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in

BA Interview
Questions
Ms. Shaheen – 9392540018
[email protected]
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Who is Business Analyst?

Answer: A business analyst works as a bridge between different stakeholders in an organization. He
connects with the different stakeholders of an organization to clarify and finalize the requirements,
helps the project team in project planning, designing and finally validating the developed components.
He is the person who possesses adequate domain knowledge and can sort the business needs amongst
the stakeholders who belong to different domains.

How will you be able to handle the changes to requirements?

This is a logical question asked in an interview. As a BA, first I’ll get signed a document by the user
which states that after a point of time no changes to the requirements are accepted.

In few cases, if the changes to the requirements are accepted then as a BA,

• Firstly, I’ll note down the changes made to the requirements and will prioritize them.
• Will also go through those changes and find out the impact of them on the project.
• Will calculate the cost, timeline, and resources required to cover the impact of change
requirements in the project.
• And will make sure that whether those changes affect or create gaps to functional design
documents, testing or coding.

Can you name the tools that are helpful for business analysis?

The process performed by a BA is termed as Business Analysis. The tools used by a BA are Rational
tools, Jira (or whichever Project Management tool you have used in your organization) Microsoft
Excel, Microsoft Word, Power Point, MS Project, ERP systems.

How can you say that a requirement is good or perfect?

The features and standards of a good requirement can be pointed out using a rule called SMART
rule.
• Specific – The description of a requirement should be perfect and specific enough to
understand it.
• Measurable – There are various parameters through which the requirement’s success can
be measured.
• Attainable – Resources should be able to achieve success with the requirement.
• Relevant – States that what results are realistically achieved.
• Timely – Requirements of a project should be revealed in time.

What makes you unique from others?

The answer to this question will test your experience, skills, and individuality. “I am technically sound
and can make a strong relationship with the customer. With this unique combination, I can use my
knowledge and information to build a user-friendly environment”.

What are the tasks that are not part of a BA’s job?

i) A Business Analyst is not intended to organize the project team meetings.

ii) A Business Analyst should not bother regarding the risks and issues tracker of a project.
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iii) A Business Analyst should not perform activities like automation testing (executing the TC’s),
coding or programming.

Differentiate a Risk and an issue?

‘Risk’ is nothing but a problem or something that can be predicted earlier so that some
improvement plans are used to handle them. Whereas an ‘Issue’ means the risk that had happened
or occurred.
The role of a BA is not to solve the issue instead should suggest some plans to control the loss/damage
caused. And this should be marked as a precautionary measure for other projects.
Example: On some roads, there are few caution boards stating that “Road under repair, take
diversion”. This is called as Risk.
If we travel through the same route which is under repair, then there caused some damage to the
vehicle. This is called as an issue.

List out the documents that are used by a BA in a Project?

As a Business Analyst we deal with various documents like Functional Specification document,
Technical Specification document, Business requirement document, Use case diagram, Product
Backlog, Requirement Traceability Matrix etc.

How can you handle and manage the difficult stakeholders?

Dealing with difficult stakeholders is a major task for a BA. There are many ways to handle such
situations, few important points to be noted among them are listed below.

• Identify that difficult stakeholder among the group of stakeholders, listen and concentrate
on their point of view with patience. Be polite to them and do not close off the conversation
immediately with such people.
• Generally, a stakeholder will be difficult because they are not comfortable with few things
in the project. So listen to them and answer such difficult stakeholders in a diplomatic way.
• Find out a way to meet them personally and have a one-on-one discussion. By this, you can
show your commitment towards them.
• Try to find out and resolve their motivations like are they worried about the budget of the
project or Curious about the project whether it is turning exactly as per their vision etc.
• Continuously engage such difficult stakeholders and make them understand that their
contribution is much value for the project.

When can a BA say that the requirements are done?

Requirements are considered as complete when they satisfy the below criteria.

• Requirements should be aligned with the objectives of a business. It means that the views
of business stakeholders should align with the needs to be built for the project.
• All the possible views and ideas of key stakeholders are to be extracted.
• A quality of the requirements should meet/satisfy the organization’s set of criteria’s
through which the quality of the requirements is tested.
• One can say that the requirements are complete when they could be done with in the
possible available resources.
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• All the stakeholders of the project should be in consent with the gathered requirements.

Which model is better than Waterfall model and Spiral Model?

