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. Notes: (Business Users: are the individuals who work in organizations in different departments like Logistics accounting finance Inventory) in the company who wanted the software in Place for them to work on to help the Customers. Stake Holders: Some one who is related to the Project? 2 types of People are involved : Direct Stake holders: business end users customers developers tech team. Indirect stake holders: management etc. The Project Manager responsibility (usually) identifies the stakeholders determine their needs and expectations and more important must manage and take their help for the project success. (You should Understand them well to provide them with right service for the right success of the project)... SMEs: are the Subject Matter Experts who know about that project and have in-depth knowledge about that software application used and that particular business domain knowledge like Finance ( terms and permutations etc. ) Accounting ( Business Planning Ledger maintaining Forecasting ) Mortgage ( Local banking rules Knowledge about compliancy of applications forms/ applications that needs the authorizations of the local Government bodies or counties Underwriting conditions( How flexible the Loan lending organizations at the individuals credit check or History) So The SMEs help the Project Manager or BA to help them understand about the necessities or needs of the Business Users or Stake holders like/interests- (How the Project help save time for the transactions or? how much secure/security is needed the application wise or profitable over long run) and SMEs explain How the Stakeholders or Business Users want the application to be or appear to be for the Customers or Business Users). How would you transform business requirements to functional requirements? while preparing Business requirements documents you mention why you need to bulit a system i.e. problem statement. What you need to do while creating functional requirements is you have to specify is Specify thorugly business problem and explain solution of the problem. solution for the same.

Business requirement documents does not necessarrily contains solution part functional requirement may contain it how end user wants the system to perform. Dont forget to add non-functional requirements same doc. Following is the instance of Business Requirement Functional Requirement and NonFunctional Requirement. Business Requirements :purchase order. authority Functional requirement:Sales order shall be made with reference from sales order is made against customers Sales order is given for approval to upper

Purchase order and it should be approved from upper authority. Non-Functional Requirement:(Specify format) and six copy of in 1 minute. Sales order should be in proper format sales order should be printed from printer

2. How would you transform business requirements to functional requirements?

while preparing Business requirements documents you mention why you need to bulit a system i.e. problem statement. What you need to do while creating functional requirements is you have to specify is solution of the problem. Specify thorugly business problem and explain solution for the same. Business requirement documents does not necessarrily contains solution part functional requirement may contain it how end user wants the system to perform. Dont forget to add non-functional requirements same doc. Following is the instance of Business Requirement Functional Requirement and NonFunctional Requirement. Business Requirements :- sales order is made against customers purchase order. Sales order is given for approval to upper authority Functional requirement:- Sales order shall be made with reference from Purchase order and it should be approved from upper authority. Non-Functional Requirement:- Sales order should be in proper format (Specify format) and six copy of sales order should be printed from printer in 1 minute. -------------------------------

Create project-initiation diagrams including business use cases activity diagrams workflow diagrams flowcharts Determine project scope and derive context diagrams and project use cases from the business diagrams Detail the use cases by using activity diagrams or other techniques Create high level analysis dataflow diagrams domain class diagrams and entityrelationship diagrams from the use cases or other high level diagrams Recognize and understand the various design models including the other relevant types of UML diagrams detailed design entity-relationship diagrams and decomposed dataflow diagrams Determine when to use which modeling technique following them through a project life cycle and understand which diagrams are derived from others

Understand the basic concepts of normalization and decomposition so can converse intelligently on the topic and review diagrams that have been normalized or decomposed.

3. Rational Rose
Rational Rose is an object-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML) software design tool intended for visual modeling and component construction of enterprise-level software applications. In much the same way a theatrical director blocks out a play, a software designer uses Rational Rose to visually create (model) the framework for an application by blocking out classes with actors (stick figures), use case elements (ovals), objects (rectangles) and messages/relationships (arrows) in a sequence diagram using drag-and-drop symbols. Rational Rose documents the diagram as it is being constructed and then generates code in the designer's choice of C++, Visual Basic, Java, Oracle8, CORBA or Data Definition Language. Two popular features of Rational Rose are its ability to provide iterative development and round-trip engineering. Rational Rose allows designers to take advantage of iterative development (sometimes called evolutionary development) because the new application can be created in stages with the output of one iteration becoming the input to the next. (This is in contrast to waterfall development where the whole project is completed from start to finish before a user gets to try it out.) Then, as the developer begins to understand how the components interact and makes modifications in the design, Rational Rose can perform what is called "round-trip engineering" by going back and updating the rest of the model to ensure the code remains consistent. Rational Rose is extensible, with downloadable add-ins and third-party partner applications. It supports COM/DCOM (ActiveX), JavaBeans, and Corba component standards.

