-tell me something about yourself

- I have over 5 years of experience in business analysis, requirements

management, project coordination, business modeling, quality
assurance and business process improvement
- Have worked in various financial sectors like insurance, banking,
mortgages, investments, wealth management and also in telecom
- Have worked in various phases of SDLC like planning, requirements
gathering, analysis, design, development, testing and implementation
- As a part of requirements gathering, was involved in collaborative
sessions like direct interviews with business sponsors, end users and
subject matter experts.
- Was instrumental in drafting documents like BRD, Use Cases, use case
diagram, class, sequence, activity etc.. SRS, test plan, test cases and
training documentation
- Facilitated various meetings like JAD, walkthroughs, reviews and
status meetings.
- Was involved in feasibility analysis, gap analysis, estimations,
scheduling, business modeling using UML, status reviews and training.
- I have worked with various tools like RequisitePro, DOORS, Rational
rose, MS Visio, MS Project, and QA tools like mercury Winrunner, QTP,
quality center
- This is my professional background in brief

Tell me something about yourself which is not there in

your resume
- In my resume, I have portrayed my experience, education and my
professional skills.
- But there are many situations I have faced in my real-time work
environment which I did not explain in detail.
- In this process, I have also faced quite a few challenges and it was a
very good learning experience to encounter, analyze and solve those
problems. Such situations have given a very good dimension to my
knowledge, experience and career as a whole. (then explain about
problems you have faced and various solutions…discussed in
subsequent FAQs)
-
As a BA, what were the various things you have done?
- Planning
- Requirements gathering
- Requirements analysis
- Document of understanding
- Feasibility analysis
- Gap analysis
- Risk analysis – mitigation plan (contingency plan)
- Functional decomposition
- Work breakdown structure
- Estimations & scheduling
- Proposal / statement of work
- BRD
- Use cases
 - Business modeling diagrams
- JAD session
- Walkthrough & reviews
- Design specifications & architecture framework
- SRS - clarifications
- Project coordination
- Change request management
- Configuration management
- Progress tracking
- Conduct Project status meetings
- Status Updates to client
- Test plan
- Test cases
- Defect management
- UAT
- Project closure
- Feedback from the client
- Training documentation
- Training to end users
- Process improvement
- Process implementation

What are the problems you have faced

- First and foremost, requirements gathering is a challenge by itself and
without thorough planning, we can’t afford to meet end users or
business sponsors to gather requirements. - proper homework
- Complexity of requirements, usage of unknown terminology and
jargon was a challenge to me when I widened my domain expertise
from telecom to financial services. Now that I’ve been into financial
services for the last few years, I’m very much comfortable with any
kind of terminology used in requirements. Also the experience helped
me in getting adapted to business domain and understanding market
dynamics.
- Communication: this need not be a challenge with English language,
but also due to ambiguity in requirements, vague requirements, oral
communication (unrecorded or unofficial or unconfirmed
communication) – approvals, record everything
- Conflicting requirements: some requirements contradict each other
and they will be usually given by two different sets of users. – bring all
users under a roof
- Changing requirements: accommodating changes or enhancements
into requirements is a perennial issue in BA’s job and BA has to plan
and feel comfortable with that. – have change request framework in
place, re-estimate, reschedule.
- Facilitating meetings - bringing all key persons under a roof would not
be very easy all the times. – let all know in advance and block their
calendars, send reminder mails
- Feedback- delay in feedback from end user for approvals or
clarifications – reminder mails, escalation
- Missing schedules - due to inexperience developers or project team
members – make estimators as responsible persons in their phase
 - Impractical estimations from technical teams which would lead BA to
go forward with bad planning which would affect the whole project -
make estimators as responsible persons in their phase
- Conflict between teams - Difference in perception among all teams
involved –Third parties involvement - if other parties are involved in
form of project development teams, or third party tools, they bring
their own set of challenges. – record all assumptions and dependencies
- In case of conflicts, bringing all teams members to agree to one
unanimous solution is again the biggest challenge for any BA.- see
next answer
- These are few of the challenges I have faced in my career and working
through such situations made me a good BA and this experience in any
project added a lot of value to my subsequent projects.

