hey everyone this is shruti from simply learn welcome to this video on the business

analyst full course in this

full course video we will learn all about the currently trending topic which is business
analytics
for all the aspiring business analysts out there this video will help you learn more
about the job role of a business
analyst so without further ado let's get started we'll begin this full course video by
understanding the need for a business analyst in an organization we will have a
close look at the duties
carried out by a business analyst through an interesting story after this we will have
an in-depth
understanding of the various skills required to become a business analyst following
which we will look at the
business analysis knowledge areas after this we will look into a hands-on demo on
business analysis with excel
we will then conclude this video by drawing a brief comparison between the two
most popular job roles today
business analyst and data analyst for this training with me i have avijjeet and we will
take you through
the various topics in business analytics all of this in under two hours
so let's start with an interesting story on business analytics but before we begin
make sure to subscribe to our
youtube channel and hit the bell icon to never miss an update from simplylearn we
will understand the importance of
business analyst with a sort and interesting story so meet rob he runs a cafe in a
small
town far away his cafe is one of the oldest and most popular eateries in town rob's
cafe was hugely popular amongst
customers and it was doing very well until the onset of the deadly coronavirus due to
kovite 19 like other eateries rob
was forced to shut down his cafe too this took a heavy toll on his business and
subsequently he lost his customers
none of his customers visited his cafe and this resulted in a huge loss for him he
knew he couldn't afford to close his
business forever as it would take time for coronavirus to be eradicated but he was
lost this situation was new
to him and he didn't know how to reopen his business amidst this pandemic
after a lot of brainstorming he recollected reading about business analysts he
remembered that business analysts are
professionals who enable a change in an organization he felt like a business analyst
could help him sort out his
current business problems hence without wasting any time he set out to
hire a business analyst he hired ted the business analyst to help him with his
ongoing business
problems rob entrusted ted with reopening the business the first step ted took was
to have a
discussion with rob and understand the business problems and the objectives that is
ideally the first step a
business analyst would take on discussion with rob ted learned that the business
objective was to reopen the
business and get at least 80 percent of the customer base back in addition to that
rob also wanted ted to look for
sustainable ways to reopen and continue the business in the long run amidst the
pandemic ted studied the case and he came up with
a few suggestions that he thought was fit for rob's business his first suggestion was
to develop an
exclusive home delivery app for rob's cafe this way ted knew that business will
improve as customers prefer home delivery in the current scenario next ted
suggested that rob has work
from home meal boxes added to his menu many professionals are working from
home currently and having work from home meal
boxes would be a good pick for such professionals in the middle of a busy day ted's
third suggestion was to bring down
the selling cost by providing discount coupons that can be utilized by customers
having a discount will enable more customers to order from rob's cafe of course it
was not possible to get the
customer base back without any short of price cuts in the current situation finally ted
suggested the drop staff
would facilitate home delivery orders this way he didn't have to lay off his staff and
at the same time get the home
delivery running so these were a few suggestions given by ted yes depending on the
situation business analysts can
take up different approaches so after the suggestions were accepted by rob for the
app ted began to make
sure that the development went well by collaborating with the i.t team that became
the intermediary between the
iit team and rob he provided suggestions to the team checked the app through user
interface testing and made sure that the
requirements met well the same applied to the other business requirements and
changes as well ted
held regular meetings to gaze the progress and also kept robb in the loop and
updated him with the status of the
project attending regular catch-ups helped rob gain an insight into the progress and
gave his feedback from time to time
ted made sure that the entire case was well documented by doing so he could
always refer to the documents in the
future with similar cases as well ted made presentations that showed rob the
business growth after implementing the changes and ted always supported his
presentations with data
rob was very impressed with ted's business approach such an approach not only
helped rob
reopen his business amidst the cove at 19 but also helped him get 80 percent of his
customer base back ted successfully
brought about a positive change in rob's business which was highly beneficial so that
is how ted the business analyst
helped rob make a business sustainable this was the importance of having a
business analyst in rob's organization
don't you think every organization should have a business analyst well yes depending
on the business
domain and the situation the roles and responsibilities may vary let's start off and
have a look at a day in the life
of a business analyst through a small story so meet angela who is working as a
business analyst in an application
development firm her firm builds applications for clients depending on their
requirements our next
character is rob he is a budding entrepreneur with a vision of setting up his own e-
commerce app he plans on
selling several electronic gadgets like phones laptops cameras etc on his app
so what is rob's first step well he approaches angela's firm one day with the vision of
creating his e-commerce
app angela and rob start talking business and angela promises to help rob with his
app creation she assures him
that she will look into his business requirements and coordinate with him to get the
app running rob is happy about
it and increased to cooperate with angela regarding all the business requirements
from his end angela as we
know is the business analyst she starts planning rob's project and without any delay
she embarks on this project's
journey she has a set of planned steps that will help her fulfill rob's requirements
but what are the steps she takes is her approach going to be effective and quick let's
find out the answers to these
questions now up next you can learn about angela's approach that helps her deliver
rob's projects smoothly and
without any hassles these steps that we are going to look at are the typical roles and
responsibilities of a business analyst
here we will understand these roles better with respect to angela's and drop story
first and foremost angela
understands rob's business objectives problems and requirements without
understanding this do you think
angela will be able to proceed no hence a business analyst like angela understands
the problems related to
rob's business and comes up with the right solution to achieve the goals of the
business she brainstorms around what
is best suited for an e-commerce app focusing on electronic gadgets in the next step
angela gathers all the
necessary requirements here she understands rob's requirements and makes sure
that they are on the same
page regarding the project and its goals both of them together arrive at a stipulator
deadline for the project
completion she gathers relevant information based on security of the app the
payment setup
ways to login cost of the products and style to name a few once angela has an in-
depth
understanding of rob's project and gathers all the necessary requirements she starts
allocating resources by
keeping in mind the budget of the project here she recognizes and allocates tasks
and resources to the development team bas work closely with the development team
to design the solution for a
problem angela ensures that the development team doesn't spend their time
understanding rob's requirements
in this step along with the development team she finalizes the software and tools
required to build the project
angela doesn't rest until the project is delivered to rob she continuously monitors the
progress and constantly
provides her feedback to the development team with respect to the app's layout
design and other features she gives them
suggestions in order to improve the application in the next step angela collects
feedback of the prototype
version of the app from the users she notes down if the prototype is fine
or if it requires more work pas validate if the project is running fine with the help of
use acceptance testing they
verify if the solution being worked on is in line with the requirements and ensure that
the final product satisfies
the use expectations bas also assess the functional and non-functional
requirements after
collecting feedback angela moves to one of her most crucial duties and that is
building reports data visualization is a
key skill for any ba in order to gauge the performance of the app and get valuable
insights from it
angela builds reports using various data visualization tools like tableau power bi and
quick view reports can be general
reports such as detailed reports or it can be dashboard reports such as visualized
reports with
multi-dimensional analysis based on display of business indicators it is not
uncommon for issues to crop up amidst this entire process hence angela conducts
regular meetings
with the development team and rob to solve problems quickly having these meetings
will help rob
understand the status of the project and it will also help the teams proceed in the
right path throughout this project
phase angela makes sure to maintain transparency on completion of the project
angela documents and presents
the project findings to rob generally business analysts present the project outcomes
to the stakeholders and
clients along with maintenance reports angela notes on all the project learnings and
details in a concise
manner this will help her take better decisions in the future and these documents will
save her time while
implementing the next project now that she has completed all her duties and
responsibilities with respect
to rob's project she is ready to deliver the final e-commerce application to rob for use
rob is rest assured that the
application developed by angela's firm is apt for his business and just what he
wanted
angela's streamlined approach made it easier for the project to be delivered within
the stipulated time period rob is
happy and i'm sure he will come back to angela's firm for projects in the future so
those responsibilities that we saw
angela carry out are ideally the roles and responsibilities for any business analyst out
there
yes some may vary depending on the company you work for and the project you're
working on if getting your
learning started is half the battle what if you could do that for free visit scale up by
simply learn click on
the link in the description to know more business analyst is a professional who
is responsible for bridging the gap between i.t and business teams
they use analytics to evaluate processes determine requirements deliver data-driven
solutions and generate
reports to executives and stakeholders business analyst is an individual who is
a part of the business operation and works closely with the technology team to
improve the quality of the services
being delivered they also help in assisting in integration and testing of new solutions
growing a career in a field with high demand such as business analysis could be a
challenge and competition for
