What Business Analyst Skills are Important for a New BA?

Are you exploring a business analyst role and wondering if you have the required business analysis skills and experience?

Core Skills

Typically if business analysis is a good career choice, you’ll be able to tick off these skills

Communication Skills

Business analysts must be good communicators. The ability to be a strong communicator in a virtual setting (via conference calls or web meetings) is equally important.

Problem-Solving Skills

No project is without problems. In fact, the entire project is a solution to a problem. At the highest level, BAs facilitate a shared understanding of the problem, the possible solutions, and determine the scope of the project.

Critical Thinking Skills

Business analysts are responsible for evaluating multiple options before helping a team settle on a solution. While communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills are core to being a good BA, they are not all that’s required.

Business Analysis Skills

The following skills are specific to the business analyst role.

Documentation and Specification Skills

While documentation or writing could be considered a subset of written communication, it’s really its own skill set for a BA.

Analysis Skills

Business analysts use a variety of techniques to analyze the problem and the solution. As a new BA, you might find that you naturally see gaps that others gloss over and identify the downstream impact of a change or new solution.

Visual Modeling

A close sister to many analysis techniques is the ability to create visual models, such as work-flow diagrams or wire-frame prototypes.

Facilitation and Elicitation Skills

Most new BAs have experience running very similar meetings or facilitating discussions that can is transferable into elicitation experience.

Business Analysis Tools

As a new business analyst, the ability to use basic office tools such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint should be sufficient to get you into the profession.

Other technical skills include the ability to use modeling tools, such as Visio or Enterprise Architect, requirements management tools, such as DOORS or Caliber, or project and defect management tools.