Analysis Tips when doing Requirements Gathering

1. Try to call/email and meet Stakeholders during the first half of the day when they are still energetic.
2. As much as possible arrange a meeting only after thrashing out all queries on telephone or in person(if same office).
3. Avoid meetings on Mondays as it is possible that they will be busy with weekend production roll out related issues or simply not in mood because of weekend hangover.
4. Use the non productive part of the day(for me it is between 1pm and 3pm) for Email replies and Knowledge upgrade (reading BA sites, community discussions).
5. More to follow..

BA profile skills requirement in the Bank

Soft skills

1. Good command over English both written and Oral.
2. Effective communication skills
3. Maintain good interpersonal relationships
4. Emphasis on Quality of the delivery and not the Speed of delivery.
5. Good relationships with people you will usually liase with. This includes the program manager (10%), BAs(50%), Developers(15%), Testers(15%), Business users and stakeholders(10%)
6. Conceptualize solutions and issues at different levels Organisation, Department, End user, System, System components.
7. Proactively deliver and be results oriented.

Hard Skills

1. Able to do end to end analysis using UML.
2. UML- Use case diagrams, Activity diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, Class Diagrams
3. Creatively document high level solutions using Rich Text Diagrams
4. Documentation skills. Functional Specs, use cases.
5. Understand and Manage Requirements (business, solution and Non functional) and Traceability.
6. Version control and document management for different releases.
7. Be ethical in time management and give your 100% to the customer.
8. Assist Testers during the testing cycle. Have a good understanding of the defect management life cycle.
9. Assist Developers during the development cycle.
10. Be able to "independently" run with an enhancement or change

Domain Knowledge

1. Banking and Finance domain knowledge areas that would be nice to have is "Online" Banking, Cash management (Balance information/ Payments order management and execution)