Re: What does a Buisness Analyst do?

[Win Day <winday -at- home -dot- com>]

At 02:22 PM 1/11/00 -0800, Anthony Markatos wrote:
>Question to all listserv members:
>
>What does a Business Analyst (BA) REALLY do?  I am considering a position 
>doing such.
>
>I have read a lot of internet job ads for Business Analysts.  Many say that 
>the primary thing that BA's do is "Develop function models and functional 
>requirements specifications."  However, I have been in software for almost 
>fifteenth years and have never seen anyone - including individuals with a BA 
>title - create a data flow diagram (the  most common formal functional 
>model/specification tool).  So I am mystified as to what BA's do.
>

I sure hope you're kidding about not seeing any data flow diagrams!

I spent yesterday afternoon with a couple of engineers creating flow
diagrams for manufacturing processes.  I'm writing the FDA submission for a
medical device that has a lot of subcomponents, and this was the easiest
way for them to explain to me how they make all the widgets.

Today I'm off to head office.  We'll repeat the exercise with the software
and chemistry kit people.  When we're done, we'll create an overall flow
diagram of the whole shebang.

In all my years as an engineer and then a technical writer, I can't
remember ever NOT creating flow diagrams of the processes I was working on.
 We'd start with overall block diagrams, and move to successively more
detailed drawings as the project progressed.

Win
-------------

Win Day
Technical Writer

http://www.wordsplus.net

mailto:winday -at- wordsplus -dot- net