How would you solve those problems

- First of all, I don’t believe in oral communication or any written
communication without proper approvals and sign-offs.. This would
solve a lot of problems.
- Before gathering requirements, I perform a thorough study of the
whole issue, understand nuances of an existing application (if
applicable), take help of subject matter experts and web resources to
understand what am I going to elicit and who is the concerned, I’m
going to meet. This will make me comfortable in requirements
gathering session.
- During conflict management, I’ll facilitate a meeting with parties
involved in the conflict, explain them the situation, request them or
provide them a choice of solutions, engage the stakeholders in
constructive brainstorming sessions and come up with pros and cons
of all choices and make sure that everyone come to a unanimous
solution. In spite of this, if they don’t land on a common ground, I’ll
involve project manager, business sponsor in the discussion and take
their help in resolving the issue.
- Teams which deliver their estimations and schedules are asked to
make sure that their estimations are practical and also give them a
disclaimer that they are solely responsible for any delay or problem in
their respective phases.
- If we assume anything, we have to put them down in project plan or
test plan or BRD. Assumptions, deliverables, constraints, dependencies
should be clearly mentioned to all stakeholders.

How would you plan before requirements gathering?

- Before gathering requirements, I perform a thorough study of the
whole issue, understand nuances of an existing application (if
applicable), take help of subject matter experts and web resources to
understand what am I going to elicit and who is the concerned person,
I’m going to meet. This will make me comfortable in requirements
gathering session.
How do you gather requirements?
- Requirements’ gathering is a process of understanding business and
end user requirement from business sponsor/ end user.
- Before I meet the concerned person, I make my homework and be
ready for the meeting.
- In the meeting, I would try to be as inquisitive as possible to derive
requirements in depth.
- I would utilize this opportunity to gather and consolidate as many low
and high level requirements as possible so that it would be convenient
for me to perform feasibility and gap analysis subsequently.
- If I don’t understand any term or concept, I would request the
business sponsor to explain the point in detail.
- Once I understand requirements, I will try to explain him/her as what I
understood and perceived.
- I make all notes so as not to miss any key word or idea or concept.
- Once I get back to place, I make a document of understanding in
which I store all points discussed and again send the same to the
business sponsor in mail so that he could understand if I really
understood and gathered right requirements or not.
- In this way, I make sure that there is no scope for assumption or
confusion or ambiguity as we can’t afford for any mistakes in this
stage as the whole project planning and execution is dependent on my
diligence and accuracy in gathering requirements.

During requirements gathering, if you don’t understand

end user's explanation what would you do?
- Request him to repeat the concept and pay diligence towards it.
- Then I’ll repeat his words and explain my perception and
understanding so that he can correct if there is some gap in
understanding.
- Then I’ll make notes of each word he says.
- After coming back to my workstation, I would prepare document of
understanding and share it with him
- Go to subject matter experts to understand and fill in those gaps
- Use web resources to gather more knowledge in that area
- Make sure that there is no scope for gap or assumptions or
misunderstanding.

How do you analyze requirements?

- Once I gather requirements, next step is to understand and analyze
those requirements.
- First thing I would do is feasibility study to understand whether the
development of an application is possible with the help of gathered
requirements or not.
- I emphasize on practicality of application development or re-
engineering.
- I would take help of my past experience, knowledge in the field, web
resources and subject matter experts to understand this. I work
closely with project manager during this activity
- If I’m working in a product development project (where already a
readymade product...also called as COTS (commercial off the shelf
 product)), I perform gap analysis to understand gaps between existing
application / product and required customizations. This is again a kind
of feasibility analysis which helps us to understand whether we can go
ahead with the project or not.
- Next and the most important activity is functional decomposition which
is nothing but a process of decomposing the whole application
requirements into various functional areas, functional components and
functionalities. This would help me in understanding the application or
requirements more thoroughly.
- Once I understand requirements inside out, I start working on use
cases, various modeling diagrams and subsequently BRD.

How would you perform risk analysis?