business analyst positions can be intense so you should have a clear understanding
of the roles and responsibilities of a
business analyst a ba should successfully identify and
recognize the organization's business objective they should understand the business
problems and think of a
lucrative business solution they need to understand and collect the
business requirements from clients and stakeholders allocate the right resources
and improve the existing
business documentation of business findings is another important key role of a
business
analyst bas interact with the development team to design the solution for solving a
particular problem they often need to spend a certain amount of time in meetings in
order to
save the development team from spending their time and understanding the
stakeholders requirement
they often give feedback on the layout of a software application as to what all
features need to be added and what
functionalities should the application contain and also implement the newly
designed features that a business needs
while bas identify the needs define the features right use cases uncover business
rules and manage issues they
should also gauge the functional and non-functional requirements in a business
business analysts run meeting with
stakeholders and other authorities hence discussing issues with the client face to
face can do wonders and even help in
solving problems quickly they engage with business leaders and users to understand
how data driven changes to
products services software and hardware can improve efficiency and add value
they verify and validate if the project is running well with the help of user acceptance
testing and the solutions are
in line with the client's requirements they also ensure that the product delivered
satisfies the user
requirements finally bas write documentations and build visualizations to explain all
the
findings and draw business insights they also deliver maintenance reports
they need to develop informative coherent and usable documents for the success of
a
project business analyst skills are a combination of technical as well as non-
technical skills often referred to
as soft skills the skills for a business analyst are not only acquired through training
but
through experience and combined with the ability to understand situations and the
motive behind the problem so let's have
a look at the top skills to become a successful business analyst the first skill we
have is understanding
the business objective for a business analyst it is important
to know the goals and objectives of the business it is advised that business analysts
should have a good knowledge of
the business operations in his or her organization a business analyst should
understand the
problems related to the business and come up with the right solution business
analysts will resolve the problems that
have been identified and not avoid them they work on individual actions and tasks
that will build towards the
achievement of the goals of the business objectives of the business can be to
expand customer base in order to
increase sales scale up production so that it is in line with the revenue growth
improve revenue streams through
increasing perceived product value or increasing marketing budget according to the
revenue
business analysts would have the natural curiosity and determination to continue
learning and figuring out how things fit
together even as business analysts become managers it is important to stay in touch
with the industry and its changes
the next important skill a business analyst would have is analytical and critical
thinking
now there is a famous quote by thomas elva edition which says five percent of the
people think
10 percent of the people think they think and the other 85 percent would rather die
than think
business analysts are paid to think a business analyst would be able to analyze and
interpret the client's
requirements clearly business analysts require good focus in order to collect and
understand the
needs of the client critical thinking involves evaluating several options before arriving
at the desired solution
in certain situations a stakeholder may give a requirement that's not necessarily tied
up to any business
value but rather to their own increased convenience applying critical thinking
demands not taking all the statements of
the stakeholders for granted critical thinking allows the business analyst to
distinguish between requirements that
add value to the business and those that should be given a low priority a business
analyst must be creative in
order to reach stated goals but resources are limited and the conditions are non-
ideal
the third important skill for a business analyst is communication and interpersonal
skills
understanding and being properly understood is key to any profession if you are
unable to clearly specify and
communicate requirements to any stakeholder then you may not fully understand
the requirements yourself
being a business analyst is like being multilingual you have to speak several different
languages while conveying the same
message business analysts apply communication skills at every point they use
communication and interpersonal skills
when the project is launched while gathering requirements when collaborating with
stakeholders and also
while validating the final solution listening reading and writing skills are
very critical for a business analyst this would be capable of facilitating meetings
business analysts use verbal and written communication to convey ideas concepts
facts and opinions to a variety of
stakeholders non-verbal communication skills enable the effective sending and
receiving of
messages but not limited to body movement posture facial expressions
gestures and eye contact effective listening allows the business analyst to
accurately understand
information that has been communicated verbally fourth in our list of skills we have
negotiation and cost benefit analysis
being a successful business analyst requires working with and interacting with many
people
these people include clients business leaders project team members project
stakeholders vendors private sector
representatives industry leaders and so forth business analysts negotiate at every
turn during the course of a project
at the initial stage of a project negotiation skills are used to determine what should
be included in the vision of
the project as details emerge negotiation skills are used by all parties involved to
determine which requests become requirements and which requirements have
higher priority
as the project progresses negotiation skills help to determine the functional design
which fulfill the requirements
technical decisions also require negotiation skills business analysts also perform
cost
benefit analysis to conduct an assessment of the benefits and costs anticipated in a
project when
organizations undertake new projects it is advisable for business analysts that they
use cost benefit analysis to
establish whether such projects should be embarked or not business analysts
should be able to
achieve a profitable outcome for your company while finding a solution for the client
that makes them happy
this balancing act demands the ability to influence a mutual solution and maintain
professional relationship
up next we have our fifth skill that is decision making
the quality of decisions made by business analyst is what matters a lot because it
has a direct impact on the
company's business thus it is important for every business analyst to think from all
aspects before
presenting the decision or strategy they must be having good problem solving
skills as well business analysts should have a knack to think out of the box and find
a solution
to problems majorly a business analyst follows five major steps while making a
decision
these steps are define the problem find and define the alternative approaches
evaluate the alternative approaches make the decision based on these approaches
and tests
and finally implement the solution while some may argue that the technical
team is responsible for designing the solution the business analyst still remains
instrumental in ensuring that
the design conforms to the requirements that have been approved now that we have
reached half way
through the skills i would like to ask all our viewers to please subscribe to our
channel and hit the bell icon to never miss an update from simply learn
moving on we have another really important business analyst skill that is idea about
programming languages
business analysts would have a good hands-on programming knowledge for
performing better and faster analysis of data
knowledge of r and python is highly beneficial business analysts can help solve
complex problems by writing efficient codes
both r and python have a vast collection of libraries and packages for data
manipulation data wrangling data
visualization and data analytics some of these libraries are numpy pandas deep
flyer tita ggplot and matplotlib in addition to these it is good to
understand statistical software like sas and spss using these programming
languages such as python r and sas you
can analyze and visualize large datasets as well as create machine learning models
for making future business
predictions the seventh skill in our list is creation of reports and dashboards
a business analyst should be proficient in using various business intelligence tools
for creating reports and
dashboards reports created by business analysts can be general reports such as
detail report
grouped report crosstab report column report query report data entry report
etc or it can be dashboard reports such as visualize report with multi-dimensional
analysis based on
display of business indicators dashboard reports are developed by business analyst
to solve business
decision making problems different from the tabular interface of the general report
the dashboard report adopts the
canvas like operation interface knowledge of tableau power bi and click view are
required to make different
types of reports depending on the business requirements now the eighth skill in our
list of
skills is database and sql business analysts often work with data
that is structured in nature hence to store and process this data they should have
knowledge of relational databases
such as microsoft sql server oracle database mysql database as well as nosql
databases also having hands-on experience with sql is a must for a business analyst
to
access retrieve manipulate and analyze data so they should be able to write data
definition and data manipulation
commands such as create update delete and insert
microsoft excel is the ninth skill in our list excel is one of the oldest and most
popular and powerful analytics and reporting tool used in the industries for working
with data business analysts use excel to
perform various calculations budget analysis and data analysis to derive meaningful
insights and take decisions
they sort filter and create pivot tables to summarize the data business analysts can
also create
different charts and graphs using excel to generate dynamic reports related to a
business problem
business analysts can use excel to create revenue growth models for new products
based on new customer forecasts
when planning an editorial calendar for a website business analysts can list out
dates and topics in a spreadsheet
when creating a budget for a small product they can list expense categories in a
spreadsheet update it monthly and
create a chart to show how close the product is to budget across each category
business analyst can calculate customer
discounts based on monthly purchase volume by product they can even summarize
customer revenue
by product to find areas where to build strong customer relationships and finally in
the list of skills we
have documentation and presentation you could have all the industry
experience in the world but if it's paired with poor business analyst practices you
could be more of a risk to
the organization than a business analyst with no industry experience at all a