4. How is R U P used to analyse a process?

The Rational Unified Process describes how to effectively deploy commercially proven approaches to software development for software development teams. These are called best practices not so much because you can precisely quantify their value but rather because they are observed to be commonly used in industry by successful organizations.

The Rational Unified Process provides each team member with the guidelines templates and tool mentors necessary for the entire team to take full advantage of among others the following best practices: 1. Develop software iteratively 2. Manage requirements 3. Use component-based architectures Rational Unified Process: Best Practices for Software development Teams 4. Visually model software 5. Verify software quality 6. Control changes to software.

5. What are the reporting tools used by BA. How do you decide that which reports
you have to extract or on what basis you extract the report? What are the fields or the data when you extract in a report? How often you extract report. There are two ways to Get or retrieve Data/Reports from database or warehouse. TWO WAYS: 1. SQL Query or Statement: This si commonly used by developers or program managers. 2*. OLAP TOOL: "Online Analytical Processing" Tool also helps to fetch the reports with out SQL query. Tool Examples: [COGNOS Business Objects.....] -------------------------------ETL: ETL is just one step above to OLAP tool. WHY & WHERE ETL is USED: ETL: Extract + Transformation + Loading ETL is used when one is not having local access. And have only remote connection thin client. One can extract transform the data and upload in the warehouse for the same. -------------------------------OLAP comes after ETL. Once developers uplaods in the warehouse BA can fetch reports using OLAP tools.

HYPERIAN also is somewhat inclined in the same tune but a Business Intelligence Tool rather than Reporting Tool. 6. Explain What is Interface / Integration mapping? For example you have a legacy system which needs to interact with third party system, for the exchange of information which needs to pass from legacy system to third party system and vice-versa, one needs to do mapping of the fields which are common on both the ends. This mapping of individual fields of one system to another for communication is termed as Interface mapping.

7. How would you use Requirements modeling and when?

When the application environment is complex and multidimensional and when many people are directly involved in using the system then we should use business modeling. Example- We do not need busienss modeling if we are adding another feature in an existing telecom system but if we are making a new order entry system then we should use business modeling to take good advantage to support problem analysis WHY TO REVISE: Now this is an important question why to revise everytime when you add something new in to existing application. See a very basic example is lets suppose we have Requirment Management Tool like RequisitePro.... if we have traceability between/among the requirements and we add new requiremnt then immediately it shows ERROR. Why so? because it is afraid of that new requirement may change or conflict with any other requirement of the system. Same here if we don't add the new element in MODELING structure no matters whatever modeling technique one is using it might be Use Case diagram flow activity or any diagram it may get stuck anywhere. PURPOSE of MODELING1. Modeling is not so much used by BA but used extensively by Technical Programming Manager. If any new element is not been added into the Modeling how he will come to know that a new element has entered into the PROCESS. 2. Lets suppose BA is onsite for some time and new person or BA is overlooking the same process. Who will let him know that process has been changed due to some element. So anytime if a single requirement/element is been adding/changing/deleting revise into the MODELING.

8. How did you assign task and/or hold testers accountable for their work?

There are applications such as Clear-Quest which can be used by the tester to list all the bugs that they come across in the application and the same can be assigned to the developer who developed the same they can add as much as information the Clear-Quest Record to make it more explanatory they can also meet and discuss the same.

9. What analysis and modeling techniques do you use to translate business

objectives into system requirements? There might be various tools that you as a business analyst would be using depending upon the work environment. The primary tools are: MS-Office (Especially Word) MS-Visio (for visualizing the concepts, creating diagrams) But a lot of bigger organizations have been using Rational Software. Rational software licensing is expensive so you might not find it being used everywhere. Rational Requisite Pro (for Requirement Management) Rational ClearCase/ClearQuest (For change management) I have also found that some places like using MS-Sharepoint, telelogic DOORS and other tools for document collaboration. I would say, keep a working knowledge of MS Sharepoint, at least. Sometimes you might end up being a BA com QA. As such, it is nice to have a working knowledge of creating Test cases, using Load Runner, QTP etc. Except for these tools if you have knowledge of RDBMS, Oracle, SQL, different operating systems, some OOP, it is always a plus.

10. Who uses the output produced by business analyst?

It is used by: Business: Act as a documentation repository for their business process and what they expect from the system being built. The BRD's are signed off by business. Dev team: They would refer the requirements document for building the application.

