Monday, April 16, 2012

Business Analyst Tools

Why Business Analyst should use tools?

The tools would be useful for the Business Analyst in project implementation, as the Business Analyst would be involved in so many activities like gathering business requirements, analyzing the requirements, categorizing the requirement, maintaining the requirements in the document for different versions etc.

The tools will help doing the activities with ease, maintaining them in different versions that will help the Business Analyst in making the project successful. The tools are designed based on the best practices so it’s strongly recommended for Business Analyst to use the tools.

It is not one tool, which the BA can use it for all the activities in Project implementation. BA has to learn few specific tools which are designed for specific purpose to do the job more efficiently. It is also not necessary to learn all the details, ins and outs, workings of the tool, but the BA should know what the tools is specifically designed form, it means the basics of tool, its main features which will give you an idea of what to do with that tool.

There are many tools available on the internet, but the Most popular Business Analyst tools used are:
  • Rational Rose – useful in Requirements Management
  • Microsoft Visio – Used as a diagram or modeling tool.
  • Microsoft Office.
Most of the Business Analysts (including meJ) use the Microsoft office and Visio.

Microsoft word: It is used in all the activities of the Business Analyst which are as below:
  • Preparing Proposals
  • Preparing Solution document
  • Preparing Communication plan
  • Preparing MOM (minutes of meeting)
  • Preparing SRS (System Requirements Specifications)
  • Preparing FS(Functional Specifications)
  • Preparing TS (Technical Specifications) and many more… (depends of organization)
  • Preparing weekly/monthly Project summary report
Some time BA’s use Microsoft word for creating UML Diagrams, flow charts and capturing screen shots.

Microsoft Excel: It is used in few of the activities of the Business Analyst which are as below:
  • Create Project Tracker (high level document which gives a complete picture on what’s happing in the project and its status, target dates, go live dates etc.)
  • Create Use cases documents
  • Used for tracking issues, new changes etc.
  • Used for analyzing trends
  • User for and generating bar charts etc 
 Organizations use Microsoft Excel to perform complex tasks.

Microsoft Power point: It is mainly used for creating visuals for presentations.

PowerPoint allows you to create slide show presentations using visuals that how the system is going to work, user interfaces designs, few diagrams which explain the flow of the processes.

The PPT creates a better understanding of the new system that will draw the attention of the customer in and create a better understanding of the new system.
Believe it or not, most of the Business Analyst will use the Microsoft office for their activities.

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