Selecting the life cycle model for a project is based on its type, scope, and limitations. It is solely
dependent on the culture of the organization, their terms, and conditions, policies, a process of
developing the system etc.

Differentiate an alternate flow and exception flow of a use case diagram?

Basic flow represents the activities carrying out in order as required by the business. Alternate flow
represents actions that are performed apart from the basic flow and also be considered as an
optional flow. Whereas Exception flow is executed in a case or any errors.

Tell me about yourself.

Nearly every interview starts out with this question, but it’s frustratingly vague. Does the
interviewer want a complete rundown of your career history? Or a synopsis of your key skills? Or a
more personal account of how you got where you are today?
Instead of stumbling through a long-winded introduction that may or may not be relevant to the
position or interesting to your interviewer, a good approach is to provide a brief summary and turn
this opening question into an opportunity to shape the
direction of the job interview and focus the discussion on your most compelling business analysis
qualifications.

What is the importance of a flow chart?

Answer: A flow chart is a tool that provides a graphical representation of a process. This chart will
make a system easy to understand for everyone that is involved with the project that is underway.
If you have a massive and complex project with many entities, data, data sources, data destinations
and processes involved, a data flow chart is one of the most effective ways of making sense of all that
data. The flowchart mostly concerns itself with the flow of data through the system. It is popularly
used in Structured Systems Analysis and Design.

What is a use case model?

Answer: A business analysis presentation of the steps involved in defining the interactions between
a user (actor) and a system (computer system) is termed as use case model. It gives details on the
interactions and sets the expectations of how the user will work within the system. The use case
model consists of 2 main elements:

• Use case diagram – It is a graphical representation that details which actors can operate
which use cases
• Use case description – It is a detailed textual step by step presentation of interactions and
dialogue between the actor and the system.

Can you describe a time when you had to steer a client towards a different course of
action than the one, they were set on taking?

Being a business analyst isn't about telling a client what they want - it is about telling a client what
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is best for their business. This question shows how a candidate handles telling a client something
they may not want to hear.

• Problem-solving ability
• Ability to handle difficult situations.
• Business analysis ability

Are you familiar with SQL queries? What are the different parts of an SQL Statement?

It isn't necessary for a business analyst to have advanced technical skills, but it helps if they have
skills in SQL and relational database technology. This question shows their familiarity with and
understanding of SQL.
• Technical skills
• Understanding SQL documents
• Advanced analysis skills

Example: "An SQL statement has three parts. There is the Data Definition Language or DDL, the Data
Manipulation Language or DML, and the Data Control Language or DCL."

Name some of the documents that a business analyst uses?

Answer: Following are some of the common documents that a business analyst uses:

• Project vision document

• Use cases
• Requirement Management Plan
• User stories
• Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)
• Business Requirement Document
• System Requirement Specification (SRS)/ System Requirement Document (SRD)
• Test case
• Functional Requirement Specification (FRS)/ Functional Specification Document (FSD)

What is SRS and what are its key elements?

Answer: A System Requirements Specification (SRS) or a Software Requirements Specification is a

document or set of documents that describe the features of a system or software application. It
includes a variety of elements which define the intended functionality required by the stakeholders
and customer to satisfy the end users.

In addition to that, an SRS provides a high-level idea of the system and its behaviour, the main
supported business processes, the assumptions and the key performance parameters for the
system. The key elements of an SRS are:

• Scope of Work
• Functional Requirements
• Non-Functional Requirements
• Dependencies
• Data Model
• Assumptions
• Constraints
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• Acceptance Criteria

What is a requirement?

Answer: A requirement is a targeted solution to achieve specific business goals or objectives. It is an

input to various stages of SDLC. This is a basis of a project which must be validated by the stakeholders
and business users before implementation. Besides that, every requirement needs to be properly
documented for future reference purpose.

What is Use case?

Answer: A use case is a diagrammatic representation of a system which describes how a user uses a
system to accomplish a goal. It is an integral part of software engineering and software modelling
technique which defines the targeted features and the resolution of any possible errors which a user
may encounter.

What are the steps that you need to follow to design a use case?

Answer: The steps in designing use cases are:

• Identify the users of the system

• Creating a user profile for each category of users. This includes all roles that the users may
play and relevant to the system.
• Identify essential goals associated with each role. Also, identifying the significant roles.
• Creating use cases for every goal associated for a use case template. This also includes
maintaining the same abstraction level for the entire use case. Higher level use case steps are
considered as goals for the lower level.
• Structuring the use cases
• Reviewing and validating the users

What is Scope creep and how can you avoid scope creep?