business analyst must be able to
document their project learnings and results in a concise and compact form they
should also be confident about
presenting the findings and conclusions in front of the stakeholders and clients
organized documentation will help you
communicate technical concepts to non-technical employees it is important that a
business analyst notes down all
the details that they learn from their projects this will help them take better decisions
in the future also if similar
problems arise at a later stage they can implement the same solution thereby saving
a lot of time and unwanted
problems while business analysts are generally not responsible for making decisions
regarding project solutions
decision making skills are still important for understanding gathering and presenting
relevant information to assess decision makers with selecting
the optimal solution with that we have covered our top skills for a business analyst
if you have any questions related to the skills that we covered then please put it in
the chat section our team will
help you solve your queries now let me tell you how simply learn can help you grow
your career in business
analytics and help you become a business analyst so let me search for simply learn
here
this is the simply learn website and on the search bar let me look for
business analyst
you can see there are a few courses related to business analyst so let me open these
two courses so let's go to the first course so this is the business analyst masters
program now this program is endorsed education provider is iiba
now if you look on the right we have the different courses that will be covered as part
of this master's program
so there is introduction to business analysis certified business analytics professional
you'll also learn about
agile and scrum there's business analytics with excel we'll also get training in sql this
tableau training and you will also get to work on business analyst caption projects
if i scroll down now here are the tools that will be covered as part of this course so
there's microsoft excel zera tableau power bi postgresql
then this plan box target process and others
here you can see the program advisors and if i scroll further
is the entire course content we have these are the different courses
that you will be learning in this course and
after you finish the course you will receive a certificate which will look similar to this
so please go ahead and enroll to this course if you want to start your career in
business analytics now let me take
you to another program we have post graduate program in business analysis
now this is in partnership with podu university and endorsed education provider is
iipa
if i scroll down you can see here the key features of this course you get
purdue post graduate program certification alumni association membership
master classes from purdue faculties enrollment in simply learns job assist
there's 170 plus hours of blended learning 11 plus hands-on projects custom
projects in three
domains if i scroll further on the right you can see this is the purdue certification that
you will
receive after finishing the course and you will also get the certificate received by
international institute of business analysis that is iiba let's scroll down
you also have the advantage for enrolling to simply learn job assist program so you
will get i am jobs pro
membership for six months resume assistance and career monitoring you'll also
have interview preparation
and career affairs now here you can see the program details
so you will learn about an introduction to business analysis certified business
analysis professional
there's a island scrum business analytics with excel tableau training business
analyst capstone
project and you also have the opportunity to
enroll for some electives so we have purdue university business analysis
you can also enroll to a power bi course and there is agilent scrum foundation
if i scroll down here you can see the skills that will be covered as part of this program
so
this business analysis there's alicitation and collaboration requirement analysis
planning and
monitoring let me click on view more you have strategy analysis dashboarding
wireframing does data visualization statistical analysis using excel sql database
there's requirement lifecycle management and lots more so these are the tools that
will be
covered in this course we have microsoft excel zera fogburst
plan box that's rally power bi pro square sql that's version one target process and
others and now this is the important part though these are the industrially
related projects that you will get to work on once you enroll to this course so the first
project is canteen ordering
system for unilever we also have library management system for stanford university
there's whatsapp pay and you can see the description of these projects mentioned
below
and you also have hospital management system for myoclinic
there are course advisors for this course now they are directly related to purdue
university
if we scroll further there's the learner's profile and how the industry trend has been
for business analysts
so please go ahead and enroll to this program if you really want to start your career
or you
want to grow your career as a business analyst now here is a quick roadmap that
depicts what a fresher needs to possess to
become a business analyst first they need to have a graduation degree in a related
field
then knowledge of sql and relational database is very important
thirdly a fresher should have good hands-on experience with programming
languages and that's a prerequisite
and finally they need to have good communication skills to nail the role of a business
analyst
up next we have the roadmap that depicts what an experienced professional needs
to possess to become a business analyst
firstly they should have good knowledge of the domain they are currently working in
next they should know how to write sql
queries an experienced professional should be good with programming languages
in addition to that they need to have good communication and negotiation skills
finally they should be good at creating interactive reports using business intelligence
tools
in addition to that having a certification offered by international institute of business
analysis such as
certified business analysis professional would be highly beneficial let's now learn the
business analysis
knowledge areas first up we have business analysis planning and
monitoring now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to organize and
coordinate business analysis efforts
it involves planning business analysis approach stakeholder engagement business
analysis governance as well as
information management then we have illustration and collaboration
now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to prepare and conduct elicitation
activities and confirm the
results it also includes communicating business analysis information and
stakeholder engagement
the third knowledge area we have is requirements lifecycle management so this
knowledge area describes the
tasks that we perform in order to manage and maintain requirements throughout
their lifecycle it covers the creation changes
prioritization traceability and governance processes fourth in our list we have
strategy
analysis now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to identify the business
need
address that need and align the change strategy within the enterprise
you need to analyze the current state define the future state assess risk and define
change strategy
then we have requirements analysis and design definition this knowledge area
describes the tasks used to organize requirements specify and model requirements
it also validates and
verifies information and identifies solution options the final knowledge area we have
is solution evaluation this
knowledge area measures the solution performance analyzes performance
measures assess solution limitations and
recommends actions to increase solution value now let's discuss two of the most
widely used methodologies in any
business analysis process these methods are popularly used in the industries to
ensure smooth running of
projects the first methodology we are going to talk about is the agile
methodology agile is an incremental and iterative approach to project management
and software development it helps team deliver value to their customers faster and
with fewer obstacles
teams can manage a project by breaking it up into several stages and involving
constant collaboration with stakeholders
along with continuous improvement and iteration at every stage so the steps
involved in an agile
project development includes planning the project in terms of business goals budget
time duration for
completing the project and resource needed then we have designing the solution for
the problem at hand
the third step is developing the solution this could be a software a website an
application etc
it's done by the development team next we have testing the product in the next step
of the life cycle
deploying the developed product to check if it's working fine and finally we have
reviewing the product and getting
feedback from customers clients stakeholders etc now in agile methodology the
entire work is broken
down into several sprints after each sprint we get a shippable product and that
product is reviewed by the client or the stakeholder the suggestions are incorporated
in the next sprint
here you can see we have sprint 1 sprint 2 and sprint 3 and all of them have the 6
steps that we discussed in the agile
methodology process now let's discuss this scrum methodology
scrum is a subset of the agile framework it is one of the most widely used
lightweight process frameworks for agile
development you can easily collaborate develop and deliver complex products of the
highest
possible value scrum empowers the development team and supports working in
small teams like 8
to 10 members scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time
this process enables organizations to adjust smoothly to rapidly changing
requirements and produce a product that
meets evolving business goals okay so the concepts and practices in scrum can be
divided into three
categories first we have three roles a product owner owns the product backlog
and writes user stories and acceptance criteria they are responsible for privatizing
the product backlog and deciding the release
date and the content a product owner is the one who is responsible for the return on
investment or roi of the
product a scrum master is a servant who encourages and demands self-organization
from the development team they enable
close cooperation across all roles and functions addresses resource issues and
disobedience of scrum practices a
development team comprises individuals working together to develop and deliver the
requested and committed product
agreements the development team builds the product and includes all the expertise
necessary to deliver the
potential shippable product each sprint the second category comprises of three
artifacts the product backlog is an
ordered list of the features and requirements needed to complete the project the list
can include bugs or
defects that need to be resolved features that must be added another technical or
project work your team has
to complete before the project is over the sprint backlog includes only what needs to
be completed during the current
sprint it often has greater detail and more complete user stories than the rest of the
product backlog once created no one
can add to the sprint backlog except the development team the product increment
is the version of the product that will be delivered at the end of each sprint while the
sprint backlog outlines what
must be completed within a sprint the product increment details the outcome of all
that work
the increment is a prototype or working version of the final product expected by the
customer
the final category we have is sprint ceremonies there are four ceremonies in total
