Business Analyst
A business analyst (BA) is a professional who works out what an organization needs to change and defines the requirements for a solution that delivers that value. BAs gather needs from stakeholders, analyze processes and business logic, document requirements in a form teams can build and test, and check that the delivered solution actually solves the original problem.
What a Business Analyst Does
The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines business analysis as "the practice of enabling change in an organizational context, by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders." Its standard, A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (the BABOK Guide), organizes the profession into six knowledge areas covering planning, elicitation, requirements management, strategy analysis, requirements analysis and design definition, and solution evaluation.
In practice, a BA's work usually includes:
- Running interviews and workshops to draw out what stakeholders need.
- Mapping current and future business processes.
- Documenting functional requirements and non-functional requirements.
- Capturing business rules, data definitions and edge cases so nothing is left to guesswork.
- Writing acceptance criteria and supporting testing.
- Tracing each requirement back to the need it serves.
Why the Role Matters
Ambiguous requirements are expensive. When engineers have to guess how a rule works, the result is rework, defects and disputes over what was agreed. A BA reduces that risk by making the business logic explicit before it is built.
The role is strongest where domains are complex and getting requirements exactly right is critical: banking, insurance, healthcare, government and large internal systems with many departments and regulations. For an applied view of this work, read about writing clear, testable technical requirements.
Business Analyst Example
An insurance company is replacing its claims system. The business analyst runs workshops with claims handlers and discovers about a dozen informal rules they use to approve small claims without review, several of which contradict each other. She documents each rule, flags the conflicts for the compliance team to decide, and writes acceptance criteria so testers can confirm the new system applies the agreed rules correctly.
Business Analyst vs. Product Owner and Product Manager
These roles overlap but focus on different questions. A business analyst focuses on defining needs and requirements for a specific change, often inside an organization's own processes. A product manager focuses on which problems a product should solve for its market and why. A product owner is accountable for ordering the backlog and maximizing the value a Scrum team delivers.
A BA usually informs priority decisions rather than owning them. In agile teams, BAs often work alongside the product owner to refine backlog items, and in some organizations a BA takes on the product owner role.