A business analyst after having spent a good number of years gaining useful experience in the field of business analysis after completing the Certification Course for Business Analysts often wonders if the time has come to move up the ladder and become a senior business analyst. But another question that pops up subsequently is whether he/she possesses the right skills, know-how, and experience to do justice to the elevated role and the responsibilities that will come with it. Knowing the senior analyst job description can assist your company in hiring the best person for the job or in determining the best career path for you based on your interests. In this article, we define the senior analyst job description and what do business analysts do.
Senior Analyst Job Description
Senior business analyst job responsibilities may vary significantly from one organization to another and even across different projects within the same organization. However, there are specific areas where we see a senior business analyst takes up higher and greater responsibilities in comparison to a junior/mid-level business analyst. At a broad level, below are a few such roles and responsibilities that fall into a senior business analyst’s scope of work –
Strategic Analysis
Senior analyst job description involves strategic business analysis in terms of understanding the business need behind an initiative. It involves understanding where it fits into the organization’s overall goal/ vision/ objective. Their role also involves looking at the bigger picture and determining how the initiative at hand. It has an impact on other projects/ programs/ initiatives. Such strategic thinking activities essentially include understanding the fitment of the initiative to the organization’s overall strategy. While also analyzing and determining the various inter-related initiatives. This helps business sponsors in taking well-informed critical decisions and planning for the initiative at hand. Its impact on the other related projects/ programs/ initiatives.
Business Analysis Planning and Estimation
Senior business analysts are to perform the planning and estimation for the requirements specific tasks/activities in a project. They put in efforts to understand the overall purpose and size of the project, stakeholders to work with, methodology. It is done in order to follow in executing the project, processes that need to be adher to, and other critical characteristics of the project. These important aspects become inputs to the complete business analysis plan that outlines the business analysis tasks. (typically involving all activities around requirements creation and management process), deliverables to be produced as well as the effort estimates for each task. Senior business analysts, thus, come up with a plan that is add into the overall project plan and monitor for ensuring adherence to it by the senior management.
Senior Business Analyst Skills
The Senior business analysts have the required skill-set and experience to work on multiple projects simultaneously. While doing the required justice to each of them. Such seasoned business analysts are able to utilize their expertise developed over the years to undertake responsibilities across multiple projects together. In addition, they are the chosen ones when it comes to tackling business-critical and complex assignments. Complexity can be in varied forms with a few mentioned below –
- Project belonging to a completely unfamiliar domain requiring the need to understand business process and any associated systems from scratch.
- System to be developed interfaces with multitude of systems needing detailed interface analysis.
- Involvement of multiple business stakeholders across different business areas/ teams with the aim to reach consensus on requirements & solutions collaboratively.
- Requirements are to be channelised through to stakeholders distributed across varied teams/ organizations who are leading solution implementation/ delivery.
Leading A Team of Business Analysts
In projects with a large scope where a team of business analysts works together. A senior business analyst assign the responsibility of managing their efforts as well. Senior business analyst plans their work, oversee their activities, remove any hindrances that are impacting their work and take accountability for their work as true leader.
As needed, the senior business analyst also mentors his/her team of business analysts by familiarizing them with tools and techniques. They can utilize in performing their tasks better. He/she also makes them conversant with the business needs, impacted business processes, required system capabilities. Any other aspects they need to be aware of in order to perform their tasks better. In addition, the senior business analyst also defines performance measurement benchmarks.. It requires to use to evaluate the activities and deliverables of business analysts so that the require measures for improvement can perform accordingly.
Senior Analyst Job vs Project Manager Job
Apart from the aforementioned key differences between senior business analyst and project manager roles. There are a few other important differences that are not customary but can observe in some cases. A senior business analyst has a task to add value as a consultant in pre-sales activities. When required considering he/she has a detailed understanding of the business domain. Another important role that separates a senior business analyst from his/her lesser experience counterparts is that a senior business analyst. It is trusted by business stakeholders to understand their needs & priorities and empowered to act as their proxy in discussions with the delivery owners and other stakeholders.
Here are inviting comments from the business analysis community to enlighten us with their views on what additional roles and responsibilities. These are taken up by a senior business analyst that separates them from a junior/mid-level business analyst.
If you want to know more about Business analyst certification, you can also explore our other blogs related to becoming a better business analyst, ECBA certification, and Business analyst certification FAQ