in sprint planning the team meets and decides what they need to complete in the
coming sprint
sprint review is a type of meeting in which the team demonstrates what they shipped
in the sprint
in the sprint retrospective the team reviews their work identifying what they did well
and what didn't go as planned
so that they can make the next print better daily scrum is a stand-up meeting or a
very short like 15 to 20 minutes meeting
for the team to make sure that they are all on the same page now let's talk about the
average annual
salary of a business analyst according to pay scale the average annual salary of a
business analyst in
the united states is eight thousand nine hundred and seventy three dollars while in
india a business
analyst can earn nearly six lakh rupees per annum now talking about the companies
hiring for business analysts
we have the indian e-commerce payment system and financial technology company
paytm american mnc cognigent and british
dutch multinational oil and gas company shell we also have cisco the search engine
giant google and dell finally in our list of companies we have arnstein young global
limited american
multinational computer technology corporation oracle and british multinational
investment bank and financial services company barclays
with that let's discuss the top business analysis tools and software used by business
analysts
we have the widely used spreadsheet application microsoft excel web-based kanban
style list making
application trello relational database management systems such as mysql microsoft
sql server and postgresql
then we have bug tracking and agile project management product zera and tableau
software for data visualization
okay so let's look at our demo on business analyst training often times business
analysts work on
structured data using excel to prepare reports and dashboards they do create pivot
tables and pivot
charts to summarize and analyze data find trends and insights to make critical
decisions
so in this demo we will work on a sales data set from the united states and analyze
the total revenue total profit
the quantity sold for different categories and subcategories of products across
various regions segments cities
etc now let me show you the data set first okay so here is my data set you can see
there are nearly 9994 rows and we have
17 columns you can see this is a sales data set and the first column is of order date
then
we have the shipment date we have the shipment mode next we have the customer
name
that is the customer who purchased the product we have the segment the country
name there's only united states then we
have the different cities from the u.s we have the state names and if i go to the right
you can see the
categories of product we also have the sub categories next we have the product
name
then we have our sales value now you can assume this to be in dollars
then we have the quantity that was sold for each product then we have the discount
column and
finally we have the profit column so let's analyze this data set using
different charts and graphs first let's create a pivot table to see the sales by region
and year so here we
want to see the sales of all the years in different regions of the united states so for
that
i'll click on any cell inside this data set go to the insert tab and here i have the option
to create a
pivot table i'll click on this create pivot table option and you can see it has selected
my
entire data and here i'll choose new worksheet that is the place where i want to place
this
pivot table and let's click on ok so you can see it has created a new
sheet which is sheet2 and let's drag our columns
onto the different sections in this pivot table fields so since i want to
know the region and the year so let's drag the order
date first and let's delete
the quarter column so i'll click on remove field i don't want this field so i have my
ears first and then let's drag
region column under columns
and we want to know the sales for all the years in different regions so
i'll drag sales onto values
you can see here we have our pivot table ready if you want you can go ahead and
rename
this row labels and column labels now with this table ready let's create a
line chart this will help you analyze your data better
so what you can do is go to the insert tab and here under recommended charts
you can go for line chart you can see the line chart preview here and click on ok
there you go how easily excel has created a pivot chart for us based on
this pivot table now if you notice the lines in this graph you can see the different
regions
and here is the legend now if you see the yellow line which is actually for the west
region
so the sales had declined from 2014 to 2015
and then it gradually started increasing from 2015 to 2017 onwards
and if you see the orange line or the red line it is for the east region
the sales have been continuously increasing you can see the trend here similarly
if you see the central region the sales generated was steady from 2014
till 2015 then it increased in 2016 and after 2016
it became constant similarly you can analyze the south region as well
now let's say you want to know the sales by each category of product and the
different segments so you can do that as
well let's go to our sheet one where we have our data set let me click on any cell i'll
go to
insert and i'll choose pivot table here
let it be new worksheet i'll click on ok all right so since we want to know the
sales value again so let's drag sales onto values field
and now i'll choose category under rows
so let's select category under rows
and then we want to know for each segment also
so what i can do is i'll choose segment under columns
you can see i have my pivot table ready so here you have the furniture office supplies
and
technology as the categories of products and on the top you can see consumer
corporate home office has the different
segments now let's create a visual out of this pivot table so i'll
go to recommended charts and let's say this time i want to
create a bar chart now this is a horizontal bar chart let's click on ok
if i close this and i bring it to here you can see this is a nice bar chart
and below you can see the sales values and on the y-axis you can see the
different categories of products and in the legend we have the segments now if you
want you can edit this chart
as well so let's delete or hide all field buttons on the chart
all right similarly let's do this for
our line chart as well let's hide these field buttons
okay all right now
let's suppose you want to know which segment made the highest and the lowest
profits so for that you can create a pivot table
as well so i'll click on any cell go to the insert tab
and choose pivot table i click on ok all right now say
we want to know the profit by each segment so i'll first choose profit on to values
and let's drag the segment column
onto rows so we have our pivot table ready now here if you want to know which
segment made the highest or the lowest profit you can sort this data so click on any
cell under sum of profit
right click and here you have the short option so let's do
sort smallest to largest which is in ascending order okay so here you can see
consumer
segment made the highest amount of profit while the home office segment made the
lowest amount of profit now
based on this pivot table you can create a pie chart let's do that i'll go to insert
and here under recommended charts i'll select pi
and let's click on ok there you go we have a nice pie chart ready
now the gray color pi represents your consumer segment which made the highest
amount of profit you can also validate
it from the pivot table while the blue segment which is actually home office made the
lowest amount of profit
now let's remove this field from here i'll right click and select hide all field buttons on
the chart
now one thing you can do is you can edit the chart title
here by default it has shown total we can rename it to let's say profit
by segment and hit enter
okay now you can adjust the size of this and the color of the text if you want you
can do it from here similarly let's
add a title to our bar graph as well so here if you see
there's an option to choose chart title and i'll say sales
by segment and category
okay similarly let's add a title to our first line chart that we created
i'll click on the chat title and here i'll write sales by
year and region okay
now let me go back to my data sheet now suppose let's say you
want to know the total units that were sold for each sub category of products and
the
shipment mode so here we have the shipment mode
and you want to know the total units that were sold which is basically
this column the quantity column for each sub categories of product you can see we
have different sub categories
like bookcases this chairs labels this tables furnacings art phones binders etc
so let's create a pivot table for this i'll go to the insert tab click on pivot table
and click on ok all right now since we want to know the total units
that were sold let's drag the quantity column under values
and i'll choose the ship mode field under columns
and let's select subcategory under rows
so i have my pivot table ready now based on this pivot table let's create a line chart
i'll go to the
insert tab click on recommended charts and let's go to line chart
all right you can see the preview here and the legends which show the
shipment mode let's click on ok i close this now
first let's remove these fields i'll right click and i'll hide all field buttons
now if you see this one you can add some styles to your chart
let's modify our chart a bit let's see i'll select
yeah this one you can see it has given dots for each endpoints
which means this is my first sub category as you can see the second sub category
the third
subcategory which is art then we have binders so it's really easy to read
and understand the chart well okay now let's add a chart title
i'll write quantity
sold by subcategory
and ship mode now you can reduce the size of the
chart title text let's keep it 10
okay now you also have the
feature to create different kinds of maps in excel so suppose
you want to see the states that made the highest and the lowest sales in the united
states so you can create a field
map for that so first of all let's go to our data sheet i'll click on any cell go to insert
and
create a pivot table and click on ok alright
so since we want the state and the country so let me first drag country field under
rows
and then i'll choose the state field under rows now let's
drag sales under values okay so we have our
pivot table ready now if i sort this data you can easily know
that california state made the highest amount of sales now if i scroll down
below you can see north dakota made the lowest amount of
sales now let's do one thing let's remove the grand total so you can go to the design
tab and under grand totals you can select the first option you can see the grand total
has gone and in order to create a map we need to
adjust this pivot table so i'll click on united states i'll right click
and i'll go to field settings here under
layout and print i'll click on show item labels in tabular format
and i'll also click on repeat item labels you can see
it will populate united states for all the rows if i click on ok you can see the united
states have been populated
for all the states now let me select this table
or before that let's remove the subtotal from here
i'll close this go to the design tab under subtotals
i'll choose do not show subtotals okay now let's select the table
and i'll actually paste it somewhere here
now with this data i can go to the insert tab and choose maps
let's select field map there you go you see
we have a nice field map of the united states and here you can see the color scale
so it goes from light gray all the way up to dark blue so the states that are
in dark blue let's say california made the highest amount of sales you can also
validate it
