💥 8 Essential Business Analyst Abilities 💥

🗣 Communication Skills

💻 Technical Skills

📈 Analytical Skills

🗎 Documentation Skills

💡 Problem Solving Skills

🤔 Decision-Making Skills

💼 Managerial Skills

🤝 Negotiation and Persuasion Skills

1. Communication Skills 🗣

By nature of our job, us Business Analysts spend a great deal of time interacting with users, clients, management and developers.

A project’s success may depend upon our clear communicating details like project requirements, requested changes and testing results.

Fluent language skills and written communication abilities are necessary to thrive in our career as a Business Analyst.

2. Technical Skills 💻

In order to identify business solutions, we should know what information technology applications are being utilised, what new possible outcomes can be achieved through current platforms, and what the latest technology offers.

Testing software and designing business systems are also important technical Business Analyst skills.

Gaining respect and creating a sense of confidence among IT and business end-users requires us to speak with confidence about business and technology, and to demonstrate a strong technical aptitude.

3. Analytical Skills 📈

A BA skill set should include outstanding analytical skills so that a customer’s business needs are properly interpreted and translated into application and operational requirements.

One aspect of our role is analysing data, documents, user input surveys and workflow to determine which course of action will correct the business problem.

Strong analytical skills are beneficial in performing our job successfully.

4. Documentation Skills 🗎

The ability to produce high-quality documents, written for their intended audience, is a must-have skill for any and all Business Analysts. Either in Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Apple Pages, we need to gather templates and keep them in our arsenal.

The ability to create a well thought out cover page, clickable index, high-level overview and the ability to embed spreadsheets, process flows diagrams, presentation slides and then end with strong, well thought out and researched recommendation, will offer senior stakeholders the ability to make major decisions from our documents.

5. Problem Solving Skills 💡

While the ability to create workable solutions to business problems is not unique to business analysts, it is a necessary skill for performing our job successfully.

As with most IT roles, the Business Analyst’s career may be spent dealing with frequent and random changes.

When we are working to develop custom business solutions, nothing is 100% predictable - so finding ways to quickly resolve problems and move toward a project’s successful completion is important in our role.

6. Decision-Making Skills 🤔

Another important Business Analyst skill is the ability to make decisions.

As a consultant to management and advisor to developers, we are called upon for sound judgment in a wide variety of business matters, any number of which could determine the viability of the business.

Professionals who wish to pursue a Business Analyst career should be able to assess a situation, receive input from stakeholders, and decisively select a course of action.

7. Managerial Skills 💼

Another skill we as Business Analysts should possess is the ability to manage projects.

Planning the project scope, directing staff members, handling change requests, forecasting budgets and keeping everyone on the project within allotted time constraints are just some of the management skills we should possess.

Supervising projects of all sizes, from inception to implementation (and usually concurrently) can take a high degree of managerial skill.

8. Negotiation and Persuasion Skills 🤝

We as a Business Analyst serve as a liaison between developers and users, clients and companies, and management and IT.

Finding the balance between individual wants and business needs, and then interacting with a variety of personality types toward a solution that works for the business, takes professional persuasion skills.

When competing for client projects, our negotiation skills come into frequent use, with the goal of achieving a profitable outcome for the company and a working solution for the client.

Maintaining relationships within an organization and with external partners is an important function of a Business Analyst that require strong negotiation and persuasion skills.