Answer: Scope creep, or requirement creep is a term that relates to the uncontrolled changes or
deviation in the project’s scope within the same resource range for example within same schedule
and budget of the project. It’s an indication of poor project management and a viable risk to a project.
Some of the possible causes of scope creep are:

• Poor communication between the project’s stakeholders

• Improper documentation of the project’s

Requirements Scope creep could be avoided by:

• Clear documentation about the project scope

• Following proper change management
• Prior intimation about the effects of the changes to the associated parties
• Proper documentation of the new requirements in the project log
• Refrain from Gold Plating which means adding extra features to the existing functionalities
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What is Gap Analysis?

Answer: Gap Analysis is a technique to analyse the gap between the existing system and
functionalities, and the targeted system. Here gap means the amount of task or change that may
be required to get the intended result. It is a performance level comparison between the present
and the proposed functionalities.

What is BRD? How is it different from SRS?

Answer: A Business Requirements Document (BRD) is a formal contract between the customer and
the organization for a product. The difference between BRD and SRS are as follows:

What is requirement prioritization? What are the different techniques used for it?
Answer: Requirement’s prioritization is the process to allocate requirements based on the business
urgency to different phases, schedule, cost, etc.

There are various techniques which are used for requirements prioritization:

• MoSCoW Technique
• Requirements Ranking Method
• 100-dollar method
• Kano Analysis & More
• Five Whys

What is the requirement elicitation technique?

Answer: Requirement elicitation is the process of requirement gathering from stakeholders, users,
and customers by conducting meetings, questionnaires, interviews, brainstorming prototyping,
sessions, etc.
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What is the fundamental difference between a requirement and need in a business analysis
perspective?
Answer: Needs are high-level definitions of the future goals of a business. Whereas Requirements are
the representation of the detailed description of that business needs.

What are non-functional requirements and how do you capture them?

Answer: Non-functional requirements represent the performance level characteristics like how fast
it can respond, how smooth is a user interface, security, etc. of the application under development
(AUD). No functional requirements are captured in the SRS document in its designated section.

What are the skills that a business analyst must possess?

Answer: We can broadly categorize the skills of a business analyst in three types:

• Fundamental skills
• Technical skills
• Business Analysis skills

For each of the above categories a business analyst should possess some skills as mentioned below:

Which documents are used to capture non-functional requirements?

Answer: There are two documents that are used to capture non-functional requirements, and they
are:

• SDD (System Design Document)

• FRD (Functional Requirement Document)
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What is alternate flow in use case diagram?

Answer: It is an alternative solution or activity in a use case that should be followed in case of any
failure in the system.

Define Personas?
Answer: Personas represents User-Centered Design methodologies. To enable an application capable
of performing on a demographic basis, fictional characters are conceptualized by the business analysts
and based on their possible demographic specific behavior scenarios are created during design.

What is an activity diagram and what are the important elements of it?
Answer: An activity diagram is a visual representation of the workflow of a business use case. This
diagram shows various activities that take place in an organization in different departments like HR,
Sales, Accounts, etc. The activity diagram highlights the differences in the departments.

The important elements in Activity diagram are initial nodes, activities, control flows, decisions, a fork,
guard conditions, join and end nodes.

What is Pareto Analysis?

Answer: Pareto Analysis which is also known as 80/20 rule is a decision-making technique. It is a useful
technique for defect resolution and quality control. As per this analysis rule, 20 % causes create 80
% effects in a system, which is why it is named as 80/20 rule.

What are the best practices to follow while writing a use case?

Answer: Some of the best practices to write a use case are as follows:

• To become a valid use case, the use case must provide some value back to the actor or
stakeholder.
• The functional and non-functional requirements must be captured appropriately in the use
case.
• The use case must have one or more alternate flow along with the main flow.
• The use case should only describe what the system does and not how it is done which
means it will not describe the design. It will act as a black box from the viewpoint of an
actor.
• The use case should not have any, i.e. it should be stand alone.

Do you think a business analyst should be involved in testing?

Answer: Yes. Because a business analyst understands the overall system requirements and
challenges associated with it very well. Hence, he can be instrumental during the testing phase to
run it appropriately and resolve any system related query.
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What does INVEST stand for?

Answer: INVEST stands for –

• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Sized Appropriately
• Testable

What is BPMN and what are its basic elements?

