Experienced Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers

31. How would you make most sense out of the Business requirements to the developers?
 The following steps will detail out the procedural way of professionally dealing with this:? Identify the scope of the project.? Take out the key features expected by the client. Reason out the most critical aspects of the system that has to be built.? Depict the business use oriented UML diagram and derive it further to the specificity of what is needed from the technology side of development.? Detail out the use cases that will make the input from client clear to the developers. Refinement should always be done with peer discussions.? Activity, work-flow and data-flow diagrams are of immense importance in detailing out the requirement. Identifying the best modeling technique and representation of the deciphered Client input will finally go through to the Development team across series of meetings

32. What are the most important software tools that BA should be accessing to coordinate the team through the project?
 The most important tools are meant for diagrammatically representing the project through its various phases. In this sense, the most important software tools are:? MS-Word : Requirement gathering and discussions will customers will mostly be through Word documents, be it the marketing or business document.? MS-Visio: This will be one of the most important tool that every BA has to have knowledge about. This will help you coordinate the project at every level of development.? IBM-Rational Suite: This is a good tool to get good representations of requirements gathering and other functional diagrams.? Other Testing Tools: Most of the time it is better to get involved in the QA tests as a Business Analyst. So a good knowledge about the QTP, Load Runner etc will be of use. Other than these, MS SharePoint, SQL databases will also find good use in the career of the Business Analyst.

33. How does a Business Analyst play an important role in the initial stages of the project?
 To do it right the first time, has always been the motto for projects that are running under a tight schedule. To find out the right requirement thus is important. Translating the requirements from client to the developers is essential for the project to kick off on the right note. If this stage goes off-track, then you can be jeopardising the future of the entire project.

34. What are the different documents that can come across to the Business Analyst?
 The documents that are responsible to be completed as a Business Analyst may include:? Study of Feasibility.? Scope & Prospect of Project.? Business Requirements Document.? Functional Requirements document including UML, Activity and dataflow diagrams.? Fact sheet for constraints from technical side (as prescribed from client).? Testing phase documents including QA Test requirements, plan and types of tests that have to be considered before delivery.

35. What do you offer to show as your experience that will come into relevance to thisorganization?
 Primary experience/skill of mine that would come into play in this organization is my domain knowledge. This organization deals with the same kind of projects that I have had good exposure to. The educational qualification of mine is sure to show you the different aspects of business that I have gotten to know right from the college. So the experience over the past few years have just honed my skills better to be a Business Analyst.

36. How should the requirements be to proceed with the project in the best way? What if the client does not give you the technical side of the requirement?
 The requirements that we obtain from client have to be clear, descriptive at the necessary places. The requirements should be verified to be consistent. The Business Analyst has to understand it clearly to proceed on with feasibility checks. The client may not give the technical details. But the main thing is to gather the business oriented expectations clearly. We can decipher the technical requirements by analyzing the clear business requirements.

37. What are the things that have to be considered while writing a Business document?
  Never should we bring out the small glitches on the top. We have to see through the eyes of the business persons and should always try to instill confidence in them, as much as we have on ourselves. As what they expect is the outer level of details, we should bring out the expectation, assumptions and other such criteria into picture clearly.

38. How can a BA be of assistance to the marketing team?
 The BA has a good share of both business knowledge and technical knowledge pertaining to a specific domain. So when it comes to marketing a product or procuring a project, he can give his views and prospect oriented perspective in a more acceptable manner to the customers. This makes him a good advantageous role in marketing department of an organization.

39. BA is the bridge between the IT and Non-IT persons when it comes a software system. Does it mean that decision making responsibility can be rested his hand entirely?
  No, that is not the advisable case. Every BA has to take the decision regarding business/technical aspects of a project only after discussions and meetings with the appropriate members of the team. In this way meetings and team discussion come off as the most important aspects of BA’s decision making capabilities.

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Freshers Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers pdf

21. What is the main quality of a good requirement?
The requirement should be good, clear, understandable, and consistent and should be easily verifiable.

22. Where did u use rational rose & requisite pro ?
When we created different modules of requirements for different functions, and finally collected all together and made a single requirement document, we used requisite pro to do this.

23. What do understand by version control & configuration management ?
Basically version control is a part of configuration management. Mainly it handles when the previous document changes. Where as configuration management handles the individual component.

