The Tools Required to become a Good Business Analyst

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Business Analysts play an important role in bridging the gap between IT and business in an organization. They help businesses improve business processes, products, and services.

Business Analysts perform core technical competencies ranging from requirements management, project management to modeling or diagramming. For each one of these tasks, there’s a tool to be used. In most cases, this tool can be more than one. In this article, we will discuss the tools Business Analysts use to achieve their goals and carry out a successful business.

Requirements Management tools

Business Analyst uses requirements management tools as a great way to ensure that the IT department knows what the business wants. It ensures all the needs of the stakeholders are well communicated. This includes documenting, analyzing, tracking, prioritizing, and communicating those requirements. Requirements management software simplifies all the aspects of this task, keeping things organized and, most importantly, making sure nothing is overlooked. If you need to identify and map a requirement, then go with one of the tools offered by the business, such as Microsoft Project. It can give you the measurements of how different approaches compare so that you know which approach is best. You can make use of eDesign tools when you’re developing a product because it’s vital that the UX gets made as seamless as possible for the end-user. What this means is that the UX needs to be built with the user in mind at all times. To do this, you need tools that can support the process and create tools that can have more meaningful outputs.

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Diagramming/ Modelling tools

An example of Diagramming tools is Jade Quick Sketch Diagram Editor Storyboard Designer Wireframe.

The art of drawing diagrams can be seen throughout history and architecture. From people drawing paths through rooms to doodles on cave walls, people have been doing this for quite some time. Today, the tools of the trade include even a little more sophisticated than cave paintings: CAD and 3D modeling. Here, “model” means not only visual or virtual models of things with a tangible structure but abstract concepts as well – like decisions. Decision models are a kind of mental diagram for clarifying the logic behind a given business decision, accounting for (and notating) all the relevant factors brought to bear on the process.  

Project Management

Project Management tools are the scaffolding of any successful business process, and that’s not just due to simple synergy between the processes. Your business analysts may have a small team, but building a product is still a complex process. To make that process simpler, many companies opt to implement project management tools. 

Project management is simply the skill of seeing a project through to successful completion, on schedule and on budget, given its constraints. Easier said than done. Factors that need to be weighed include everything from the aforementioned constraints to legal requirements, the management of the resources it takes to do the work, and quality control of the deliverables themselves. Fortunately, project management software exists to keep all these moving parts running smoothly.

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Data Analysis and Visualization

One of the most important capabilities a Business Analyst needs is the ability to analyze data and make sense of it. This is done using tools like Excel or Google Sheets or Tableau. For example, the most common type of analysis in BI is visualization – that is, to show the data in a graphic format. If you are ever presented with a data set, chances are good that you will have to view the data as it is. With visualization tools, you can change the data to show results based on different filters, such as different filters for by geography, by time of the day, by different industries, and even by specific metrics. 

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Conclusion

Ultimately, it’s up to the Business Analyst to be the specialist. For anyone who wants to earn a six-figure income, it’s important to make that the mindset. Becoming a specialist doesn’t happen overnight. At times, it feels impossible. But with the right mindset and the right tools, you can be great at your job, and make that six-figure salary a reality.

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