Answer: BPMN is the Business Process Model and Notation. It is a graphical representation of
business processes. There are five basic elements of BPMN, and they are –

• Flow Objects
• Data
• Connecting Objects
• Swimlanes
• Artifacts
•
What is Kano analysis?

Answer: Kano Analysis is used to analyze a system regarding its requirements to identify its impact
on customers’ satisfaction.

What are the different types of actors you know in use case diagram?

Answer: we can categorize actors into four types:

• Human
• System
• Hardware
• Timer

What are the different types of the gap that a business analyst can encounter during gap
analysis?

Answer: There are mainly four types of gap –

• Performance Gap – The difference between expected performance and the actual
performance
• Product/Market Gap – The gap between budgeted sales and actual sales is termed as
product/market gap
• Profit Gap – The variance between a targeted and actual profit of the company.
• Manpower Gap – The gap between the required number and quality of workforce and
actual strength in the organization
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What is Benchmarking?

Answer: Benchmarking is about measuring the performance of an organization to compete in the

industry. In this process, a company may measure its policies, performance, rules and other
measures.

What are the problems that a business analyst may face?

Answer: From the initiation to post implementation of a project a business analyst may face the
following problems –

• Employees related issues

• Technology related problems
• Access related
• Business policies related issues
• Business model errors

How do you perform requirement gathering?

Answer: The requirement gathering process is generally divided into multiple steps which are
agnostic to the SDLC cycle. Each step involves:

• specific tasks to perform

• principles to follow
• documents to produce

The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Gather Background Information – This may include collecting background information about
the project, analyzing any potential risk associated with the project. Techniques like PESTLE analysis,
Porter’s Five forces framework could be used for this purpose.

Step 2: Identify Stakeholders – They are the decision makers of a project and approver for
requirements and priorities. Stakeholders may range from project owners to senior managers, end
users, and even competitors.

Step 3: Discover Business Objectives – This is to understand the business needs of the project before
going deep into the project. SWOT analysis, Benchmarking, analyzing business objectives SMART and
listing business objectives are some of the techniques used for this purpose.

Step 4: Evaluate Options – This is to identify the options to achieve business objectives. Impact
analysis, Risk analysis, Cost-benefit analysis are some of the methods which are used for this purpose.

Step 5: Scope Definition – A scope is a project development goal which is set based on the business
objectives. A scope definition document is used to detail the goals for each phase of a project.

Step 6: Business Analyst Delivery Plan – Based on the project scope, stakeholders availability and
project methodology a document called business analyst is created at this step. The document
provides information on deliverables with their timeline.
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Step 7: Define Project Requirements – In this step, two types of documents are used – Functional
requirement document and Non-functional requirement document. Based on the development
methodology to be used in the project the business analyst needs to clarify the requirements with the
stakeholders by interviewing them on the requirements and get the sign off on the same.

Step 8: Support Implementation through SDLC – This is the technical implementation step of the
requirements where a business analyst gets involved with different teams. This includes coordinating
with the development team and testing team to ensure requirements are implemented as expected
and appropriately tested against all the possible business scenarios. They also need to handle the
change request which may arise from the stakeholders at the later point of time.

Step 9: Evaluate Value Added By Project – This is the continuous evaluation of the project to evaluate
whether the business objectives implementation correctly meets the business needs outcome and
timeline.

Why it is necessary for a business analyst to get involved during the implementation of
requirements?

Answer: Gaining domain knowledge and providing an analytical solution are the two major criteria
of a business analyst. Hence, during actual implementation of a requirement or use case a business
analyst can help to resolve many business strategies related problems that may arise during the
implementation stage. On the contrary, they can learn from the problems which may help them to
provide the solution in similar scenarios and also help to gain their domain knowledge.

What is Business Model Analysis?

Answer: Business Model Analysis is a technique to analyze whether a business is viable and valuable
regarding social, economic and other perspectives. The business model analysis provides the
foundation for any required business model change and innovation for an organization.

Do you think the role of a Business Analyst is a need for a project?

Answer: Yes, because the role of a Business analyst is extremely beneficial from the kick-off to the
implementation of a project. Here are the top 5 reasons:

• During the project kick-off session, there are high possibilities that some technical queries
come up from stakeholder and clients. As we do not involve the technical project team during
this phase and immediate answering is essential, a business analyst may play a pivotal role to
answer those queries.

