Business Analyst Responsibilities in an IT Company

All business and IT collaboration and communication is under the purview of business analysts. In plain English, a business analyst serves as a liaison between a company's business and technical teams. The project's stakeholders, who make up the business team, present their business requirements during what the technical team refers to as "requirements gathering." But frequently, the stakeholders are conflicted, unsure of what they want, or just confused. Therefore, the phrase "Requirements Gathering" is overused. This is where a business analyst enters the picture, and it should be called "Requirements Clarification." A clear, straightforward, and unambiguous set of requirements that technical people can work on are provided by the BA after clearing out all the confusion.

A business analyst (BA) solves business problems by designing information systems either by implementing a new business process or by improvising or reducing the operating costs of the existing business processes. For this, the BA needs to have very strong business skills and an understanding of the business domain. Business Analysts can also be referred to as “Organizational Analysts” as they are also involved in identifying problems, needs, and opportunities for improvement at all levels in an organization.

We'll understand the different roles of business analysts in software project development and the entire IT industry in general.  

Business Analyst Role in Software Project Development

1. Initiating the Software Project

This phase involves assembling project requirements and indicating the problems to be solved. The BA brings together the stakeholders, collects all the information, and prepares a Scope Document, ultimately deciding whether to fund the project.

2. Interpreting the business needs

This phase involves working with the stakeholders and analyzing their requirements. So the BA ensures that the stakeholders have unanimously agreed on what to implement and that the development team has everything they need to design and implement the solution.

3. Translating technical issues

The BA needs to break down the technical and architectural complexities for the stakeholders as in to explain to them what developers are doing or why they need to do it. Also, BA needs to convey schedules & estimates of the project to the stakeholders.

4. Political Guide

As BAs have good connections, they can help the development teams overcome all the political minefields. Also, BAs can help the development teams engage the right people for their project needs.

5. Implementation of the Software Project

BA’s are not directly involved in the implementation phase. However, if some issues come up while implementation, then BA’s need to extend their support, which involves conducting a meeting to address the newly discovered requirements and communicating them with the development team, and providing a heads-up about it to the stakeholders. BAs can also provide their support for training, documentation, and user acceptance testing.

6. Representing Project Stakeholders throughout the process

As the project development teams do not have direct access to the stakeholders, BA’s can provide them with domain information, requirements, and business priorities. In turn, they will also have to communicate with the stakeholders to verify that information and decisions.

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