Business Analyst Interview Questions and answers part 1 Common Business Analyst Interview Questions 1.

What are the qualities you have that makes you suitable for the position of Business Analyst? As a Business Analyst, one always have to have the top notch communication skills. A perfect mix of technical knowledge and business market knowledge is highly essential. I consider myself a very quick learner and with a good ability to communicate with the development teams and the customers, I think I can certainly make a good difference to the organization on the whole. Ability to deal with conformance tests and identify the prominent parts of the use cases and track them through time will make me more than efficient in the overall work that is involved 2. What do you think are you weaknesses? How do you plan to deal with them effectively? No person can boast of No weaknesses. But the thing that would make the difference is the way you deal with it. Acquiring in-depth knowledge about the entire project with latest technological updates to the knowledge is quite a tiresome part of being a Business Analyst. I think every BA has to deal with it on a continuous basis. But having the positive attitude and taking such difficulties as challenges will help me overcome them entirely 3. How do you see your future as a Business Analyst? I have always liked the career of Business Analyst not just because of the management perspective but also because of the responsibilities that would be held in order to make the entire project successful one.. Growing with the organizations success as a more prominent and effective analyst has always been in my mind right through. I would also like to take up the BA certifications like the PRINCE 2 in the near future. This would help me grow in a field that I like most, in a more professional way 4. What do you think is an important characteristic that a Business Analyst should have to tide over tough times of project? The first and foremost character that a Business Analyst has to show is confidence. Without that aspect, the interactions with customers and clients can never be positive. Especially during the rough times of project when there are development related issues that are being handled, the customer has to be given the right positive picture from the business/development perspective. This has to be done and handled by the Business Analyst. Not just self-confidence but the confidence that he places on the other teammates come into prominence. 5. How can you identify yourself with this organization? The personal principles and motives in the business domain of mine coincides with the goals of this organization. There can be no better thing than to have like-minded people working on projects. The organization tries to promote itself with projects in the same domain that I have been interested to deal with right through my career. So it is more of the connection in terms of

business thinking that makes me more identifiable as myself within this organization. I would like to be a part of it! 6. How would you make most sense out of the Business requirements to the developers? The following steps will detail out the procedural way of professionally dealing with this: Identify the scope of the project. Take out the key features expected by the client. Reason out the most critical aspects of the system that has to be built. Depict the business use oriented UML diagram and derive it further to the specificity of what is needed from the technology side of development. Detail out the use cases that will make the input from client clear to the developers. Refinement should always be done with peer discussions. Activity, work-flow and data-flow diagrams are of immense importance in detailing out the requirement. Identifying the best modeling technique and representation of the deciphered Client input will finally go through to the Development team across series of meetings

7. What are the most important software tools that BA should be accessing to coordinate the team through the project? The most important tools are meant for diagrammatically representing the project through its various phases. In this sense, the most important software tools are: MS-Word : Requirement gathering and discussions will customers will mostly be through Word documents, be it the marketing or business document. MS-Visio: This will be one of the most important tool that every BA has to have knowledge about. This will help you coordinate the project at every level of development. IBM-Rational Suite: This is a good tool to get good representations of requirements gathering and other functional diagrams. Other Testing Tools: Most of the time it is better to get involved in the QA tests as a Business Analyst. So a good knowledge about the QTP, Load Runner etc will be of use. Other than these, MS Sharepoint, SQL databses will also find good use in the career of the Business Analyst.

8. How does a Business Analyst play an important role in the initial stages of the project? To do it right the first time, has always been the motto for projects that are running under a tight schedule. To find out the right requirement thus is important. Translating the requirements from client to the developers is essential for the project to kick off on the right note. If this stage goes off-track, then you can be jeopardising the future of the entire project! 9. What are the different documents that can come across to the Business Analyst? The documents that are responsible to be completed as a Business Analyst may include: Study of Feasibility. Scope & Prospect of Project. Business Requirements Document. Functional Requirements document including UML, Activity and dataflow diagrams. Fact sheet for constraints from technical side (as prescribed from client). Testing phase documents including QA Test requirements, plan and types of tests that have to be considered before delivery.

