This guide is focused on empowering better performance in company analysts and aspiring business analyst professionals. In this aspect, I thought understanding the fundamentals of project phases may be a useful read. Basically I'm hoping to touch upon the many different areas of a technology project that accomplishes a particular small business outcome where business analysts play a vital function.

Why choose technology projects for business analyst debate?

Our world today is regulated by technology. From the time we wake in the morning to the time we hit the sofa in the night we are in a way dominated by tech. A business analyst role in a way is much better appreciated if there is technology demanded. As mentioned previously in my articles, anyplace in this world, that unites people, process and technology would result in a issue.

If there is a business analyst, who is working exclusively on procedure with no impact to technology or with no facet of technology involved, I would like to meet her or him. So coming to our subject - let us attempt to understand from a business analyst and consulting stand stage in a simple way the different phases of a practical business endeavor that involves engineering.

Note - Please note that I'm refraining from becoming into Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or Agile. I would like to maintain the context of this article short and not specific to a particular project management style though what I really do say would align to most methodologies.

Is a company analyst actively involved in the project sub phases?
Business project that involves technology are often divided into two large stages in the consulting world. The first phase is called Scoping and the second phase is known as Delivery. These two stages contain multiple sub stages in which a company analyst plays a vital function. We'll look at them in detail.

The sub phases of a the Scoping stage of a consulting job are often split into Scope Definition, Analysis and Functional Design.

The sub stages of a Delivery campaign in a consulting mission includes Technical Design, Construction / Build, Test phase which includes System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing.

Scope definition - From my own experience, I have noted than frequently the scope definition of the job is prior to a company analyst being assigned to the project. Sometimes, the company analyst might get lucky and stand to be included in the scope definition of the undertaking. But usually in this stage a project / functional manager, the program manager and subject matter specialists play a major part. Sometimes, this stage is also known as blue printing.

In certain cases the scope phase comprise the requirements gathering process while in some cases, it has pushed into the analysis phase of the job.

Analysis phase - Again although the expression Analysis strictly refers to assessing the business requirements gathered, more often the requirements gathering process start in this phase. The analysis phase of the project actively includes the company analyst interfacing with all the stakeholder and gathering the business requirements and analyzing the prerequisites to better understand which demands fit into the scope region defined and that doesn't.

It is a significant challenge that in some instances business requirements often exceed the given project scope and might need to be identified with the business analyst and De-scoped. To the contrary in some instances, there is scope creeps and lots of the business requirements are overlooked being documented. The analysis phase is certainly an area where a business analyst plays a critical role.

Functional Design - In the consulting world, the design phase is split into functional design and technical design. The function design is the stage where design components concerning data flows, demands mapping to information flows, requirement functions that may be met through the plan etc will be documented.

Technical Design - Technical design as its name suggests is the design document that offers the technologies that defines the systems that will especially be used to meet the functional business requirements documented by the business analyst. While the functional design document details the functions that would be met as a part of the design implementation, the technical design sticks on to the technology used, type of server to be used (Windows vs Linux), the kind of database to used etc..

A good deal of times in associations these two files are united together to house a single design document. The usefulness of this comprehensive design document is completely determined by the methodology followed by the organization. In some cases, in which the business analyst is more practical some pieces of the comprehensive design document becomes a challenge to comprehend.

A business analyst in the design stage plays the function of a solution specialist. The company analyst is required to validate the design record and the alternative suggested meets the project objectives and the particular business requirements which were captured.

Build / Construction - While at a rigorous sense a practical business analyst function would be limited to requirements planning, requirements gathering and documentation before hand off to the IT teams, associations today take a holistic view of the company analyst function. A business analyst might not play a very active role in the construction phase of the project. That certainly does not follow that a company analyst goes on to another job at this point or includes a relaxing time. While the IT team works on the construction phase of the job, a company analyst might be asked to focus on supporting the Testing preparation together with the job manager.

Aside from possibly encouraging change management deliverables, a company analyst might be asked to help drive reviewing the evaluation strategy, test plans, test scenarios, scripts and cases.

The CBAP handbook specifically calls out that creating design documents, test strategy, test strategies or executing test cases isn't considered as relevant work experience for CBAP certificate. I'm sure most of us would agree that irrespective of our preferences and what the manual states, for many practical reasons, a business analyst usually ends up taking on those deliverables.

In my opinion getting our hands dirty about those deliverables is quite great because you'd no longer be restricting yourself to the role of a business analyst but scaling up for a management advisor.

Test Phase - I hate to break it to you, but testing is further split into sub components.

A business analyst would be aware that the systems integration test is much more often the key to solving the majority of the problems and issues in a tech project. While in the build stage, the IT staff would make sure that they perform chosen core testing on what they built, it often becomes the use of a business analyst to support integration testing. The systems integration testing involves passing data through origin and down flow systems to frequently test the interface / information flow between the systems through predefined test cases/ scenario having a particular test result.

The User Acceptance Test (UAT) succeeds the systems integration evaluation. In this stage, the testing is done from an end-user / customer standpoint. It's anticipated that the testing out of systems integration throws a bit of problems and bugs that will have to be solved prior to entering UAT. Throughout UAT, the end-user or customer is provided the flexibility to help choose the business scenarios they'd like tested. The anticipated results (which should fit to the anticipation of the consumer ) is often shared with the consumer to enable enhance their confidence and sign off on the testing period.

Testing is always done in a server environment out of the real time manufacturing environment. Consequently, if you are in a meeting and hear people talking about analyzing surroundings, do not be baffled. It's merely a server environment which often reproduces the production environment but allows you to make mistakes and fix them.

Implementation / Go Live - The execution stage of the project is when the codes and alternative tried and tested through the other stages of the job are transferred to the production environment. After the codes are transferred into manufacturing and the systems are ready to Go Live, together with the flip of a switch the fluctuations are posted into production and are live to be reflected.

As you might have noticed, the part of a company analyst is much more than frequently exemplified in the beginning phases of this project. During the beginning stages of the project, there's a higher need for the business analyst to interact with the stake holders, gather requirements, document them, examine requirements etc.. Thus a BA becomes the bridge between the company stakeholders and the IT teams which makes the role extremely important. At the exact same time, it is also critical for a BA's to comprehend the impact of their function and their work on different areas of the project.