from the pivot table similarly the lighter the color the amount of sales were less for
that
state now let's give a chart title here i'll
give a chart title as sales by
states and let's remove this legend
now you can format this map so here you can change colors and
let's see if i choose this one you can see the color has changed and you can see the
california state
is shaded in dark which means it made the highest amount of sales you can also
add data labels you can see it will show the sales values for each of the states
and if you want you can keep the legend as well i'll just remove these two
all right now similarly you can also create a field map
to see the profits by each state so you can analyze which states made the highest
amount of profit and the state
that made the lowest amount of profit so let's do that i'll go to my data sheet
i'll click on insert and select pivot table let's click on ok
now first and foremost let's drag country under rows and then i'll choose state under
rows
next let's drag the profit column under values
so i have my pivot table ready
let's go to the design tab and remove the subtotals i'll select do not show subtotals if
i
scroll down okay i have my grand total now so let's go to the design tab under grand
totals
we'll remove it okay now let's just populate the united states which is the country
name for all
the rows i'll right click on united states go to field settings
click on layout and print i'll choose select item labels in tabular form and
select repeat item labels let's click on ok so i have my
country name populated throughout let's select the pivot table
i'll paste it somewhere here and now let's go to the insert tab
i'll choose map let's select field map there you go
now we have the profits for each of the states
let's first delete this and edit our chart title
which is profit by states
okay let's close this let's say
we'll use this one now okay let's edit the color of the chart title
i'll make it as white and let's say
we'll choose the color
as say this one okay now let me go ahead and remove the
legend here and just delete it all right so we have our
field map ready which shows profit by each state now that we are done with our
analysis
and creating our different pivot tables and pivot charts let's build the final dashboard
so let's create a new sheet here okay the first thing i need to do is i'll go
to the view tab and i'll remove the grid lines all right now let's go to the insert tab
and here we have text let me choose text box
let's create a text box here okay
now you can reduce the size actually let's reduce it
okay and you can move it to the top
all right let's pull this a little down and this to little right
let's fill the text box color with blue color
and let's give the text as sales
dashboard and we'll
give a white color to the text and i'll select my font you can select any font you want
so i'll go with let's say
britannic bold okay we have it here and let's increase the size to
30 and we'll center align it all right
now the next step is to bring all our pivot charts
to this dashboard sheet so i'll first copy my
pivot chart and i'll paste it in sheet 8 let's paste
it here and we can reduce the size
okay now similarly let's do it for the
other charts as well i'll copy this and let's paste it somewhere here
okay now let me just reduce the size
and if you want you can reduce the chart title font size as well let's make it 11
okay and let's drag this a bit
all right now let's copy the pie chart
and let me paste it here let's reduce the size of this pie chart
okay see we have our pie chart here
now let me take my line chart which shows the
quantity sold by different sub categories of product i'll copy it and let me paste it
somewhere here i'll close this and we need to reduce the size so that
we can fit in our other charts as well
okay let me reduce a bit more all right now we are left with the two
maps that we created let's copy this and let's paste it here
i'll go to the right let's reduce the size
similarly we'll do it for sales by
profit map as well let's copy this
and paste it onto our dashboard
let's reduce the size first
and let's increase it towards the bottom
so we have our dashboard ready you can see the different
pivot charts that we created now let's add slicers and timelines to
this dashboard so that we can filter our tables and the charts
so i'll click on this first chart which is our line chart i'll
go to the insert tab here you can see under filters we have slicers and timeline
first let me click on timeline and here i'll choose my order date column
let me click on ok all right let's drag this a bit here on to the
right and i'll show you how you can use this
let's first choose years instead of months
and let me reduce the size a bit okay now another thing to do here is let me
right click and i'll go to report connections here i'll select
all my pivot tables instead of just one so that any manipulation you do
in the order year it will reflect for all the tables or the charts we have on the
dashboard i click on ok now that we have seen how to add a
timeline i'll reduce this a bit let's now add a few slicers
let's click on any of the charts i'll go to insert click on slicer
now let's add a region slicer i'll click on ok
and let's take it to the right we'll reduce the size of this region
slicer slicers are nothing but filters which have
advanced filtering options and
we can add one more filter or a slicer let's say
we want to do this time on the segment so i'll go to slicer
i'll choose segment here and click on ok so you can see i have my segment slicer
here let me just reduce the size and let's drag it
here at the bottom all right okay
now if you want to know the sales and profit for a particular year so you can choose
that particular year here on the timeline suppose i want to know the sales only for
2014 and 2015.
so the way to do is you can select one of the years so i'll click on 2014
and now i'll drag this to select 2015 as well
if i go to left the figures that you see only reflect
the sales and the profit for 2014 and 15. similarly
if you mark here or let me just bring it to the middle
suppose say i want to have 2016 year included as well i can
just drag it to the right you can see the charts will change
i'll just remove the filter and place it here
similarly if you want to see the sales and profit for
a particular region you can do that too for example let me just bring this
region slicer here and let's say you want to know the sales and profit only for the east
region
you see here it shows only for the east region and suppose you want to see for east
and west region also
you can see it changes here okay
we just cancel this now you might be wondering when we selected
the different regions only the pie chart changed but the rest of the charts were
the same now the reason was we did not apply this slicer to all the pivot tables so let
me right click
and go to report connections here i'll choose the remaining pivot tables as well i
click on ok all right now let me just bring this to the middle
and let's say we want to know the sales and the profits
and the quantities sold for let's say south region if i select this you can see it shows
only for the south region let's see you also want to know for the central region now
we have selected both central and
south you can see the variations in the graph we cancel this similarly we have our
another slicer
which is the segment i'll populate the slicer for
all the other pivot tables let me choose all of them
and click on ok i'll bring this to the middle so that you can see the
variations in the graph let's say i want to know the seals the unit sold and the profit
for
home office segment so i'll only select home office you can see the variations here
now the slices actually don't work for the maps so you can't see any change
here now suppose you want to know for the corporate segment you can select
cooperate or if you want to
select for multiple segments you can do that as well just cancel this
and let me place it here all right now we are done with our demo
so if you want to get a copy of the data set and the demo file that we are using here
in this video you can put your
email ids in the comments section our team will send you the files over email we'll
compare the two most popular
job roles in the field of information technology that is business analyst versus data
analyst
business analyst is a professional who bridges the gap between the it and the
business teams in an organization they
use data analytics and modern technologies to assess processes and deliver data-
driven solutions
they understand and solve a business problem and validate business requirements a
business analyst generates reports for
executives and stakeholders they are part of the business operation and work
closely with the technology
team to improve the quality of the services being delivered they also assist in the
integration and testing of
new solutions now let's talk about the job description of a data analyst
with a rapid increase in data generation today the term data analyst has found its
prominence
a data analyst collects processes and performs analysis of large data sets
every business generates data in several formats this data can be in the form of
customer information and feedback log
files transaction data marketing research and so on it is the duty of a
data analyst to transform these business data into valuable insights some of the
problems that can be addressed are how
to improve a business how to provide good customer experience what would be the
ideal price for a new product how to
reduce transportation costs and so on data analysts deal with data handling
data modeling and reporting with this brief understanding of the job description for a
business analyst and a
data analyst let's now shift our focus towards the various responsibilities of a
business analyst
a business analyst identifies the business goals understands the problems faced by
an organization and comes up
with a cost-effective solution to tackle the issues they thoroughly understand the
requirements from the clients and assign
the right resources bas communicate and work closely with the development team
to design the
solution for a problem they ensure that the development team doesn't spend their
time understanding the stakeholders
requirements and often give iterative feedback on the solution being developed they
check and validate if the project
is running fine with the help of user acceptance testing they also verify if the solution
being worked on is in line
with the requirements and ensure that the final product satisfies the user
expectations bas assess the functional
and non-functional requirements a business analyst documents the project findings
and results they present the
project conclusions to the stakeholders and clients along with delivering
maintenance reports and building
visualizations to make decisions now let's take a look at the responsibilities of a data
analyst
first and foremost a data analyst must identify and understand the organization's
goal and requirements
this helps to plan and streamline the analysis process data analysts collect data
from various
heterogeneous sources they assess the available resources comprehend the
business problem and gather the right
data for analysis they work closely with different team members like programmers
business analysts and data scientists
data filtering and data wrangling are vital jobs of a data analyst the data collected is
often noisy and it contains
missing values hence it is crucial to clean the collected data and remove invalid
values to make it ready for
analysis they use a variety of analytical statistical and business intelligence tools to
spot trends and patterns in
complex data sets discover hidden insights and prepare summary reports for the
leadership team they also use
programming languages for data mining and data manipulation now it's time for us
to understand the
difference between a business analyst and a data analyst based on the skill set they