11. What problems did you run into while gathering requirements?
There could be a lot of problems while gathering requirements these are some up to my knowledge 1) Contradiction ( As different S/H or different ideas from same s/H) 2)Communication. 3) Undocumented process 4) Lack of access to en users 5) Instability and end users] 6) Abunance of choice to s/H or end users 7)s?H design 8) Bad requirements 1- Lack of consolidated business decision for To Be business processes. 2- This can be controlled by defining roles and responsibilities of project team members and proper communications. 2- 1.Dependencies on thrid party interface 2.Analyzing all possible secenarios 3.Impact on current system behaviour

12. Test DirectorWhen does a BA use Test Director tool and for what purpose in
a project? Some companies use Test Director for Requirement Traceability. In Test Director there is a tab for Requirements and all the functional requirements can be added in this section. These requirements will be used by the testers to link their testcases. Test Director also provides Testing metrics for the management to know what requirements are covered and the percentage of completion. BA is also responsible for maintaining the RTM in the Test Director.

13.

What does a BA do when DEV Team recommends a better solution in the application? How does a BA determine the solution is good and that it is going to work for the customer. How does a BA convey this to the customers? There are several things that a BA must communicate to the Business Team when considering the solution given by the development team. 1. Does this solution impacts the current project schedule? 2. Will this cost more money? 3. Will this effect the quality of the software? Eg. BA needs to evaluate if this solution is

a temporary solution or a long term fix. If its going to solve a problem in future BA must know what exactly Business Stakeholder wants. Even if there is a minor changes to the schedule and Budget are they willing to chose the permanent solution. 4. Is there any Risk when considering this solution?

14. What real challenges does a BA face in different phases of the project.
Conflicting requiremnts and changing requirements from the business users can be very challenging for a BA which is to be deal tactfylly..one more challenge phased inInitial phase is "Mine First".Every business user wants his need to be developed in the first release.this can be very critical to handle and BA has to involve PM and other lead for this..In the Dev phase BA has to see to it tht the application is being developed as per the requirements and is not going off track..BA has to be in constant touch with the team members to help them understand the requiremnts and let the users know abt the project progress

15. Requirements Traceability MatrixWhich phase of the project does a BA stop

using the Requirements Traceability Matrix and when does he starts to use it for the first time. Requirements Traceability Matrix is created while writing the Usecases in the Requirements Phase of the Project. All the Functional Requirements must be traced to the Business Requirements or the Project scope document or the Vision Document. This is a deliverable in the Requirements Phase of the Project. RTM will be used both by the design team and the Testing Team to trace their work products. BA will be responsible for maintaining the RTM until the launch of the application. If there is any Enhancement request then the RTM must be updated have struggled with creating a traceability matrix when it is early in the requirements creation process. The reason is because you requirements are not stable they are still changing which causes extra work maintaining a separate document with exactly the same information and causes data integrity risks. When I give this scenario it is in an environment where every function is captured. If I were only capturing the use case title/function and no lower than that then I would have no problem creating a traceability matrix during the requirement process. The only problem with that is how reliable is your traceability matrix? My understanding of the intention of the traceability matrix is to ensure that your functional requirements are traced to the technical approach (provided by the technical team) so that each requirement is accounted for by all involved groups. My recommendation would be that the analyst creates the shell when requirements are stable and signed off. When the technical team comes back with the technical approach then the analyst will do the gap analysis to ensure that each requirement is accounted for by documenting them in the traceability matrix.

16. BA Role : What is the role of BA in Design, Build, Test phases of a project?
Explain. Its the responsibilty of BA to ensure that all the requirements of the business users are well understood by the degin team..BA has to make sure that all the requirements are clear to design team for development.BA also has to work with the testing team to test whether the application that is being developed is as per the expectations of the business users..Thus BA is invovlded in all the phases What are HIGH/MED/LOW Use Cases? How does a BA determine this. Explain the process in detail steps. High - Feature of the system Mid - Functional requirement Low - Detailed Use Case (inputs/outputs/supporting detail) What role does a BA play in the testing process of the requirements? List the different type of tests a BA is associated with. Depending on the organizational structure and the methodology used it is not uncommon for a BA to coordinate the testing efforts. The PM will pretty much have their hands full with development issues, and the BA being the requirements 'guru' so to speak it is advantageous that the BA write the Test Plan, and Test Cases. A good BA would think about this in advance and write their use cases or other form of requirements documentation in enough detail that they would be testable and you could just reuse those documents for testing efforts. If that is not acceptable, you can always copy an past into a formal document "Test Case". The BA would also need to coordinate with other people to set up scenarios so that data can be tested with more complex test cases. Your Technical Lead should manage the bugs and there should be regular meetings held to review and discuss bugs/duplicates/new requirements/etc. PM should track and report this detail to senior management---that is not the BA's job. BA manages requirements and if they are responsible for testing, then they need to manage the requirements related to testing. Don't be surprised if you need to write user guides also :-) Screen Mock Up or WirescreensWhich stage of the project does a BA prepare Screen Mock ups? What does he do with them. Wireframes are usually used during the Funcitonal Specification document it describes how the proposed screens should look like. Again this depends on what kind of methodology is used and template.