10. What do you offer to show as your experience that will come into relevance to this organization? Primary experience/skill of mine that would come into play in this organization is my domain knowledge. This organization deals with the same kind of projects that I have had good exposure to. The educational qualification of mine is sure to show you the different aspects of business that I have gotten to know right from the college. So the experience over the past few years have just honed my skills better to be a Business Analyst.

1. What is UML? Why is it required? What tools have you used to create such UML diagrams? UML stands for Unified Modelling Language. It is the real world representation of the different entities that are involved in the project. This is essential to start understanding the requirements clearly. It consists of the real world objects represented as the most readable and informative diagrams. The major tools I have used for creating the UML diagrams are: IBMs Rational Rose. MS Visio and I am also introduced to the Enterprise Architect.

12. What are Non-functional requirements? What constitutes them? The non-functional requirements refer to the things that are technically expected from the clients. These are not regarding the output of the system, but more about the systems behaviour and conditions of environment. The thing we usually find in non-functional requirements are: Performance expectation ( specific benchmarks that have to be met as a standard etc). Stability factor of the system. Error handling and recovery. Tolerance to abrupt changes in environment. Security of data across functionalities. User manual and training related information that have be provided along with the system. as deliverable.

13. What are the different types of diagrams that you have come across while you were in design phase? What tool is apt to generate those diagrams? Use case diagrams. Activity diagrams.

Sequence diagrams. Collaboration diagram. State Diagrams. Use Case diagrams can be high-level or low-level. The most appropriate software that can help you in developing these are IBMs rational Rose, Requisite Pro

14. How can you differentiate the Activity diagrams from the Sequence diagrams? The activity diagrams are the ones that show you the operational work flow between the different actors involved in the system use. This is pretty much a higher level of view than a sequence diagram. The sequence diagrams are more technical in that they represent sequential order of message flow and function calls across the different modules or processes. 15. How should the requirements be to proceed with the project in the best way? What if the client does not give you the technical side of the requirement? The requirements that we obtain from client have to be clear, descriptive at the necessary places. The requirements should be verified to be consistent. The Business Analyst has to understand it clearly to proceed on with feasibility checks. The client may not give the technical details. But the main thing is to gather the business oriented expectations clearly. We can decipher the technical requirements by analyzing the clear business requirements. 16. What are the things that have to be included as a part of the System Design Document? The SDD is one that has to give the higher level of the system from the user perspective. This may not have the entire systems technical information. The modularity, extensibility and constituents of the system have to brought out clearly through a good block diagram. 17. How will you keep track of the modules, documents and components through the development process? The Configuration management and the Version control will help us to keep track of the changes that are being incorporated in the different components and documents. Most of the source control software programs allow you to help organize the different versions, revisions and updates that are being done to the documents. Branching out the important versions will help you keep in track of it. 18. What are the different Software Development Methodologies that you are aware of?

The most important and prevalent methodologies include Six Sigma approach, Risk Benefit Analysis, Cost Benefit Analysis, SEI-CMM, RUP and SDLC. Each of them suits specific development style and specific system.

19. How does Black Box testing differ from While Box testing? Does a successful Black box testing mean the system is error-free? Black box testing is more abstract level of testing. You do not have to see the internal implementation level. Give an input and see if you get the expected output from the module or system- this is referred to as Black Box testing. White box testing involves testing internal details as to whether an expected output is obtained through the expected set of changes within the system. A successful black box test case may be obtained even by a wrong internal implementation. So a perfect system should always be passing all test cases in the white box testing phase before it is declared completely fit.

20. What is RAD? Why is it used? RAD stands for Rapid Application Development. It involves development of system in a considerably lesser time period. This may not be advisable if the system is going to be system that is used for important purposes as a stand-alone system. But such development cycles help you in when you are aiming at development of a system that is going to be a part of an entire system, that just requires a good component in this to-be developed systems.

21. What does proof-of-concept mean? Proof-of-concept is just an initial deliverable that are rolled out to get started with the project. When we are dealing with a completely new technology and we are going to be the fore-runners int he domain when it comes to such systems, we have to have a verification phase wherein we are making sure that we are on the right track. Such scenarios demand a deliverable for proving the establish theoretical concept. This helps in avoiding the waste of time and work, as we may not be sure initially whether a specific technology works as expected.

