. You should do this local check
for all the certifications described here because it‟s a good rule of thumb to get certified by a
professional body which is also recognized in your country.

Choose the ISEB Business Analysis certifications if:

You want to pick specific topics to learn about and get certified in that topic individually.
You are new to business analysis or haven‟t really ever had any formal Business
Analysis training before.
You are based in the UK or a country that recognizes the ISEB range of Business
Analysis certifications in the industry.

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 You are able to attend online or classroom based courses prior to sitting the certification
exams. Make sure you work through sample exam questions for the ISEB certification
exams.

Disadvantages to keep in mind

With the ISEB certifications the content is not based on one single source of business
analysis reference materials.
Most business analysts would need to attend an ISEB endorsed classroom based course
prior to attempting the exams. This potentially can become quite costly, especially if you
have to fund it yourself!

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THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS (IIBA®)

Entry Certificate in Business Analyst (ECBA™)

The IIBA® offers an entry level certificate for people who would like take that first step towards a
Business Analysis career but who may not have any practical Business Analysis experience.
This is a great place to start when embarking on your professional career path towards
becoming a professional Business Analyst.

Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®) designation

This certification requires a lot of pure business analysis experience and is heavily based on
practical hands-on experience in a wide variety of knowledge areas. It is like the “crème-de-la-
crème” of business analysis certifications internationally. It was the first Business Analysis
certification developed by the International Institute of Business Analysis, better known as the
IIBA®.

IIBA® Certified Competent Business Analyst (CCBA®) designation

They CCBA® is a mid level Business Analysis certification, called the Certified Competent
Business Analyst (CCBA®). Both of these IIBA certifications are based on knowledge coming
from the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK®). These certifications are being
compared to the PMI project management certifications in terms of level of professionalism and

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level of experience required. They are both very good certifications to pursue if you are based in
the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and some other predominantly English speaking
countries.

Choose the IIBA® ECBA™, CCBA® or CBAP® certifications if:

You want a dedicated international Business Analysis institute to endorse your certification. The
IIBA is becoming the most recognized Business Analysis institute in the world and many large
corporations are starting to integrate the BABOK® and Competency models into their
organizations.

You are a mid- to senior level business analyst (with a minimum of 2.5 years experience) and
want your career path to develop into a Professional Business Analyst with a recognized
qualification to boot!

You want to stand out and be recognized for your industry level Business Analysis knowledge
and experience across any company in the world! You want to ensure you have the competitive
advantage when it comes to job interviews!

The following few sections will discuss these certification requirements in more detail. Read
them, be aware of each certification‟s requirement and decide whether this is something you
would like to attempt or aspire to in future years if you don‟t already qualify.

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ISEB Business Analysis Certifications

As mentioned earlier in the discussion around the ISEB certifications, these certifications are
great because it is modular and can be tailored to your specific career path as a business
analyst. Having completed many of these certifications myself, I can confidently say that they
are very relevant and of a very high standard. They are certainly based on industry best practice
and practically applicable in your real project life!

Some specific ISEB certification types are listed below:

Foundation based certifications

These are great internationally recognized certifications to obtain before delving into anything
too specialized. It provides a great foundation for Business Analysts who are either just starting
their careers or experienced Business Analysts with limited formal qualifications.

IT Enabled Business Change

Business Analysis
Commercial Awareness

Entry Requirements: No specific entry requirements to sit the exams for foundation based
certifications. Although it is recommended to do an online, self help or classroom based course,
this is not mandatory.

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Practitioner based certifications

The ISEB practitioner based business analysis certifications are allowing you to choose which
areas you would like to steer your career path down.

Certificate in Benefits and Business Acceptance

Certificate in Business Analysis Practice
Certificate in Data Management Essentials
Certificate in Modelling Business Processes
Certificate in Requirements Engineering

Entry Requirements: No specific entry requirements to sit the exams for practitioner based
certifications. Although it is recommended to do an online, self help or classroom based course,
this is not mandatory.

Higher Qualification
If you wanted to obtain a higher formal Business Analysis qualification, this is the ultimate
outcome of all your ISEB certifications. It has minimum requirements of certifications to be
completed and entails an oral exam with a designated ISEB examiner. The oral exam is based
on your ability to apply your knowledge to your role as a Business Analyst in practice.

BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis

Entry Requirements: There are some entry requirements, which you should research before
embarking on this ISEB Business Analysis career path development journey.

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CHAPTER 6
Closing Refections

I trust you have enjoyed reading this book and that you have learned from my experiences.
Business Analysis is a fantastic career with great challenge and enormous scope for
professional development.
My closing remarks are simply:

Embrace the opportunities this career provides, take pride in your results

and always be focused on your end goal.

With Sincerity

Esta Lessing CBAP® (Director)

BUSINESS ANALYSIS EXCELLENCE PTY LTD

Email : esta@[Link]
Website : [Link]
Phone : + 61 3 86770891 (AEST 9am – 5pm)

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Canfield, Jack. The Success Principles. Harper Element 2005.
2. Blair, Lawrence. Rhythms of Vision: The Changing Patterns of Belief. Schocken Books
1976.
3. International Institute of Business Analysis. Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
(BABOK V3) 2017.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Esta Lessing is a Coach of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Certified Business

Analyst Professional (CBAP)® currently living in Melbourne, Australia.

Esta started her career out with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa where she
worked as a Technical Analyst on the trading floor 1997. She changed her career shortly after
that to take up her very first Business Analysis role with Arthur Andersen in 1998. She was
selected to work on a variety of EMEIA based projects early on in her career which allowed
significant European travel and she gained valuable global project experience.

After a few very long trips to London, Amsterdam and Germany she decided to move across
to England where she continued her role in the London based head office. Esta spent a total of
6 years in London working for both public sector and private sector companies as a Business
Analyst.

She not only studied with the London University during this time but completed 5 BCS ISEB
Business Analysis certifications. After all those long winters, she decided to migrate to
Melbourne Australia in 2006. Esta certified as a CBAP shortly after arriving in Melbourne.

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Business Analysis career coaching, mentoring and professional training and development
programs have been an integral part of her experience during the last 12 years. Esta remains in
Melbourne where she is now running her own Business Analysis Training company, Business
Analysis Excellence Pty Ltd, aspiring to assist thousands of Business Analysts worldwide with
her skills and experiences gained as a Business Analyst and Professional Career Specialist.

1. Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®)

2. [Link]. (Hon) Informatics
3. Information Systems Development and Management, London University
4. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner

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CAREER SUCCESS STORIES

Meet - Florence Dangotte

I studied Latin and ancient Greek in Belgium but I am doing a Business Analysis job in
Spain!

Florence, a lovely French-speaking Belgian lady, who is another driven and professional
Business Analyst crossed my path by enrolling in the Business Analysis Excellence Advanced
Training Program a couple of years ago.

Florence studied classical philology (Latin and ancient Greek) at University in Brussels. Although
nothing in her academic background suggested that she would work as a Business Analyst, she
became a recognized Business Analyst professional in the very demanding financial sector in
the European capital.

When she was close to 40, Florence moved to Spain, she followed her husband there and after
6 months, managed to find a position of Business Analyst in a totally different business sector in
a country, which at the time was experiencing a terrible recession.

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Florence enrolled for the BAE Advanced Training Program and whilst working on being able to
perform effectively using Spanish as the main language at her new job, she also studied online
in English and reached her goal to achieve her CBAP® in 2016!

Florence taught me that there is no obstacle you cannot overcome if you have the determination
to achieve your goal: academic background, age, language, economical crisis should never
stand in your way when believing in yourself, learning new competences and improving your
skills.

Thank you for sharing your unique journey to achieving Business Analysis success.

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Meet - Munzolli Tower

He achieved his CBAP® and gained a new Business Analyst role in a very
short timeframe!

Munzolli is one of those people who would move a mountain if he could. When I met Munzolli he
was working for a large US bank as a Financial Analyst with quite informal Business Analysis
experience. I remember he was telling me during our coaching session that he was working
beside another Business Analysts who just happened to be a CBAP® at the same location.
After a chance meeting with the BA he asked Munzolli what was his job? Munzolli told him his
official job is working with Muni Bond but that he was working on several projects that has been
really an amazing experience to work on. He came to find out that doing the project work was
more enjoyable than what he was originally hired to do. During the conversation with the
Business Analyst in his office that day, Munzolli was introduced to the IIBA® and what it would
take to be a certified professional Business Analyst. Munzolli decided that he really wanted to be
a formally qualified professional Business Analyst too!