possess
first let's look at the skills that can help you become a ba a business analyst should
have a
graduation degree in any relevant field such as business accounting information
systems human resources or engineering
you can apply for entry level business analyst positions or with professional
experience excel is a powerful analytics and
reporting tool for working with data bas use excel to perform various calculations
data analysis plan an
editorial calendar and calculate customer discounts to derive meaningful insights
and take decisions
base sql to retrieve manipulate and analyze data stored in relational databases
critical thinking skills are important to understand customers business needs it
allows them to distinguish between
requirements that add value to the business and those that should be given a lower
priority
base should find different ways to address each challenge data visualization is a key
skill for
bas to build interactive dashboards and reports to convey the outcomes of a project
knowledge of tableau power bi and qlikview is required to make different types of
reports depending on the
business requirements business analysts should have a good hands-on
programming experience to solve
complex tasks and perform faster analysis of data hence knowledge of
programming languages
such as r and python is a prerequisite finally they should have good presentation
skills they should also be
confident about their findings and conclusions and communicate it in front of the
stakeholders and clients
let's now understand the skills that a data analyst should possess you must have a
bachelor's degree in any
relevant field or be a graduate in statistics economics or science you're eligible to
become a data analyst
being a fresher or as an experienced professional you should have domain
knowledge in the field you are working
in once again knowledge of excel is another basic requirement for a data analyst
data analysts often work with structured data so they should be proficient in writing
sql queries using data
manipulation and data definition commands they should know how to create stored
procedures
another crucial skill for a data analyst is to have hands-on experience with
programming languages such as python r
sas and javascript you can analyze and visualize large data sets and create
predictive models for making business
decisions data analysts create data visualizations using libraries such as matplotlib
c-bond ggplot and plotly this helps them to perform exploratory data analysis
knowledge of tableau and power bi is required to create different business reports
with the help of graphs and
charts data analysts should have knowledge of machine learning algorithms to build
sophisticated models and make future
predictions so they should know about linear regression logistic regression support
vector machines k-mean clustering and
other supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms finally data analysts should
also
possess good communication and presentation skills now let's discuss a salary
structure for
both of these job roles according to pay scale a business analyst in the united states
earns an
average salary of 69 000 while in india you can earn nearly 6 lakh rupees per annum
now talking about
the salary of a data analyst according to pay scale in the us a data analyst earns an
average salary of sixty
thousand seven hundred and ten dollars per annum and in india you can earn around
four lakhs twenty four thousand
rupees per annum let's now move on and look at the different companies hiring for
business analyst roles here we have
oracle the search engine giant google the american mnc cognizant and e-commerce
company amazon in addition to
that we have ernest and young technology giant ibm dell and cisco hiring business
analysts talking about the companies hiring for data analysts we have twitter google
the
social media leader facebook and amazon we also have the american oil company
shell the electric vehicle company tesla
apple and the american credit reporting agency equifax now choosing the right field
that is to
become a business analyst or a data analyst could be a challenging task the key
points that you have to keep in
mind before making a decision is first review your background and see
what qualifications you have check what skills you possess and the domain
knowledge you have
then gauge your interest to see what suits you best and finally consider your long-
term
goals and see the job roles that will help you grow in your career in the long run now
let me tell you how simply learn can
help you grow your career as a business analyst and a data analyst simplylearn
offers a postgraduate
program in business analysis that is in collaboration with purdue university the
endorsed education provider is iiba some of the skills that will be covered in this
course are strategy analysis
wireframing evaluation dashboarding data visualization agile scrum methodology
scrum artifacts statistical analysis using excel and sql database
some of the tools covered in this course are microsoft excel tableau power bi
jira postgresql planbox and others some of the key features of this
business analysis program are you will receive purdue post graduate program
certification master classes from purdue
faculty you can enroll in simply learns job assist where you will get im jobs pro
membership for 6 months and obtain
35 iiba pd cdus and 25 pmi pdus
you will get 170 plus hours of blended learning along with capstone projects in three
domains
to become a data analyst you can enroll in the postgraduate program in data
analytics offered by simply learn
this program is in collaboration with purge university and ibm the skills that will be
covered as a
part of the course are statistical analysis using excel data analysis in python and our
data visualization using
tableau and power bi linear and logistic regression modules clustering using k-
means
supervised learning and others the tools that you will learn are numpy pandas scipy
scikit-learn excel and
others some of the key features of this course are you will get purge your post
graduate program certification industry recognized ibm certificates enrollment
and simply learns job assist and master classes from purdue faculty you have 180
plus hours of blended
learning 14 plus hands-on projects on integrated labs and capstone projects in three
domains
so please go ahead and enroll for these programs if you want to grow your career as
a business analyst or a data analyst
business analyst interview questions my name is richard kirschner with the
simply learn team we'll go over some beginner intermediate and advanced level
questions to expect
in interviews when you're looking at business analytics let's start with the
differentiation
between a risk and an issue and this should be a very fundamental question
dealing with business because in business they want to make money and we really
want to understand where the split is on a lot of these things always
ask yourself where is the bottom dollar on this and what does this mean risk is your
potential and an issue is
something that's actually happening so risk is a potential problem that can be
predicted risk may or may not happen
in the future a proactive response plan is formulated and kept ready to mitigate
risks so these are things you plan for and the issue refers to a risk that is
occurring or about to happen there is no response plan in place to solve an issue you
can only respond reactively to an
issue what are the various tools a business analyst works on this is very
company specific and so when you start looking for work you start going in for
interviews
you should start really asking yourself what are these companies looking for that i'm
interested in
clearly if you work with ibm you want to have your tools that are central to ibm and
the ibm setup same thing with google
with you know just across the whole field some of the more basic ones
obviously an excel spreadsheet which isn't on this list but your python your sql you
should
really know your sql it's going to come up in no matter what format you're in your
tableau your xur your balsamic all
these are different platforms there's a lot more out there but you should be aware on
which platforms your
proficiencies are on and those also that you might not be proficient on but you at
least know what they do and what
their performance is so you can answer questions and a lot of companies will pay for
you to be certified if their platform isn't on
your list what are the various stages of a business project
and we look at project initiation project planning project execution project control
and monitoring project
closure and it's really important to understand any one of these in a little bit more
detail than just knowing the list what is feasibility study
a feasibility study is a method of gauging the success rate of proposed business
solution it enables business
analysts to discover new business opportunities and uh really a lot of businesses
when
they're looking at a for a business analyst this is really what they want to know
what's the feasibility uh that is a
very central question that comes up in most business plans what's the feasibility of
doing something and
getting it done what is business model analysis business model analysis is a
technique that helps
you analyze if a business is financially economically and socially viable or not
i know a number of contractors that this is their sole career is to go in and analyze
ski resorts in colorado to find
out whether it's going to make it this year or not and what they need to do to fix that
so it's a very high-end
job niche where you really need to know your stuff and understand what it means
what do you understand by requirement differentiate between requirements and
needs
we look at requirements requirement is a targeted solution that is required to achieve
the set business objectives
business requirements are data used for business processes needs needs are the
high level
representation of the terms and the result business needs include identifying and
comprehending the businesses goals and articulating its strategic direction
and you can think of needs are what do we need to succeed requirements are well
these are the things we need to put into place this is
what's required to achieve a business objective
suppose you have been given a list of zip pin codes
from different countries using those codes find the city and the state names using
excel
and so if you're given a list of zip codes pin codes of various cities from the us and
india here's how you can find
the city and the country names select all the codes go to the data tab under data
types select geography click on the
insert data option choosing city from the field list click on the insert data option and
select state from the field list really you do need to know your way
around excel no matter what other packages you're working with excel is such a
base package in business
analysis so much people are giving that back and forth still it's still kind of a baseline
below our sales data that has information on different items sold across various
regions and countries
what was the total revenue generated for all the items in india
you can use the sum if function to find the total revenue generated from india you
can see here equals some f and then
of course b2 to b100 india l2 to l1001 and that will give you
the sum you can also use a filter option to filter the data only for india and use
subtotal by pressing alt plus equals
nice short hotkey to remember there create
a highlight table to visualize the revenue generated from offline and online cells for
different items across
the region using tableau now not all companies use tab blue
but it is becoming a very highly used tool because it's so easy to use you drag the
region onto columns drag
the cells channel and item type fields onto rows select the total revenue column and
drag it on to color and label
