Enrich Your Business Analysis Expertise
Third of five articles drawn from “Turbocharge your Skills and Career with Business Analysis,” presented at Dreamforce 2022.
A Diverse Skillset
Business analysis encompasses a broad range of expertise, including:
Professional communication with a wide range of stakeholders
Learning an organization’s domains (specialties) and their processes
Analyzing business needs and curating them into well-understood requirements
Collaboration between business stakeholders and the development team
Administrators, architects, and aspiring business analysts should determine the skills they need to develop to succeed in a business analyst role. The following sections outline four skills categories.
Communication Skills
Successful business analysis requires clear communication and trusted relationships. Business analysts clarify business needs during discovery. They develop trust by respecting and appreciating stakeholders’ time, energy, and attention.
Business analysts elicit business needs primarily through stakeholder interviews and discovery workshops. For example, they interview domain experts to learn about a domain and its processes. Discovery workshops bring stakeholders together to coordinate what they need from a solution.
Whether business analysts elicit requirements from interviews or workshops, they should
acknowledge each business need as an initial confirmation. After curating business needs into requirements, they should present their understanding to the business stakeholders, eliciting feedback to reinforce clarity and trust.
Domain Skills
Business analysts learn about an organization’s domains to understand terminology, goals, and processes. Business analysts should create a glossary of terms and concepts while learning a domain. Then, stakeholders can agree on definitions.
Analysts can show relationships between domain terms with a concept map. The map below illustrates .domain concepts and their relationship with the business analyst and each other.
A concept map works well in a discovery session by visualizing concept relationships instead of showing a list of words and definitions.
Analysis Skills
When interviewing stakeholders or leading discovery meetings, business analysts often get pain points, wish lists, and feature requests. If they’re lucky, they’ll get some well-defined business needs. It’s up to business analysts to curate this information into requirements.
Analyzing needs and curating them into requirements forms the core of business analysis. These skills also include eliciting process steps and reflecting them back with a process map. This process diagram shows high-level analysis steps:
Each box shows an activity connected to the next one by an arrow labeled with what passes between them. Any activity can drill down to another process diagram with more detailed steps. The hierarchy of diagrams forms a process map.
Once the business analyst has verified the process map with the stakeholders and understands the requirements, they’re ready to write user stories for the development team.
Collaboration Skills
Often, business analysis demands collaboration between business stakeholders and the development team. A business analyst acts as a diplomat between the two, on a mission to get the solution right the first time. They’re not just a translator between the stakeholders and developers; they’re an active participant, drawing out and meeting expectations.
For example, developers build a prototype to give the stakeholders a preview of how a solution will work. The stakeholders try the prototype and provide the business analyst feedback in their language, which they pass to the developers in technical terms.
In another case, user acceptance testing entails a lot of stakeholder collaboration, as users verify that a solution meets their requirements. Business analysts get feedback from stakeholders that they pass back to the developers, driving the test to completion.
Even with all this developer interaction, business analysts stay oriented to benefits when collaborating with business stakeholders.
Discovering Your Skill Gaps
Business analysis can feel scary if you doubt your expertise. For example, you may enjoy one-on-one interviews with stakeholders but shy away from presentations.
Professional introspection enables you to discover the skills you need to develop to gain confidence in your business analysis talent. If you don’t know introspection, take a good hard look at yourself. For example, you can ask these questions:
What business analyst skills do I want to improve?
What abilities seem daunting to me?
What feedback have I gotten from trusted colleagues or performance reviews?
Analyze your business analysis talent gaps - the spaces between your current skills and where you want them to be.
Filling Your Skill Gaps
Once you’ve identified your gaps, see if you know anyone who will mentor you to develop those skills. For example, if you struggle with presenting to stakeholders, and know someone who gives excellent presentations, see if they will offer you some pointers to develop your presentation skills.
If you have skill gaps where you don’t have access to an expert or training, you can find information online to guide you through your development process. The tables below list common business analysis skills linked to articles that can help you develop those aptitudes.
Communication Skills and Resources
| Skill | Resource |
|---|---|
| Business analyst communication skills | 10 Ways to Hone Your Communication Skills as a Business Analyst |
| Stakeholder interviews | Discovering Success with Stakeholders |
| Stakeholder engagement | 10 Tips to Engage Stakeholders |
| Discovery workshop management | Super Effective Meetings: 5 Quick and Easy Tips |
| Presentations to confirm understanding | Public Speaking Skills |
| Managing your introversion to succeed | How to Excel as an Introverted Business Analyst |
| Dealing with resistant stakeholders | Dealing with Resistant Stakeholders |
Domain Skills and Resources
| Skill | Resource |
|---|---|
| Learning a new business domain | How to Learn About a New Business Domain |
| Domain-driven business analysis | Domain-Driven Business Analysis |
| Learning a domain’s terminology | Why Terminology is Important |
| Creating a glossary of terms | The Glossary: A Gateway to Clear Requirements and Communication |
| Concept mapping | Showing Customer Concepts |
| Managing organization complexity with domains | Managing Business Complexity with Domains |
Analysis Skills and Resources
| Skill | Resource |
|---|---|
| Essential business analyst skills | Essential Business Analyst Skills |
| Capturing business needs | Elicitation Techniques Used By Business Analysts |
| Business process analysis | How to Analyze a Business Process |
| Process mapping | Business Process Mapping |
| Writing user stories | User Story Creation |
| Validating the solution | Building the Solution Right |
Collaboration Skills and Resources
| Skill | Resources |
|---|---|
| Diplomacy between business and technical stakeholders | Business Analysts’ Diplomatic Mission |
| Providing business context to development team | Your Technical Team Needs Business Context Too |
| IT-business collaboration | Making it Work Between Business and IT |
| Collaborating with difficult developers | How to Handle Push Back from Your Tech Team |
| Prototype development and evaluation | Refining Design with Prototypes |
| User acceptance testing | User Acceptance Testing |
Enriching Expertise
Business analysis skills not only help admins and architects but any position needing:
Clear communication with a broad range of stakeholders
Quick learning of new subjects
Asking questions to determine what an organization needs
Working as an active liaison between business and technical stakeholders
You can develop business analysis expertise by finding and filling skills gaps. First, determine the talent needed to become more effective in your position. Then develop it with a mentor, colleague, or training. The tables above list articles for specific skills. For more information, see Business Analysis Knowledge for Salesforce Experts.
Developing business analysis talent with a curious, benefits-oriented mindset turbocharges professional confidence.