A typical Day of a Business Analyst
Any prospective business analyst is always inquisitive to know what a typical day of a professional business analyst is like. So, let us review a typical day of Robin who is a ‘Senior Business Analyst’ working in a multinational organization and on a million dollar project.
9:00 a.m: Robin’s day starts at around 9 am with a cup of coffee in his hand and eyes busy scanning the emails he has got. ‘It’s always good to go over the emails first as it sets the tone for the day’, he says. Once he has scoured the emails, he begins segregating them into the ones needing immediate attention and archiving the others. The next hour is spent on answering emails, giving replies and solving queries.
10:30 A.M: It’s 10:30 am now and it’s time for the daily scrum meeting. Since Robin works in an agile environment, his team gathers for 15 minutes and quickly discusses the issues encountered and tasks for the day amongst the team members. It’s 10:50 now and Robin is busy preparing himself for the 11:00 am meeting with the subject matter experts and user experience professionals. The next hour is spent on discussing solutions to business issues, assessing the viability of the solution and deciding the user interface. Post the completion of the meeting, Robin sends meeting minutes to the attendees and sums up the conversation. ‘Minutes of meeting helps in delegating responsibilities and aids follow-ups’, observes Robin.
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12:30 P.M: At around 12:30 pm, Robin breaks away to quickly finish his lunch and is back in half an hour. The technical teams await his presence for clarifying the business flow of some modules. Robin clarifies the procedures, supports his explanation with technical documentation and shares the same with the team. Also, he recalls that he is expected to do an integration testing of two modules. To do so, he opens the use cases prepared by him and simultaneously performs a positive flow testing along with negative testing. To corroborate his findings, he matches the functionality with the technical use cases. Then, he sums up his findings by creating a test report, logs the bugs in the defect tracking software and intimates the software developer responsible for the faulty piece of code.
2:30 P.M: The day is half past for Robin and he gears himself for the 3 pm video conference with the functional and delivery managers located halfway around the world. The meeting involves showcasing the newly developed software which will bolster the organization position in the market and help achieve its strategic goals. After the meeting, Robin receives acknowledgments and is congratulated on successfully capturing the requirements, assisting in developing and testing the application and deployment activities of the software.
5:00 P.M: At around 5 pm, Robin takes a break for some evening snacks and chit-chats with fellow colleagues. Later, he has a discussion with the project manager over the project status. They analyze the current status of the project, compare it with the project baseline and other parameters and recommend corrective/preventive actions. Robin documents the findings and also lists some risks encountered by him in the project risk register.
6:10 P.M: At 6 pm Robin is ready to leave when he is asked by his manager to review the business requirement document (BRD) of a new project which is prepared by a new business analyst in the organization. Robin conducts a thorough evaluation of the document, corrects some errors and shares the updated document with his project manager. He then shares his findings with the new business analyst, gives him some tips for clear and concise documentation and encourages him to perform better. ‘Nothing is more important than comprehensive yet crisp documentation. A business analyst should strive for clarity in communications’, he ponders.
The above write up is a brief snapshot of the day to day activities of a business analyst. However, if you want to understand and learn more about the business analyst role and deep dive in the areas/verticals they work in, then visit this in-depth article on the complete job description of a business analyst.