cards select square as the mark type drag the total revenue filled onto
columns drag the total profit column onto rows place item type column on to
colors under the size card place a total profit drag the region column into the
filters card and select asia so one of the things about tableau is it
looks real complicated but it's all drag and drop and so you should know your way
around about doing some very simple drag
and drops for doing your query and summation and below is the resulted plot
so let's look at some more questions but let's jump to a little more intermediate level
differentiate between software development lifecycle and project life cycle
so look a little bit more hierarchical towards the top of the list software development
lifecycle helps with the
development of software products it consists of a single software across multiple
phases here phases include requirement
gathering coding operations maintenance and documentation where the project life
cycle this
enables you to develop a new product in the business project lifecycle consists of
multiple software in one customer
scenario phases here are idea generation screening development testing and
analysis how do you perform risk management in your project
so again we're dealing with intermediate not just how to pull tables across we start
analyzing things and the risk
management is a technique wherein risks are identified avoided reduced
assessed and mitigated having the appropriate risk management plan decreases
losses and optimizes
decision making to enhance the organization's performance how does risk
mitigation differ from risk avoidance
risk mitigation risk mitigation is a plan to be executed when a risk occurs when a risk
occurs there might be a
business impact and the cost incurred is high risk avoidance whereas risk avoidance
is
carried out to avoid the risk from occurring meanwhile the business impact here is
zero and the cost is fully
eliminated and you can think about a brick and mortar store and they have
shoplifting
you want to mitigate as you want to avoid as much shoplifting as you can but you
can only frisk people at the
door and have security so much before you start losing customers and so when you
mitigate it you're gonna have to pay
for your lost merchandise where you avoid it you have your security cameras and
people watching to stop
uh people from stealing things risk in this case can mean loss of money
spent badly spent on equipment certifications there's all kinds of areas where you
want to mitigate and avoid risk what are project deliverables project deliverables
represent a
collection of measurable services and goods that are to be delivered to the end user
in the project completion stage
this is so important we start talking about any of our when you sign a contract any of
our
online contracts cloud computing all of that make sure you're very clear what the
deliverables are who owns it who is
the responsibility of the service and the security around it those are all very
important questions to know
differentiate between the agile and waterfall model two of our biggest or most basic
models
used today the agile model which is slowly taking over especially in software the
agile model is adaptable to
requirement changes and has an incremental approach in the agile mile model
testing can be
performed in every phase with the waterfall model the waterfall model is referred as
a structured
software development methodology changes and requirements are difficult to
implement meanwhile in the waterfall
model testing is performed only in the final phase and you can look at this as a lot of
the
software today has to be ready to change quickly when the waterfall uh setup
you're not looking for fast changes you're looking for a very solid it's going to work
no matter what kind
of view this is something that we can build it doesn't have to make major changes
but it better work correctly
describe the different analytical techniques like moscow and swat
moscow analysis it is a prioritization technique that highlights a requirements
significance question like is it a
must-have or it should have could the demand be made better would a specific idea
be useful in the future
are asked here in the swot analysis it discovers the strengths and weaknesses of a
firm and
evaluates them as opportunities and threats swot analysis consists of strengths
weaknesses opportunities and threats and you cannot kind of think of it as like the
swat team coming in uh
to you know be worried about threats here so we're talking about policing or in
moscow really what is um what can we
get out of this you know is this do we have to have it to succeed is it going to be
useful in the future so you're
looking more for a general value attached to it list various components of strategy
analysis
for developing a strategic plan for an organization the vital components are vision
objectives mission strategies action plan what is benchmarking
benchmarking is a process of evaluating an organization's measures like the quality
of policies programs etc against
the standard criteria it's so important to have that baseline of what are you
measuring against the
baseline might not even be a very good one but you can't measure something unless
you have something to measure it against
it helps with the measuring the performance of the company you can recognize the
areas of improvement in a company and analyze how other companies
achieve other objectives what is the best approach to work with
difficult stakeholders a business analyst interacts with many
professionals during his work few of the best approaches to take into consideration
while working with
difficult stakeholders are before i even jump into this i have a
friend who was working with some very high-end individuals who took their private
plane uh and he was supposed to meet him at
the in location when he arrived they had been in a fist fight while on their private
plane the
stakeholders had so much difficulty with some particular aspect going on so
difficulties are going to arise
hopefully not at that level but things happen and of course you want to just assume
work with anybody but you want to listen
patiently to the stakeholders point of view respond to them politely and
diplomatically
have a one-on-one discussion to make things more precise comprehend their
worries and be
transparent make sure to continuously engage such difficult stakeholders
i'm going to highlight the last one because if you're working with somebody who's
difficult and you just try to ignore them
one of the things is that whatever problems are arising they're just going to explode
so that is so important not to ignore the ignore somebody who's being difficult
but the rest of it is stay focused stay focused on what you're trying to accomplish be
goal driven this is a great time to
be goal driven not driven by emotion or the problems that arise or how the person
communicates name the different types of agile
methodologies scrum go get scrum certified important thing to look into if you
haven't
learn software development and extreme programming xp feature driven
development fdd
crystal kanban dynamic systems development method dsdm if getting your learning
started is half
the battle what if you could do that for free visit skill up by simply learn click on the
link in the description to
know more there is an agile just a ton of different methodologies so knowing at
least a few of them inside and out and having a kind of a general idea that the other
ones are out there is important to
at least know what we're talking about when someone comes up and talks about
agile
describe the gap analysis gap analysis refers to the analysis of differences
between the existing systems functionalities and the targeted system the gap
indicates the amount of work
required to get the intended result gap analysis is a comparison between the current
and proposed functionalities
and you can see here we put together an action plan to go from the current state to
the desired state
how do you import text file data into ms excel and
remember excel is one of those things that has been around forever and even though
it's like the bottom barrel of a
lot of uh analysis that we do most of our data starts in an excel spreadsheet
or a comma separated variable file that you then end up with an excel spreadsheet
given below is the employee text file it
has information about name agent company and here's how you can import this data
into excel
go to the data tab click on get data drop down under from file select text
csv select where the text file is located in your system and click on import click on
load data imported into
excel you've been given cells data that has information on the cell of different
items across the world below is the data create a pivot table to analyze the
profit of all the items in each region now remember our pivot table is a table of
statistics that summarizes the data
of a more extensive table so it takes a full data sheet and we're just going to bring
we're going to focus zoom in on
something that's what the pro the pivot table means if we want to go ahead and do
this what we do is we go ahead and select a cell
in the table go to insert and click on pivot table in the create pivot table box choose
existing worksheet to place your pivot table drag region and item type onto rows
drag
total profit onto values sort the sum of the total profit column
using the cells table find the percentage contribution of cosmetics to the total
revenue and total profit
create a pivot table by dragging item type onto rows select the revenue and profit
column under values
right click on the revenue value under show value as select percentage of grand total
right click on a profit value
under show value as choose percentage of grand total and you can see here when
we do that we end up with cosmetics made a 14.03
percent contributions to the total revenue and an 18.94 contribution to the
total profit how do you create a dual axis chart in tableau drag the order data onto
columns and
convert it into continuous year drag total revenue onto rows and total profit to the
right corner of the view until
you see the light green rectangle synchronize the right axis by right clicking on the
profit axis
under the marks card change sum total revenue to bar and sum total profit to line
and adjust the size and color
they're lots of fun to play with as you start getting into these using the sales data
create a view to
show the total units sold and the profit generated from each item which item sold
the police and has least profit so we'll go ahead and load an excel file data in tableau
desktop
drag units sold onto columns and item type column under rows place the total profit
column under color and choose the
desired color palette sort the units sold axis in descending order
you can see here it produces a very quick bug figure shows the fruit sold and the
least and had the least amount of profit
create a map to show the units sold and the profit generated from different middle
east and north africa items drag
country onto the detail card place a total profit column under size drag units sold
under color
in the filters card drag the region column and select middle east and north africa
bahrain had the maximum number of units sold at the same time iran made the full
amount of profit
create a visualization to analyze the total revenue and the units sold for clothes meat
and baby food across
different regions in 2006 and 2017. drag the units sold filled on the
columns drag the region and item type fields on to rows under the cooler card place
a total revenue column drag item
type onto filters and choose clothes meat and baby food drag the order date column
onto filters and select 2016 in
2017 meat had the highest units sold and made the maximum profit now with any of
these
tableau it's good if you have your own hands on for this so that's an important thing
to note we
kind of zoomed in on tableau again there's a lot of other companies out there using a
lot of other packages so