24. What are different software methodologies.?
SDLC, RUP, SEI-CMM, Six sigma, SWOT, Cost benefit analysis, Risk analysis, Gap analysis.

25. What is UAT ?
User acceptance testing.
If the UAT fails, BA did not understand the requirements properly.

26. What do u mean by Data mapping ?
It is the mapping of data from source system to a destination system.

27. What are the qualities you have that makes you suitable for the position of Business Analyst?
 As a Business Analyst, one always have to have the top notch communication skills. A perfect mix of technical knowledge and business market knowledge is highly essential. I consider myself a very quick learner and with a good ability to communicate with the development teams and the customers, I think I can certainly make a good difference to the organization on the whole.  Ability to deal with conformance tests and identify the prominent parts of the use cases and track them through time will make me more than efficient in the overall work that is involved

28. How do you see your future as a Business Analyst?
 I have always liked the career of Business Analyst not just because of the management perspective but also because of the responsibilities that would be held in order to make the entire project successful one.. Growing with the organizations success as a more prominent and effective analyst has always been in my mind right through. I would also like to take up the BA certifications like the PRINCE 2 in the near future. This would help me grow in a field that I like most, in a more professional way

29. What do you think is an important characteristic that a Business Analyst should have to tide over tough times of project?
 The first and foremost character that a Business Analyst has to show is confidence. Without that aspect, the interactions with customers and clients can never be positive. Especially during the rough times of project when there are development related issues that are being handled, the customer has to be given the right positive picture from the business/development perspective. This has to be done and handled by the Business Analyst. Not just self-confidence but the confidence that he places on the other teammates come into prominence.

30. How can you identify yourself with this organization?
 The personal principles and motives in the business domain of mine coincide with the goals of this organization. There can be no better thing than to have like-minded people working on projects. The organization tries to promote itself with projects in the same domain that I have been interested to deal with right through my career. So it is more of the connection in terms of business thinking that makes me more identifiable as myself within this organization. I would like to be a part of it!

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Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers for freshers pdf free download

11. Mention the difference between business process improvement and business process reengineering?
Business process improvement implies changing a step sub step or any part of the process i.e. process is not completely changed In BPR we actually study the business and find out what is the best way I can carry out the process and change the whole way the process runs(business process redesign)

12.   How do you resolve issues?
I would rather focus on issues and the facts related. Origin of issue, severity of the issue, implications and possible solutions to solve the issue. Try not to focus on the person who brought up the issue.
Another important part is how to avoid similar issues in future.

13. How is business plan evaluated?
A business plan is evaluated by checking the contents of the plan such as if the plan have based on the resource planning and envisioning phase of the project.

14. What are the problems Business Analyst could face during gathering Business requirements 
The availability of the people (e.g. managers, supervisors and the end users) the BA wants to talk with for gathering business requirements.  These people have regular daily works to do and their time to spend in the gathering sometimes hard to schedule and for this reason gathering business requirements is delay.

15. What can a Business Analyst do differently than project or program manager (Design Architect) with respect to successfully getting the project implementation done?
Business Analyst role is not entirely different than Project manager role but Project Manager is bigger role than business Analyst.
Project manager is responsible for all the deliverables like
- schedules/ timelines
- resources management
- risk management
- Daily/weekly status report to project stack holders etc.
where as business analyst sometimes report to project manager or may report to business manager.
Business Analyst deals with business users to gather requirements prepare RD, FD and coordinate with development team for development and then do the testing involve with users in testing get the sign off and move component to live

16. Where would you document Functional and Non Functional Requirements (i.e. deliverable)?
Functional Requirements are documented in the SRS document / Use Case Document. Non Functional requirements are listed in the SRS document.

17. What would you do if the client says that you and the other analysts cannot directly talk to the users?
If this happens then explain the purpose of your talk (e.g. capture requirements) and why its important to talk to users directly (e.g. the quality of requirements will be better if they comes directly from the users mouth). Explain them that it will be a high risk to the project if analyst can't talk to the users directly. Client can give access to indirect (surrogate) users but explain that the quality of requirements will be not good. Hopefully your client will agree by now otherwise flag it as a higher risk in Business Requirement Document and highlight during your meeting with your PM and Project Sponsors. Now, it’s your PM or project sponsors duty to provide you access to those direct users. If they can't than you are safe anyways.