22. What are the different types of testing that you are aware of? Who will be responsible for each kind of test? White box Testing and Black box testing - These are done by the module owners or team for each module and finally as a whole project.

AdHoc testing - Just random tests that are performed from time to time by anyone who is involved in the project. Unit Tests - A developer does this test to verify the functionalities of the module he has developed. System Testing - Overall system is under the scanner. The test team is responsible for getting this test out in the most elaborate manner. Front end and Backend tests for UI and databases respectively. Regression tests - Which are meant to test the consistency of the system in longer run. Stress Tests - Where the system is put under maximum expected load to see if it can handle it properly.

23. Explain the different phases that are involved in the RUP methodology. The RUP methodology consists of the following stages in system development. Inception phase - Where the requirements are gathered and higher level of view of the system is made clear with UML diagrams. Project plan is drafted in this stage by having discussions with the developing team. Elaboration - The idea regarding the project are descriptively laid out so that everyone understands their responsibility with reference to the entire system under consideration. The configuration management, control management for the entire development process is also laid out in this phase. Construction phase - Active coding of the different modules. Test case / batch script and test plan generation is also carried out. Transitioning phase- Where the developed system is delivered to the client after sufficient amount of testing has been done to make it delivery-ready.

24. What is prototyping? Prototyping is very effective way to communicate with client when client is not clear about the requirements that he is expecting. Modeling a prototype for the entire system will help the customer in having a hand-on experience in how the system will behave and work.

25. Why is BRD required when all that can be found on BRD is explained in even more detail with FRD? The BRD is the interface with which we correlate the Functional requirement set with the customers ultimate practically used requirements. This way one has to maintain the higher level of view from the clients perspective. So it is not always the explanatory technicalities that we refer to; as a business analyst we will be dealing with customers perspective more often and BRD makes more sense in such situations.

26. What are the things that have to be considered while writing a Business document? Never should we bring out the small glitches on the top. We have to see through the eyes of the business persons and should always try to instill confidence in them, as much as we have on ourselves. As what they expect is the outer level of details, we should bring out the expectation, assumptions and other such criteria into picture clearly.

27. How can a BA be of assistance to the marketing team? The BA has a good share of both business knowledge and technical knowledge pertaining to a specific domain. So when it comes to marketing a product or procuring a project, he can give his views and prospect oriented perspective in a more acceptable manner to the customers. This makes him a good advantageous role in marketing department of an organization.

28. BA is the bridge between the IT and Non-IT persons when it comes a software system. Does it mean that decision making responsibility can be rested his hand entirely? No, that is not the advisable case. Every BA has to take the decision regarding business/technical aspects of a project only after discussions and meetings with the appropriate members of the team. In this way meetings and team discussion come of as the most important aspects of BAs decision making capabilities.

29. What are the different aspects one should consider before validating a requirement set? The requirements have to be validated by the BA by logically reasoning out the system usage and expectations from client side. Sometimes the non functional requirements may not be possible to achieve. These sort of limitations have to be sorted out before start of the project. A

good requirements gathering phase should therefore get as much information from client to be sure that one can make complete sense of each of the different individual requirements.

30. What is Load Runner? What is it used for? Load Runner is a tool used for carrying out performance tests on a system. The tool offers a good deal of automation and other related analytical support over the tests that are run. This way one can easily narrow down the performance benchmarks of the system. Some aspects of the results can even help developers to identify the exact place of issue inside the system.

31. What is User Interfacing? What are the advantages of User Interfacing? User Interfacing is the stage in the project development cycle that happens before the actual delivery of the code This is the stage where the direct imparting of knowledge from the developers to the user who is going to be working on the system. This process helps in: Better understanding of the system from user perspective. Better requirement validation. Better maintenance- The user is more exposed to the practical working of the modules within each system. So the errors that are occurring at the customer site are brought out clearly to the developer front. Also, the developers can explain clearly a system to the users who know the basics of what is it and how is it doing the different functions. User training sessions help users. Overall costs involved can be reduced to a greater extent.