• The next phase after the kick-off session essentially involves some gap analysis, business
process analysis, documentation, SOW review, project scheduling and of course preparing
requirement specification documents.

• During the development and testing phase, a business analyst can play a significant role to
resolve any requirement related queries from the project teams. Besides that, he can validate
whether the requirements are correctly implemented and tested considering different
functional and non-functional scenarios.

• In a waterfall model, new requirement or modification of requirements can be asked from

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stakeholder considering changing business needs. In this case business analyst is the person
who can handle this change request with proper validation and analysis

What is the difference between Business analysis and Business Analytics?

Answer: The key difference between Business analysis and Business analytics is the first one is more
functions and process related whereas the second one is data related.
• Business analysis – recognizes business needs and determine the solutions to that problems.
Tools and techniques like SWOT, PESTEL, CATWOE, MOST, FIVE WHY, etc. are used for
business analysis.

• Business analytics – handles data and analyze data to get insights into a business. Finally, it
generates reports. Mainly four types of business analytics are used, and they are – descriptive
analytics, decisive analytics, prescriptive analytics, and predictive analytics Tools and
technologies like Big data, BI is used for this purpose.

What is process design?

Answer: Process design is a way that helps a business to analyze the challenges in business and to find
an effective solution for those. Through Process design workflows are created to get the best possible
outcome in the shortest time.

What are the effective skills to solve any problem as a business analyst?
Answer:

• Leadership skill
• Excellent communication skill
• Problem analysis skill
• Technical knowledge
• Domain knowledge

List the important advantages of Business process modelling

• It is used to picture a clear understanding of business processes.
• It offers consistency, control over the processes of the project.
• It helps you to identify and removes errors and bottlenecks.

How to define the feasibility study?

The feasibility study is a method of identifying the success rate of a proposed idea for a business
problem. It helps you to identify new opportunities and focus more on a project.

Why should we hire you?

Possible answer 1:
I have been working as a business analyst for the last 5 years, I am well-versed in all document types
and I have a proven track record of managing difficult stakeholders. The position that you are
offering now, suits me the most. I am sure I will help the company grow as I have done in previous
companies.
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Possible answer 2:
I have the right skill-set that you are looking for. Being a pro with Saas, FMEA, diagrams, and
documentation, I am a known problem-solver. I will fit into your team perfectly and steer towards
further growth.

Possible answer 3:
I have been working in start-ups to help them gain a competitive advantage. I am known for data
mining and interpreting skills. With my experience and knowledge, your start-up will definitely
receive an impetus.

Why do you want to become a business analyst?

Possible answer 1:
I have a knack for understanding clients and their needs. I always wanted to channel the voice of
customers to business owners. I can very well achieve that by being a business analyst.

Possible answer 2:
I love interacting with all departments. I believe only a business analyst has the most comprehensive
role in an organization. For instance, the technical side of a product intrigues me. So the know-how
that I gather helps me better handle the business aspect of a product, thus positively contributing
to the overall profitability of the product.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for a business analyst?

Possible answer 1:
As a business analyst, I feel the biggest challenge is when two stakeholders have conflicting
interests. It delays projects until and unless it gets sorted. I generally use Elicitation Requirement or
do a Pareto Analysis to resolve the conflict.

Possible answer 2:
Often business owners start with a plan but suddenly decide to change or modify it even though it
is well under its way to implementation. Such abrupt accommodation to suit the business owner
becomes a huge challenge for business analysts. In such cases, I try to directly resolve with the
stakeholder.

What makes you a good business analyst?

Possible answer 1:
There are many aspects that make me a better business analyst than many. My role as a business
analyst calls for maintaining good intra-personal skills with the different teams. My communication
skills and team-building effort helps me greatly in achieving that.
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Possible answer 2:
I believe business analysts need to be very detail-oriented. They should also have a determined yet
mild temperament so that they can stay calm in difficult situations. I possess these traits apart from
the technical qualifications.

Do you have any questions for us?

You can consider asking the following questions:

• What are your expectations from a business analyst?

• Which phases are your current business analyst working on?
• Do you have a centralized business analyst team?
• Are your business analysts also involved in system analysis?
• Do you follow strict processes or methodologies?
• What are the biggest challenges your business analysts are facing?
• Do you have many difficult stakeholders?
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Though we have categorized the above business analyst interview

questions based on our experience, however, it could be a mixed
and match for any career level depending on the organization and
their requirement.

Ms. Shaheen – 9392540018

[email protected]