Business Analyst Interview Questions

A list of top frequently asked business analyst interview questions and answers are given below.

1) What is a flow chart?

Flow charts are used to show the complete flow of systems through symbols and diagrams.

2) What is the importance of the flow chart?

Flow chart is important because it makes the system easy to understand for the developers and all concerned people.

3) What is SDLC?

SDLC is an acronym stands for Software Development Life Cycle. Sometimes, it is also called System Development Life Cycle or Application development Life Cycle. It is used to describe the process for planning, creating, testing and deploying an information system.

The SDLC process includes five phases:

• Planning
• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Maintenance

4) What are the different types of SDLC models?

Following are the different SDLC models:

• Waterfall Model
• Iterative Model
• V-Model
• Spiral Model
• Prototype model etc.

5) What are the most important skills which business analyst should have?

A business analyst must be:

• A good listener
• Quick learner
• Good analytical skills
• Problem solving approach
• Tech Savvy
• Thinker beyond the box

Rather than the above stated mandatory skills, a business analyst must have good communication and written English.

6) What are the main challenges faced by a business analyst?

These are the following three challenges faced by a business analyst:

• Change management: It is the most important challenge because it happens in real time. It occurs when you get the requirements from the client side and when development is started client will come up some changes or enhancements.
• Cross team management: It is due to conflict between team and individuals. It requires soft skills and smartness.
• Communication problems: Sometimes this type of problem can happen. You might be good in English speaking and understanding the English language but sometimes you get difficulty to understand the different kind of English accent. For example: Americans speak English differently, Romans speak English differently etc.

7) What is project management? Can you explain?

Project management is the process of planning, organizing, motivating and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve a specific goal. It is used to organize scientific and daily problems. The main challenge to project management is achieve all the project goals. These are time, quality, scope, budget etc.

8) What do you know about Risk and Issue?

Risk: Risk is something which you can forecast and can handle by formulating mitigation plans.

Issue: Risk which happened is known as Issue. Once the issue is occurred, it is solved by contingency management or Issue management. Generally issues are not solved but you can get a lesson from there for other projects.

9) What are the key strengths of a business analyst according to you?

Business analysis is an evolving profession, so a business analyst must have the necessary skills for success. He must have the knowledge of technical as well as nontechnical issues.

10) What is SDD?

SDD stands for System Design Document. It is a middle step dividing between business users and developers.

11) Tell me about the diagrams mostly used by business analysts?

These are the mostly used diagram models:

• Activity Diagram
• Business Domain model
• Data model
• Data flow diagram
• Feature matrix
• State diagram
• Sequence diagram
• Scope model etc.

12) What is a use case diagram?

The use case diagram is a tool. It is used to explain the entire business environment. It shows a number of relation events or actions that are performed by a single actor.

13) What is UML modeling?

UML stands for Unified Modeling Language. It is a standard in the industry which is used for visualizing, documenting, and constructing various component of a system.

14) What are exceptions?

Exceptions are the unaccepted situations or results in an application.

15) What are the roles and responsibilities of a business analyst?

The main role of business analyst is to organize requirement and document in a clear format and make sure that the coordination is proper between the client and development team.

16) What are the mainly required tools for a business analyst?

A business analyst generally uses rational tools, MS World, MS Excel, Power point, MS project etc.

17) What is INVEST?

INVEST stands for Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Sized Appropriately, and Testable. It is used to help project managers and technical team to deliver quality products/services.

18) Which model is better according to you, the Water fall model or Spiral Model?

You should answer this question on the type and scope of the project. You can also say that a life cycle model is always selected on the basis of organizational culture and various other scenarios to develop the system.