- Risk analysis starts with identifying and forecasting various risks
involved in the project execution.
- Then a root cause analysis has to be made to identify causes for those
risks. This would help us in understanding what the reasons for these
problems are.
- Then we have to devise contingency plan or back-up plan in case of
any risk, so that the negative impact due to risks can be mitigated.
- This activity helps BA and PM to ensure smooth flow of operations
- All problems and challenges could be risks. Solutions for those
problems could be contingency plan or mitigation activity.

What are your strengths?

- Assertive
- Communicative
- Perfectionist
- Never assume things
- Conflict management skills
- Time management skills
- Risk management skills
- Planning skills
- Good interpersonal skills
- Can work as a team member or team leader or as an independent
performer.

What are your weaknesses?

- I put more effort to understand unnecessary minute details. But again
this weakness is being rationalized by the fact that I’m good at time
management. So I make sure that this weakness doesn’t really affect
project outcome and quality of my deliverables. I’m slowly working
towards coming out of this weakness.

Many experienced people applied for this job, why

should I give this job to you?
- Apart from my experience and expertise in BA, these could be some
other factors to consider
i. I’ve been into various phases of SDLC like planning, design,
development, testing and I possess bird’s eye view of the whole
project execution
 ii. I’ve worked very closely with PM and in his absence, I worked
in managing projects. This would add a lot of value to my next
employer.
iii. Apart from these my problem solving, forecasting, risk
management, conflict management, time management skills
would definitely come to rescue when the project needs some
very good planning and implementation resources.
iv. I have worked in process initiation, improvement and
implementation teams in various processes and quality
standards like CMMI, ISO. I’m good at setting standards,
guiding the team, implementing and process and making sure
that the whole project runs as per the pre-set process.

What is your involvement in QA and testing?

- Infact I have experience in complete test life cycle starting from
i. Analyzing requirements and identifying test scope and
scenarios to be tested
ii. Writing master test plan and functional test plans – setting
guidelines for the whole testing process and testing team.
iii. Preparing test data by retrieving data through SQL queries.
iv. Creating and executing test cases
v. Raising defects, analyzing impact, reporting it to development
team, performing regression on the next build, closing the
defects.
vi. Then, I was instrumental in UAT.
vii. I have very good exposure to testing tools like Winrunner, QTP
and defect management tools like Quality Center, Test Director.
viii. I’ve been working with test team very closely and am very
much comfortable with the whole testing process.

Did you ever write and execute test cases?

- Yes Infact during initial phases of my career when I have worked with
LG and Franklin Templeton, I was involved in identifying test
scenarios, creating test cases, executing them and lodging defects.
- Then I was involved not only in creating and executing but also
reviewing test cases which were developed by the testing team.

Were you involved in UAT?

- Yes, very much.
- As a BA or BSA or SA, it was one of my primary responsibilities to
facilitate the end user in understanding all functionalities of an
application and making sure that he understands the application.
- This involved providing a walkthrough of the application, making him
work hands on and explaining him the mapping between his
requirements and final end product.
- Subsequently, my job is to obtain his feedback and if everything goes
well, obtaining his sign off as well. If there is any problem, I would
again report the issue to PM, development team and work on solving
those issues.
Do you mind working under a person who is not as
experienced as you are
- Not at all.
- If at all, if I get a chance to work under any person who is not
experienced as me, I would see that my experience, expertise and
knowledge will be helpful for him and will try my best to help him/her
out of any problematic situations.
- Finally wherever I work, I tend to work for the best interest of the
project, Organization and the team and there is no scope for personal
ego.

What is your experience in conducting and attending

meetings?
- I’ve been involved in facilitating and conducting meetings at various
levels throughout my career.
- As a BA, I am involved in various sessions like JAD, walkthroughs,
reviews, audits etc.
- I use MS outlook calendar to convene meetings.
- I almost always believe in sending reminder mails at periodic intervals
so that all participants are aware and they don’t go ahead with
planning other activities during the planned meeting schedules.
- On the meetings, I was involved in initiating sessions, coordinating
sessions, moderating sessions, brainstorming and constructive debates
as well.
- I’m good at making notes and preparing minutes of meetings in
interviews.
- After the completion of any meeting, I would usually thank all
participants for their presence and contribution and also send them
minutes of meetings for their records and reference.