18. Version control and configuration management are terms used widely in the business industry, write short notes about the terms.
By definition, version control is essentially a subset of configuration management. It is usually concerned with the handling changes arising in previous documents as opposed to configuration management which essentially handles the individual components.

19. State the different software methodologies.
The term software methodology, software development methodology and software process mean almost the same thing in computer software or system development, i.e. the activities carried out by computer system engineers or computer software engineers in an attempt to procure particular computer software that servers a certain function or purpose. This includes the framework adopted, structure, plan as well as the control of the resources engaged in the software or system development process.

20. Describe the meaning of the term data mapping.
By definition, the term data mapping is the process by which a system developer creates data element mappings that relates two models of data (databases) in order to assist in data integration. This usually assists in the following manner:

i)  Data mediation or transformation between the source and the destination of data
ii)  Assisting in data lineage analysis by identifying the data relationships
iii) Assists in data masking by discovering sensitive data
iv) Assists in data de-identification process
v)  Assists in consolidating multiple databases into one thus identification of redundant columns and advising the developers for consideration or even elimination.

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39 Top Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers

1. What are the problems solved by business analysis?
As a BA the most critical part is in gathering requirements (we should understand them very well from a Business User /stake holder point of view!!!)
Reason: There might be a chance for the whole project to go in the wrong path due to wrong understanding of the Business users/ Stake holders’ needs and the gathered requirements created for the work following that step… i.e. going from A to C instead of going from A to B.

2. Who uses the output produced by business analyst?
The output will be used by the Both IT and Non-It People, as IT people use this document as key for the building of the application and Non - It people use those document where they can see prototype of their application.

3. What is the educational qualification required for a business analyst?
There is no specific qualification for a business analyst. Well, if you are a management graduate it is an added advantage since you have they have better communication skills. One important thing a BA needs to have is domain knowledge or business knowledge. Unless he/she understands the client's business process thoroughly they cannot draft the requirements properly.

4. Mention some of the important points a business analyst must take care while preparing business plan?
While Creating Business Document, Make sure you start from small problems. Don’t jump to big problems right way. Keep the Business sponsors and IT folks in the loop. Make sure your document clearly state Exceptions, Assumptions and Limitations. Sometime you need to keep in mind the legal issues. Business document should be well written for usability and for future projects.

5. Why is business analyst position vital in an organization?
The position is important because a BA is a people’s person when it comes to the users and an IT person when it comes to the developers. He can communicate with the users in jargon that they are comfortable with and is able to understand them in order to collect solid business requirements. Simultaneously he can effectively communicate these requirements and support them with documentation for a developers benefit.

6. Why excellent communication skill is essential for a business analyst?
A BA is one who sits with the client understands it and then tells the IT people what needs to be done hence BA needs to have excellent communication skills

7. What are the industry and professional standards followed by business analyst?
Industry standards that have been set for the BAs to follow are OOAD principles and Unified Modeling Language (UML). This is a common language used by business analysts all around the world to draft the functional requirements.

8. What are the quality procedures followed normally by a business analyst?
For quality there is no specific mark of course Six sigma and ITIL (Information technology infrastructural library United kingdom) are certain quality standard establishing organizations and methods. But As a normal the following should be followed:
The quality of communication while gathering requirement should be excellent and outstanding. Sometimes users are just looking for functionality in system and they are not even able to say that what exactly will be their dream functionality which will be most convenient to them. In that case BA should explore them and figure out the exactly demanded requirements.

9. How is requirement analysis done by business analyst?
Requirement session is usually done through JAD session. Business Folks and Major sponsors are always there along with some technical folks. Business analyst then goes through each requirement and asks for the feedback. If Business Sponsors and Technical Folks think that all the requirements are according to the business and won’t be a barrier to existing system. They get the official signoff on Business Requirement document. IT manager and Business manager both do the sign off on that business requirement document.

10. Does the business analyst interact with clients directly? If so state the reason for the same?
It depends on the project to project it is not always the same that we do interact with the clients directly, some time there will be a team whom might be interacting with the client and gives you the requirement and if have questions either we do talk with that team or our manager.

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