Business Analyst – The Team’s GPS

A GPS’s functionality is to help you navigate to the right destination. However, for the GPS to direct you, you need to put in the correct location of your destination. If the location is wrong, then you will end up at the wrong destination. So, it is imperative to provide the GPS with the correct and detailed location.

With that being said, a Business Analyst (BA) is like a GPS that unpacks the requirements from the client and writes the user’s story which will help the developers, UX/UI designers and technical lead etc. The idea of what the client is trying to build or the goal that they are driving towards depends on the BA fully understanding the vision document and trying, by all means, to define and translate the business requirements into functional actions. The BA acts as a bridge between business ideas and business capabilities, creating and scoping value changes to optimize the business processes that in turn will help to ensure better control around costs, delivery and meeting the business goal.

A GPS is able to show you which direction is more convenient; it can even tell you if the road that you are taking has traffic. In the same way, the BA can advise the client of the worst-case scenario on the solution they are trying to build and they can propose a better solution without entirely rejecting the client’s visioned idea.

It is therefore important to provide the BA with a correct, well–detailed specification to avoid the failure of the project because if the BA misunderstands the specification, it means the developers will take the wrong direction, which could lead to project failure.  

Therefore, the information that you give to the GPS (the BA) must be very accurate to ensure a successful outcome of the project.

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