As part of his strategy to achieve his goal of becoming a Certified Business Analyst
Professional, CBAP®, he decided to join the Business Analysis Excellence Advanced Training
Program. He went on to complete his training to an excellent standard, he also re-invented his
LinkedIn Profile, re-wrote his resume and started to look for roles as a “real” Business Analyst.

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In the background, Munzolli applied to sit the CBAP® exam and obtained his CBAP®
designation too!

Munzolli was very serious about his Business Analysis ambitions and is now working as a
Professional Business Analyst solving problems that people didn‟t even realize they had!

I am very proud to have worked with Munzolli and was totally inspired by his drive to achieve his
goals. Well done and you are certainly an example to others with the same goals. Thank you for
including us in your journey.

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Meet - Helen Anderson

Running by the seat of my pants, and loving it!!

Helen is one of my most recent students who embarked on the Beginner Business Analysis
Training Program whilst living in Darwin, Australia. She was playing the role of a subject matter
expert, technical data analyst and business analyst all at the same time within a university
environment where she was the only person in this role and had a lot of the challenges “solo”
Business Analysts often face…

However, Helen was incredibly focused on gaining the formal Business Analysis skills whilst
working to achieve formal IIBA® certifications. She completed the ECBA® Certificate exam
within a couple of weeks of enrolling in the Business Analysis Excellence program! She was also
the first of my students to do the new ECBA exam (in January 2017) and after waiting a few
weeks got her pass results. Helen didn't wait for any grass to grow under her feet, she went on
and applied to do the CBAP® certification exam in few short months. Helen was so determined
that she took the exam while she was in Spain on holiday! I received the following email from
Helen in my inbox:

“Hello from Madrid. I passed my CBAP exam! Thank you so much for your help and
encouragement. Why Madrid - I had booked 6 weeks holidays here, and I thought I'd save a trip
to Melbourne to do the exam.”

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When I received her email shortly after her success, I was both extremely impressed by her
focus and determination but certainly also feeling proud to have been part of her journey.

Helen is now employed by a prestigious Canberra consultancy firm as a Business Consultant

and she said that she would not have been able to get that role without her CBAP®
achievement. What a fantastic result after all her hard work!

Thanks Helen, you show us all what is possible with your determination and focus!

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Meet - Blessings Chakupa

Despite Many Odds: Moving my life, my career and my family around the
world and becoming a Business Analyst whilst doing it!

Blessings started his journey with me in 2014 whilst still living in Zimbabwe. Blessings enrolled
for the BAE Beginner Business Analysis Training Program as part of his strategy to not only
change his career from being a technical support analyst to becoming a Business Analyst but
also to migrate permanently to Australia (with a very young family in tow). He was still living in
Zimbabwe at the time of enrolment and worked online and via Skype with me –we had long calls
planning his training and best career transition strategies. For anyone who has ever immigrated
between countries, you would have a clear appreciation of the enormity of this endeavor.

Blessings completed the BAE Beginner Business Analysis Training Program with flying colors
whilst he went through the arduous application process to immigrate. He eventually landed in
Perth, Australia and spent a number of months trying to secure that first Business Analyst role.
Being brand new to Australia and not having any Australian work experience and being new to
being a qualified Business Analyst too, Blessings embarked on a very challenging path of
looking for his first Business Analysis job! It took incredible perseverance and he never
considered failure as an option.

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I spoke to Blessings a couple of times throughout this challenging time and suggested a few
career strategies. With being a new dad with a baby and wife waiting in Zimbabwe for him to get
a Business Analysis role, the pressure was certainly on. After a few months in Perth, Blessings
decided to look for work in the bigger Australian cities and managed to find his first Business
Analyst role ever in Melbourne! Not only was it a formal Business Analyst role, it was with a
large well-known organization in Australia. Wow, I was impressed and delighted to hear this
amazing news. He set the bar of what is possible to a new level for many Business Analysts out
there.

Since getting this job Blessings has flourished and not only completed more Business Analysis
Excellence training with us, but have started to look at more ways to progress in his Business
Analysis career. Currently Blessings is part of a well-established Business Analysis Practice in
Melbourne where he is making valuable contributions to developing and improving their internal
processes and approaches.

I am so proud of Blessings and what he has achieved! He has incredible perseverance and
reached very ambitious goals in the end! I feel very inspired and honored to be his mentor.

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