1.

What is business analysis?

One should not restrict the BA role to only being a link between Non-It and IT or only
for development projects.A BA is someone who is able to bring in improvements, changes
(technology, process, peopleetc.) in an efficient manner. So a BA could be part of the marketing
team who helps themarketing team in providing estimates/high level solutions for a said project
which is under the process of procurement. Or he could be someone involved during the
Requirementgathering/analysis once the project is initiated. Or he could be someone who brings
profit to thecompany by performing process improvement activities ROIs at process level.Last
but not the least BAs could be domain specific as well.For more BA Questions, Sample Resumes
and Open Jobs please visit:http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx
2.
What is the career path for a Business Analyst?
A Business Analyst in the IT field has many varied directions among which to choose a
career path. The most direct would lead to a Lead Business Analyst position and then Project
Manager whereby the incumbent manages projects through the entire lifecycle from inception to
post-implementation including the management of business analysts system analysts
qualityassurance analysts and most likely development project managers or team leads. That path
wouldthen lead to Program Management perhaps PMO management or Product Manager and on
toDirectorship. In addition a good Business Analyst may find they are heading toward a
Customer Relationship Manager position whereby they become the primary IT interface to a
givenBusiness Unit (BU). This role most often leads to a position within the BU as a Manager
of Applications or a Process Management role. Process Management opens many jobs
including process re-engineering quality program development and large scale or enterprise
processmanagement programs such as ITIL or Six Sigma initiatives. These roles will continue
to proliferate as companies realize the benefits of having a SME in process and quality.
And stillmany Business Analysts find their understanding of business process entirely portable
into purely system related positions in the business side that are only peripherally related to IT.
Theseof course may lead to quantitative roles manager roles or operational roles such as supply
chainlogistics et cetera.Of central importance to a successful Business Analyst is the interest
inspeaking to people. Face to face verbal communication is paramount to support other tools
suchas surveys and diagrams. Incumbents must be interested in understanding not only the pieces
thatcomprise a system but the people that comprise it and the realities that embrace the
system.Briefly the Business Analyst must understand and not judge the what should be and
the what is.
5.
What analysis and modeling techniques do you use to translate business objectivesinto system requirements?
Create project-initiation diagrams including business use cases, activity diagrams, workflow

diagrams, flowchartsDetermine project scope and derive context diagrams and project use
cases from the business

diagramsDetail the use cases by using activity diagrams or other techniques


Create high level analysis dataflow diagrams, domain class diagrams, and entity-relationship

diagrams from the use cases or other high level diagramsRecognize and understand the various
design models, including the other relevant types of

UML diagrams, detailed design entity-relationship diagrams, and decomposed

dataflowdiagramsDetermine when to use which modeling technique, following them through
a project life

cycle, and understand which diagrams are derived from othersUnderstand the basic concepts of
normalization and decomposition so can converse

intelligently on the topic and review diagrams that have been normalized or decomposedFor
more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and Open Jobs please
visit:http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx
6.Mention some of the tools commonly used by business analyst?
There might be various tools that you as a business analyst would be using depending upon
thework 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 licensingis 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 toolsfor 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 workingknowledge of creating Test cases, using Load Runner,
QTP etc.

Except for these tools if you have knowledge of RDBMS, Oracle, SQL, different
operatingsystems, some OOP, it is always a plus.For more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and
Open Jobs please visit:http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx
7.Explain equivalence class?
Equivalence class a mathematical concept is a subset of given set induced by
anequivalencerelationon that given set. (If the given set is empty then the equivalence relation is
empty andthere are no equivalence classes; otherwise the equivalence relation and its
concomitantequivalence classes are all non-empty.) Elements of an equivalence class are said to
beequivalent under the equivalence relation to all the other elements of the same equivalence
class.For each equivalence relation there is a collection of equivalence classes. Any
two differentequivalence classes are disjoint and the union over all of the equivalence classes is
the given set.Equivalence classes and their corresponding equivalence relation are defined in set
theory a vitalfoundation for mathematics and those fields that use mathematics. More details can

be found in astudy of equivalence relation.For more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and

Open Jobs please visit:http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx
8.What are the problems solved by business analysis?
As a BA the most critical part is in gathering requirements (we should understand them very
wellfrom 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 wrongunderstanding of the Business users/ Stake
holders needs and the gathered requirements createdfor 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 departmentslike Logistics accounting finance Inventory) in the
company who wanted the software in Placefor them to work on to help the Customers.Stake
Holders: Someone 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
needsand 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 indepthknowledge about that software application used and that particular business domain
knowledgelike Finance (terms and permutations etc.) Accounting (Business Planning
Ledger maintainingForecasting) Mortgage (Local banking rules Knowledge about compliancy of
applications forms/applications that needs the authorizations of the local Government bodies or
countiesUnderwriting conditions (How flexible the Loan lending organizations at the individuals
creditcheck 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 beor appear to be for the Customers or Business
Users).For more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and Open Jobs please
visit:http://futurethoughtsllc.com/InterviewQuestionsandAnswers.aspx
9.
What is the difference between data model and an entity relationship diagram ?
A data model is a model which shows how data is stored and used for e.g. a normal
database Ithas 3 main parts1)Structural part:- how data is structured2)Integrity part:- Rules
governingstructure3)Manipulation part:- operators used to select,update,querry that
data,egselect,update,delete commands in sqlTo furhter add Data Modelling is when we add this
theoryto Live instance.ENTERPRISE DATA MODEL(ENTERPRISE
RELATIONSHIPMODELING) :- This can be called as an conceptual model or semantic model
The sub parts of an ERM are1)Entity:- It is an object,eg employees,computer2) Relationship:- It
captures howtwo or more entities are related to each other3)Attributes:- Every entity has its own
sets of attributes (e.g. PAN no in India for each employee or SSN in US)To clarify the point look
at egA employee is an entity belonging to entity sets(All employees) which has a relationship
withdepartment, and attributes is emp codeFor more BA Questions, Sample Resumes and
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10.Who uses the output produced by business analyst?

The output will be used by the Both IT and Non-It People, as IT people use this document as
keyfor the building of the application and Non - It people use those document where they can
see prototype of their application.

efining a business need and making the business case for finding a
solution to meet that need is heart of the BA BoK knowledge area
called Enterprise Analysis. The tasks involved in this knowledge area
are defining the business need, assessing the capability gap,
determining a solution (high-level) approach, defining the solution
scope (high-level), and defining the business case. The IIBA identifies
the following skills for this knowledge area:
Benchmarking

Metrics and KPI

Brainstorming

Problem or Vision Statement

Business Rules

Risk Analysis

Analysis
Decision Analysis
Document Analysis
Estimation

Root Cause Analysis

Scope Modeling
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
(SWOT) Analysis

Feasibility Analysis

User Stories

Focus Groups

Vendor Assessment

Functional
Decomposition

Interface Analysis