if you're not familiar with tableau but you're able to do this in another package that's
a good thing so at least you know
what we're talking about you've had that hands-on let's go ahead and jump to some
advanced level questions
what is requirement prioritization name the different techniques used for it
requirements prioritization focuses on allocating requirements depending on the
business
urgencies this is essential for the project to run well requirement prioritization
enables various teams to
understand what is important and work in sync with the business needs
there are several techniques used for requirement prioritization we had moscow
technique we mentioned
that earlier the requirements are grouped based on must mandatory should
high priority could not necessary but preferred and would suggested for the future
ranking method here you give each requirement a distinct numerical value based on
its importance
of course this is at 100 oh well here's kind of similar to
ranking is the 100 method multiple stakeholders get a no notional 100 to distribute
among the
requirements so the 100 method is pretty similar to what the ranking method is
top 10 requirements and this approach from a large set the stakeholders simply
picked their top 10 requirements
this is very popular there's a lot of help books out there about getting things done
they say write everything
that you want to accomplish put them on three by five cards and narrow it down to
five
do those five because once you've conquered those five then you can move on to the
next ones
name the critical agile metrics that should be considered by a business analyst
sprint burn down so the sprint burn down is the chart we use when you're tracking
usually it's in
scrum is where that usually comes from the scrum setup but it's a chart of the work
to be
completed and what's still going on you have your work category allocation the
velocity
the cumulative flow diagram defect removal awareness time coverage defect
resolution time
explain bpmn bpmn business process model and notation
gateway controls the flow of interaction and sequence of processes it is a flowchart
technique which models the
end-to-end business process step the four essential elements of bpmn are
flow objects events activities gateways connecting objects sequence messages
associations swim lanes pool or lane artifacts data object group annotation
list the elicitation techniques the elicitation process is about gathering requirements
from users and stakeholders
listed below are a few techniques that are used to collaborate with users or clients
interviews during how many times i've been on the phone calling competition
um potential clients to ask questions uh so one of the elicitation techniques is to
ask questions if you're going to call clients to ask questions it can a lot of terms also
turn into additional sales
document analysis focus group prototyping brainstorming my favorite brainstorming
all these are important i just kind of highlight a few of them that i tend to get stuck in
observations and workshops
again workshops are a great sales technique also so as you're doing your business
analysis
and you're bringing people into a workshop and do observations in the workshop and
working specifically with these people they turn into potential
business growth i tell you what if you're a shareholder and someone's doing a
business analysis and they turn around
and generate a 30 000 sell for your company they're in you know you've already
earned your you've already earned your pay and you're doing what you like which is
business analysis
interface analysis questionnaire and survey questionnaire surveys my least favorite
but they are the most popular
because they're the easiest to pump out list of documents needed by a business
analyst initiation document project vision document
use cases system requirements specifications document
business requirement document requirements traceability matrix
functional requirement document use case specifications document
gaap analyst document describe how you would approach a project
here's a basic project approach outline which you can use with respect to different
situations
identifying the project goal formulating the work plan defining the requirements
collaborating with other teams tracking the project documenting the progress
and really when you start designing your project approach
encompassing all the things listed in here so important with the shareholders if you i
mean it's great if you can
identify your project goal and that's probably the most important thing because if you
don't have a goal you might as well walk away
but if you don't have the rest well how are you formulating the work plan defining the
requirements
collaborating with other teams that is such a big step because we're going from
everything
being on paper and trying to figure out what you're going to do to actually doing it
and then tracking and finally
documenting very important for the shareholders and what goes back to the top
differentiate an alternate flow and
exception flow in a use case diagram from a basic flow basic flow represents the
operation of
activities as required by the company in a use case alternate flow as the name
suggests is an alternate solution used in a system failure case different steps are
used to complete the
goals of a use cases exception flow refers to the various steps executed in case of
errors
this does not lead to achieving the required goal of a use case critical aspects of
creating analytical
reporting analytical reporting is a type of business reporting which provides data
analysis information and
recommendations it enables people to use data to make decisions
to create analytical reporting the following points should be kept in mind
comprehend business analysis
display your analysis skills think critically and i'm going to throw in here the term
from big data map and reduce really when we're doing a business
analysis you don't want to give them a massive amount of information you want to
reduce
it down to something that they can see in a single graph a very simple set of notes
um and you need to think critically you need to really make it what is it that the
shareholders want
that's going to make them understand why this is important to the business and
what does the business get out of it
what is kanban kanban helps agile teams in visually managing work through
processes it works as a scheduling system in agile just in time production
the kanban methodology is all about real-time communication of capacity and full
transparency of work
the kanban board describes a current development status and of course when you're
working with
kanban you got to be very careful about uh inspiring versus coaching versus
micromanaging it really can end up in a micro management setup where you want to
you want to watch out for that but you also
need to track everything a basic kanban board has three-step workflow as the to do
in progress and
done however depending on a team size structure and objectives the workflow
can be mapped to meet any particular team's unique process
state the key differences between brd and srs brd business requirements documents
is a
high-level functional specification of software brd is a formal document to describe
the
requirement provided by the client business analysts create this post
through interaction with the clients srs system requirement specification is a
high level functional and technical specification of software srs describes the
software's functions
and non-functional requirements that are needed to be developed whereas srs is
created by the systems architects
what is pareto analysis the pareto analysis helps in crucial decision
making it helps in prioritizing decisions identifying the most relevant and the least
decision
concerning the overall goal it is also known as the 80 20 rule
as per this rule 82 percent of the project's benefit arises from twenty percent of the
work
vice versa eighty percent of the case problem can be due to twenty percent of the
causes
differentiate between the v model and the fish model we talk about the v model it is
an sdlc
model where the execution of processes happens sequentially in a v shape
at every stage the same person reviews but other testers will do software testing in
the last step
v model consumes less time and costs the fish model is similar to the v model
but with more multiple verification teams every stage is tested by another team
for completeness and correctness the fish model is comparatively very costly and
time-consuming
which makes sense because if you have multiple tests on each stage for multiple
teams they have to all be spun
up on it and so you're literally more than doubling the work because you also have to
track all that
given the sales data create a chart to show each region's country that made the
highest revenue create a pivot table by
dragging the region and country onto rows place the total revenue column under
values
right click on the country value select the filter options and choose top 10 choose top
one as shown above and click
on ok and you can see here is the pivot table that you will get
using the cells data find all the countries where the total units of fruits sold offline
were less than three
thousand you need to use an advanced filter option in microsoft excel to solve this
problem below is a critical based on the question we have go to the data tab
select advanced filter option choose copy to another location give your criteria range
and the copy to
location click on ok here's the final result as we can see
below let's create a pivot table to find which countries from each region made the
lowest amount profit
create a pivot table by dragging the region and the country into rows place the profit
column under values right
click on any country value select the filter option and choose top ten choose bottom
one and click on ok
let's create a filled map to analyze the total revenue and profit generated from
beverages in north america using tableau
drag country under detail card place a total revenue column under the text drag total
profit under kalur in the filters
card drag the region column and select north america in the filters card drag the item
type
column and select beverages and you can see from the below map you can see that
greenland and the maximum
revenue and profit generated from beverages in north america who knew
using tableau how will you display the top five and bottom five items based on
profit drag the item type filled under rows and total profit onto columns right click on
the item type column to create a set give a name to the set and select the top tab to
choose the top five items by
sum total profit create a set for the bottom five items
by some total profit select both the sets right click to create a combined set give a
name to the set and choose
all members in both sets drag the new set on the filters and the total profit onto calor
the above graph depicts the cosmetics made the highest profit while fruits made the
lowest
and really when we're talking about tools like tabloo or if you're targeting companies
working
in r or you're targeting companies working in python you should be able to quickly do
these
kind of displays in any of those packages that you're focused on tableau is one of the
biggest ones out
there right now because it is a paid for service but it's also very robust and easy to
use and uses
less programming on the back end so just a quick side note on there really just leads
up if you if this does
not look right to you you're not able to get through some of these things make sure
you are if that's what you're targeting in a company for an interview
and with that we have come to the end of this video on business analyst full course i
hope it was informative and
interesting if you have any questions about the topics covered in this video please
ask away in the comments section
below our team will help you solve your queries thanks for watching stay safe and
keep learning