How would you introduce a process?

- First of all, I would study the existing system
- Then assess the advantages and shortcomings of the process.
- Then I try to map my experience working under various processes and
try to see what could be the right initiative to implement so as to avoid
shortcomings.
- Then I suggest my reporting manager and with his help, I would
initiate the improvement plan, help stakeholders who are affected by
the change and monitor the process.
- Once I see the result in a fraction of Organization, I would work
towards implementing the same throughout the project or discipline.
- With my experience in initiating and monitoring the process, working
towards setting up various procedures, guidelines, formats,
documents, I would feel very comfortable and good to know in process
implementation program.

Which SDLC methodology would you support?

- I have worked in conservative waterfall approach, then iterative
methodologies like agile which stresses of build a little, design a little.
Spiral methodology prototyping model.
 - I was a part of projects implementing rational unified process and
many adhoc methodologies.
- Now being exposed to all these kinds of methodologies, I know pros
and cons of all these and I don’t say that any one method would be a
right fit for any kind of project.
- It all depends on what is the priority. If estimates, release dates, cost
and budget are important and if there is no room for new changes, I
would recommend waterfall methodology.
- If client satisfaction, his regular feedback is important, obviously
iterative methodology suits the demand.
- If the business or end user is not very clear with their requirements,
prototyping would be the best solution as that would enable them to
think more towards their expectations.

What are the various tools you have worked on?

- For storing, editing or managing requirements, use cases, I used
rational RequisitePro and Telelogic doors.
- For business modeling and UML diagrams, I have used rational rose
and MS Visio
- For project management, resource allocation, scheduling and planning,
I used MS Project.
- For QA testing - mercury Winrunner, QTP
- Test management – quality center, test director
- Configuration management - MS VSS, rational Clearcase
- General – MS Office (word, excel, PPT)
- Apart from working on these tools, I’m even comfortable with working
under environment where tools are not used in a big manner

How would you provide estimates?

- Functional decomposition or work breakdown structure would be first
step towards this
- This will help me in identifying project scope and various modules.
- With the help of PM, I will understand man hours required for each
phase or activity.
- Based on this, I will understand effort in hours by dividing man hour
estimation by number of resources available.
- With help of MS project I allocate resources and schedule milestones
based on available business days.
- Once I know man hour estimations, it would be easy for me to make
cost estimations.

Whom did you report to?

- While working as BA or BSA, I report directly to project manager

Did you ever work in legacy environments?

- Yes, very much.
- My project with xxxxxx is all about migrating legacy application into a
VB desktop application.
- Also my project with xxxxxx is about migrating desktop version to
web version.
 - I’m equally comfortable with projects involving new application
development or application re-engineering to migration from legacy
mainframes application.

What career plan do you have?

- After being involved in various roles and performing various activities
as, BSA and BA, I’m looking forward for understanding nuances of
role, learn more and contribute more and there is no end for learning.
- Also since I have informal experience in project and program
management, I look forward to see myself in a role which has scope
for both BA and PM role.
- Also I would like to train more people in BA and provide them chance
to look into various tasks which I’m exposed to.

When can you join the job, if you are selected?

- Since my project has completed implementation, my role is
accomplished and I’m currently free.
- I can join my next assignment almost immediately with 24 hours of
notice.

What questions do you have?

- What is the team size
- What are the various tools you use
- What are the methodologies you follow
- Do you foresee any risks in the role I’ll fit into?
- What are the various projects in pipeline (not recommended for
contract roles)
- What would be my career roadmap (not recommended for contract
roles)
- What do you feel my areas of improvement are so that I can fit into
this role.. Or do I fall short of expectations in any area?

What do you expect in your future work environment

- scope for learning
- scope for contributing
- understanding more nuances
- training people
- project management
- process implementation

What motivates you?

- all above mentioned factors
- positive environment
- challenges in job

What do you like in BA

- everything
- very idea of setting standards, implementing the same
- being a part of every stage of project execution
- involvement in initiating a whole project
- importance in role
 - varied exposure
- importance in the whole system

What is that you don’t like?

- Nothing…really nothing