What does a business analyst do?
A business analyst discovers needs, analyzes data and processes, defines requirements, and partners with delivery teams to build solutions that achieve measurable business outcomes.
What are the key skills to assess while looking for a business analyst?
- Discovery & Facilitation: Interviews, workshops, journey mapping, root-cause analysis.
- Requirements & Documentation: User stories, acceptance criteria, use cases, PRDs, BPMN.
- Data Literacy: SQL/basic queries, dashboards, experimentation, ROI modeling.
- Prioritization: Value vs. effort, dependencies, risk trade-offs.
- Stakeholder Management: Alignment, expectation setting, conflict resolution.
- Change Control & UAT: Scope management, test planning, success criteria tracking.
- Communication: Clear, concise writing; visuals and flows; executive summaries.
What are the KPIs for a business analyst?
- Requirements Stability % (changes after sign-off)
- Rework/Defect Leakage due to Requirements
- Cycle Time to Spec/PRD and Lead Time to Decision
- Backlog Health (well-defined, prioritized items %)
- Adoption/Utilization Rate of delivered features or processes
- Business Value Realized vs. Business Case (ROI, revenue, cost savings)
- UAT Pass Rate and Post-Go-Live Incident Rate
- Stakeholder Satisfaction/CSAT for BA deliverables
- Experiment Win Rate or Forecast vs. Actual Impact
- On-Time Delivery % for initiatives the BA supports
