29 IT Business Analyst Interview Questions & Answers

"Listen to the stakeholders, acknowledge their importance, and thank them for their input. This brings to mind a project where one of the participants was impeding our progress by making unreasonable demands. I addressed their concerns so that we could proceed with the project. I used my communication skills to get them synced up with the rest of the group. The project finished on time, under budget, and met the company's expectations. Even the stakeholder mentioned was pleased with the results."

"There's a saying that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. I would dare to say that a good flowchart is worth more than one thousand pages. It allows the analyst to synthesize numerous pages of detail and explanations in one easy-to-follow chart. I can attest this first hand, during a hallway encounter with a board member, a couple of months ago, I was asked to explain the new backup process. I recommended, in order to save 40K in cloud storage cost, after a minute into my explanation I was able to recognize in her face that I was not being understood. I quickly changed approach and took her to my office and show them the flowchart I had prepared. Within 30 seconds her face went from a confused look to an optimistic smile. she told me -"If only you would have shown me this first". Flowcharts are key especially when there are multiple variables in the process, the human brain can only hold from 3-5 things at a time, thus reading a text becomes cumbersome, while in a flowchart it is all there."

"When developing a project there are several phases that are integral to its success, personally, I make sure not to skip any of the following:



Planning: Including preliminary investigation with feasibility analysis, SWOT analysis, and business case.

Analysis: Including requirements. Gathering and making sure all the requirements/user stories are SMART.

Design: Including security by design, and ensuring the final solution is scalable and flexible as much as possible.

Implementation: Building the actual solution.

Testing: Includes security, functionality, and user acceptance training.



User training also plays a decisive role in the solution's success. A solution not used is not a solution it is just an effort."

"The INVEST acronym is often used to define user stories. It stands for Independent Negotiable Valuable Estimate Small Testable.

User stories must be :

Independent means they should not depend on other user stories to be able to be accomplished.

Negotiable they must have enough info that is clear what needs to be done not how to do it.

Valuable the value being delivered must be clear.

Small they must be small enough to be completed within a few days or weeks. (1 sprint or less)

Testable this often achieved by defining the User Acceptance Criteria for the qualities above."

"On agile methodologies, KANO Analysis is used to analyze requirements impact on the end-user, based on four main characteristics:



Expectation - What does your client expect as a minimum from your product or solution. Example: A client would expect a Toyota Camry to drive.

Performance - Attributes that deliver extra functionality that the client knows exists. Example: The Camry has an EcoGreen V6 engine.

Excitement - Attributes that clients are not expecting but make clients excited about them. Example: The Camry has a flying car mode.

Indifference - Attributes the client doesn't care about or are not desirable, but are present. Example: As per regulation 5E all Camrys must have a catalytic converter with cadmium on it."

"A misuse case is the expected interaction between an actor and a system. For example, a Ford sedan car is being driven at 30mph on the pavement.

While a misuse case is a case in which the actor interacts with the systems in ways that the system is not designed for. For example: the same Ford sedan is driven into an off-road trail full of sand and big rocks. Misuse cases often lead to system failure."

"Alternate flows are alternative ways an actor could interact with the system to reach the same end goal. While exception flows are unexpected ways in which an actor can interact with the system. Is crucial to understand and add the most likely alternate flows when designing a system, also is key to implementing proper error handling to deal with the exception flows. We don't want our solution crashing when something unexpected takes place."

"All methodologies have their pros and cons. Personally, I prefer Scrum when developing new products or solutions since is more suited to deal with the inherent uncertainty of new things. On the other hand, it is something that the organization has done before multiple times and everything is figured out. For example: building a new McDonalds or signing up with a new client if you are an MSP. I then see the value of the predefined structure being offered by a waterfall methodology. When building new products or solutions the spiral models are good as well, as long as you are very careful managing your risk."

"Working with diverse stakeholders who have different needs can be challenging. I believe the best way to make sure needs are met is to engage the stakeholders early in the process. I listen to what they believe they need and then discuss how we can achieve this using IT resources. Once the project is underway, I frequently communicate with them, ensuring that we're going in the right direction."

"The types of documents I work with depending a lot on the project, some documents I've worked with are functional specifications, business requirements, and use case diagrams."

