Soft Skills for Business Analyst

Business Analyst:

The Business Analyst is an agent of change.

“Business Analysis is a disciplined approach for introducing and managing change to organizations. And this analysis is done by a Business Analyst.”

Soft Skills:

Soft skills are non-technical skills that describe how you work and interact with others.

Business Analyst Skills:

Business analyst skills are qualities for identifying business needs, analyzing data, and implementing business solutions. This analysis connects the business and technological aspects of a company. A business analyst required many skills (soft skills as well as hard skills) that helps them to collaborate with team/members of organization.

Following are the soft skills for a business analyst:

· Communication

· Critical thinking

· Problem solving

· Management

· Negotiation

· Team work

1.Problem Solving:

Problem-solving is a complex skill. It involves critical thinking, decision making, creativity, and information processing. Effective problem solvers use a systematic approach that allows them to break down difficult problems into smaller, more manageable parts.

As a business analyst, your duty is to help companies to solve problems, and you need strong problem solving skills to be successful. You must know how to apply logical thinking, statistics, and predictive analytics to solve issues. Successful business analysts are good at finding patterns and creating implementation plans for solutions.

Following are the steps for solving the problem:

· Step 1: Define the problem.

· Step 2: Analyze the problem.

· Step 3: Develop potential solutions.

· Step 4: Evaluate the options.

· Step 5: Select the best option.

· Step 6: Implement the solution.

· Step 7: Measure the results.

2.Negotiation:

Negotiation is an important part of a business or any interaction. But not all of us negotiate in the same way. In fact, there are five different negotiation styles:

· competing

· collaborating

· compromising

· avoiding

· accommodating

Negotiating with co-workers and developing a work plan that benefits your team-mates are also essential qualities of business analysts.

As a business analyst you must be convincing. You must be persuasive. Business analysts also use negotiation skills when working through solutions and maintaining healthy relationships with external partners. Business analysts negotiate at every project phase. At the initial stage of a project, negotiation skills are used to decide what they must include in the project’s vision. Business analysts then use their negotiation skills to determine which requests turn into requirements and their priority levels. As the project progresses, negotiation skills are again used to determine the functional design which fulfill the requirements.