Questioning Skills - Requirements Elicitation

Dearest Readers,

Proper Questioning skills is the simple way to get more out of your Requirement Elicitation sessions.

Whenever you go ahead with the Requirements Questioning sessions, you need to make better use of yours and your stake holder's Time. A critical part of preparing for Requirements Elicitation is identifying a list of SMART questions. 

Would you be interested in learning a simple technique for improving your stakeholder meetings?

Without writing anything further, I am providing you the below Picture which would help you in easy understanding  so that you can use it in your future Requirements Gathering processes.

Picture: Questioning Skills for Requirements Elicitation

So did you get anything from the above picture :) ?

There are broad range of questions which can be asked in the requirements gathering sessions to understand the Business Requirements clearly. With the help of all these "What", "Why", "When", "How", "Where" and "Who" related questions you can collect clear requirements from your Stakeholders.

Note: The Questions listed in each of the Categories in the above image are just sample Questions. You can frame your own questions relevant to your Project.

One more tips for you guys: While eliciting and documenting the requirements, always make sure that all the Requirements follow the SMART Rule. Refer the below picture for more details.

Picture: SMART Rules for Requirements

Though this is one of the basic posts related to Business Analysis Concepts, I hope it would help you all in your future work. 

As We Work...We Learn...

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Posted in: Requirements Gathering

BA Interview Preparation Watch-list

Dearest Readers,

Do you have any interviews ahead?

Hope you are preparing well for it. A Business Analyst interview will be very professionally structured. You will have to think laterally when encountering all Business Analyst interview Questions. For that its always advised that you prepare well ahead of any BA Interview.

Per my experience, I have divided the entire interview preparation Process into different stages and a list of checklists for each stage. Please check the below image for the same.

BA Interview Preparation Watch-list

Hope the above checklists will help you out in your interview preparation. Let me know your feedback.

All the best for your interviews !!!

As We Work...We Learn...

P.S.: Take along copies of your Resume while going :) ...

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Posted in: Center of Excellence

Who is a Business Analyst?

Dearest Readers,

May be all of you start laughing by seeing the Title of this Blog-Post, i.e. "Who is a Business Analyst?". At this stage, why this post? As all of us know more or less know about Business Analysis and what a Business Analyst means.

My objective of writing this Blog-Post is to just outline the highlighted activities which a BA performs from the start of Project to end. I tried to depict the basics of a Business Analyst Profile in the below picture, As a Picture speaks thousand words :)

A Business Analyst's Profile

I have come across many of friends who ask me "What is your role in the Company?", even though I answer, they do not get exactly what I do. Even people who wants to be a Business Analyst or switch from their current career to Business Analysis can get a high-level idea of the Business Analyst Role through this post.

Just to focus on BA Profile and to make it simple, I have not included other Stakeholders such as Project Manager, Developer, Architect, etc. in the above Picture. Hope this will give you the basic overview of a BA.

In my other Blog Post I had covered detailed Skill Set required by a BA. Below is the URL:

http://www.businessanalysis.in/2011/03/make-difference-with-your-ba-skill-set.html

Added on 25 May 2013: As requested, adding the below Acronyms used in the above Picture:

• BRD: Business Requirements Document
• URD: User Requirements Document
• SRS: Software Requirements Specification
• FSD: Functional Specification Specification
• SSD: System Specification Document
• RTM: Requirements Traceability Matrix

As We Work...We Learn...



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Posted in: A Glimpse