"For me, the use of the Pareto Analysis is a must when prioritizing solutions and tasks on the backlog. During the first 6 months at ****, my main role was to work at the strategic and initiative horizons to develop the institution's 3-year plan to its digital transformation. During this time I used a Pareto Analysis to prioritize the order in which we should engage the solutions in our plan. Starting with those that deliver the highest value with the least effort and then moving forward down the line."

"Risk is the possibility of something negative happening, for example, having unnecessary ports open on your firewall carries the risk of a malicious actor using them to enter your network. While a business issue is an actual problem or situation a business has, for example having cash flow reserves of a week is not a risk or an actual problem the business has. Risk can be mitigated thus reducing the likelihood of the negative outcome taking place, closing the unnecessary ports. While the business issues can be solved, reduced unnecessary expenses to increase your cash flow."

"When implementing a new process I always try to choose a benchmark that will be SMART so it becomes easier to highlight if actual value, in the form of bottom-line improvements, is actually being gained or not. Any change I implement must be aimed for the betterment of the organization and aligned with its vision and values.

In my last position, I was tasked with improving the overall speed of the enrollment process. To create a SMART benchmark, I decided to observe and time the operation. It took an average lead time of 4 hours and 45 minutes. By observing the processes, I was able to gather that the warm hand-offs would require an employee to stand up and walk the student to the next workstation, followed by some small talk 5-8 minutes in total. By using Power automate, I created a new semi-automated warm hand-off process in which at the end of every interaction the employee would assign the student to another representative, using a round-robin approach. This, in turn, reduced the inevitable small talk and walking to zero while maintaining the necessary transfer of context information about the student in a secure and private manner. With this I was able to reduce the lead time by 23%, thus preventing the expenditure of additional capital and increasing the total throughout the system."

"Benchmarks provide the IT business team with an assessment of how well IT projects are performing and whether they are exceeding or underperforming against the organization's standards. Benchmarking also gives the management team an idea of how the company is performing against its competitors."

"In business, change is always constant, I would meet with them to discuss the new requirements to both understand the new requirements and update the team on how the changes impact the project."

"I would say that a business analyst role is not the same in every organization. The critical factor is understanding what the organization needs, and then developing suggestions for technologies that will fulfill these needs."

"There are a variety of tools I have used as an IT business analyst. I first which comes to my mind is JIRA which is the product design management tool where we can create stories, estimating them, and keep track of them. JIRA also helps in keeping the track of the velocity of the team. Other commonly used tools are Microsoft Office Suite that includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, MS Visio, and Office 365. On the database side, I extensively use SQL query language and Tableau for creating visualizations and dashboards."

"I mostly use flowcharts, context diagrams, and case diagrams, depending upon which is more suitable to communicate with the stakeholders. I feel it is easier and clear to communicate the process with the diagram and provides better understanding."

"In my last job, I was tasked with leading the efforts to upgrade our old exchange server. After conducting my preliminary investigation, I concluded that from a cost-benefit point of view it was no longer feasible to continue using and on-premise deployment. This assessment resulted in controversy at first within the IT team, since that felt like losing control of the server. Given this situation, I decided to hold a team meeting and conducted a SWOT analysis as a team exercise. My goal was to lead the team to conclude that this was indeed the best approach and it worked. With the team's understanding, I moved forward and presented it to management. It got approved and we moved the service to the cloud. This resulted in better availability, increased security, and less overhead on the department's internal processes."

"Critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making support are the most important aspect of analytical reporting. Analytical reporting provides the base for business decisions on the basis of facts rather than assumptions. Analytical reporting acts as the tool to extract information and patterns from the data that make businesses think rationally and make appropriate actions."

"I'm gonna be honest while I have been taught SQL in the past and while I do understand the basics this is not something I use on a daily basis in my current role, however, I am sure I can pick up SQL again if it is something needed for this role."

"Cash flow issues will arise since the income is seasonal. To correct these issues I would recommend for the division to find an additional source of revenue that will provide revenue year-round, like additional products that your target clientele would be interested in. Also, I would recommend options to limit the operating expenses when resources are not being used at capacity, like the use of scalable cloud infrastructure to only pay for computing when is actually needed."