How to survive a day as a business analyst?
A practical guide to napping without getting caught!
You’ve completed all the online training, gained all of the knowledge, are well-versed in all aspects of business analysis, and have done everything in your power to comprehend the so-called BABOK 100 times.
And “Hurrah!” You have been offered a position.
You’ve been working at your new job for almost a month now, and you’re still sitting at your desk wondering, “What should I do?”
Should I start writing BRD? Oh no, I guess I should first connect with the listed stakeholders, but how should I start? Oh, I think meeting my team personally will be better now.
What should I do? 🤔
This happens because you’ve only worked on all the theory and the so-called “bookish” terms. But…
Live a day as a Business Analyst, and you’ll understand what it entails.
I have been asked this question a lot of times: What do you do in your 9–5 stretch as a Business Analyst? Hence I feel this is actually a valid question to understand what is waiting ahead of you.
What does a typical day look like for a business analyst?
The broader answer to this question is quite simple — “it depends”. Now on what it depends, there are a lot of factors.
If you ask a housewife, a businessman, a retired grandpa and a policeman, “What are your day-to-day activities?” the answer would definitely be different for all.
Similarly, even for a simple BA role, depending on certain factors such as type of organization, project need, number of projects being handled, severity of project, type of project, timeline for a project, etc., the outline of a day changes.
You might have heard a lot of people say that for a BA every day is different.
That is actually true and is one of the fascinating element of this job role. Everyday a BA comes to the office with a different goal and mindset.
Their daily routine is mainly divided into two parts — one is “full of calls” with stakeholders, with the engineering team to understand requirements, and so on and so forth. (In short, a lot of “Can you hear me?” stuff)
The other half is their “me-time”, working on important documents, presentations, user stories (JIRA is their best friend) meeting agendas, sending minutes of meetings, and much more.
Apart from all these factors, the main one remains, what methodology will be used on their project. Understanding a day in the life of a BA depends on whether the project is a Waterfall Project or an Agile Project.
Waterfall Project
I am assuming that you are aware about Waterfall methodology, which is a linear, sequential way of handling a project (complete each phase before moving to the next), a day for a Waterfall BA is entirely different of what we see nowadays in most organizations.
- In the initial phase of the project, the majority of the hours for a BA go into taking the requirements from stakeholders, back to back calls, meetings, etc.
- After this, their day’s structure changes. They are mostly engaged in preparing logical and physical designs with the design team, i.e., a lot of brainstorming calls and running back and forth to build a rigid mockup.
- In the third phase, BA’s are mostly engaged with the engineering team to make them understand the requirements, so that they can start coding.
- Once the final product is ready, a BA’s day will consist of multiple review calls with stakeholders to demonstrate the product/solution.
- It will basically be a lot of calls/discussions with both stakeholders and the engineering team to make required changes in the product until the customers are satisfied and simultaneously preparing documents, user stories for the same. (special mention for CR documents)
Hence, in a Waterfall Project, a day for a BA depends on what phase the project is in. Every day might be the same for a couple of months, until a particular phase gets completed.
But talking about the current trend, where 71% of companies in the US are using Agile over Waterfall, the scenarios are a bit different.
Agile Project
Agile Projects have some pre-defined events that take place during the project, hence I believe it somehow structures a BA’s day in a better way.
I am assuming you are aware about Agile and its different events. No worries, if not, click below to follow me and stay tuned for all the details you want to know about the Agile methodology and Scrum.
- An Agile BA’s day might start with a Stand-up, which happens on a daily basis. The team will discuss the progress on their work and if they are facing any blockers.
- At the start of a sprint, they’ll spend most of a day in a Sprint Planning, where the whole team sits together and discusses what user stories they will be picking for the upcoming sprints and estimates them. (team decides on how advanced they want the user stories to be ready, for e.g, stories for Sprint 4 should be ready by Sprint 2 itself)
- They might need to have some discussions with the UI/UX team on the upcoming designs which the engineering team might need for their next sprint.
- They could have calls with stakeholders or the Product Manager to understand the roadmap, and to discuss the timelines (for a PM, poking about the timeline is a must).
- They might include the Release Planning discussions in the same call with PM.
- If it’s the end of a Sprint, their day will include a Sprint Retrospective, where the whole team sits together and discusses what happened in the last Sprint and what they can improve.
- Obviously we can’t miss the Requirement Elicitation sessions, for the upcoming Sprints/Releases and also taking into consideration if there are any enhancements or change requests to be done.
- After all of this, if the time allows, BAs can focus on their own stuff such as preparing or editing BRD, FRD, user stories, acceptance criteria, CRs etc. or planning their day ahead.
A day for a BA can be really hectic too, depending on the scenario where they are handling multiple projects simultaneously or in the case of tight timelines.
What my day looks like as a Senior Business Analyst/Product Owner in an Agile Product Development?
✏️I start my day around 8AM with a cup of tea, for sure!! (Please don’t judge me as I am slowly working on getting up early)😄
✏️My morning is mostly utilized with the most difficult and time taking tasks of my day, i.e., editing my content and preparing lunch. Once these are done, I feel much more relaxed and I can focus more productively on the rest of the day.
✏️Around 10 AM, I jump onto my call with the designer of the team. We mostly brainstorm on the designs that she worked on for the upcoming release or if she had made any changes in the existing ones.
Sometimes, this call can stretch a bit (for around 1.5 hours), as we have a lot to digest and discuss.
✏️Until 12:30 PM, I work on my own stuff, like editing PRD (we maintain release wise PRD), looking at the user stories for upcoming sprints, discussing the designs with our PM for more in-depth understanding, finalizing the acceptance criteria, etc.
✏️Around 12:30 PM, I take my shower and enjoy a nice 45 min to 1 hr lunch break.
Although after this I feel like I am going to fall down with a terrible sleep, but I try not to (FYI, for me a power nap is not a power nap, it’s a 1 hour deep sleep).😄
✏️After my lunch, I usually connect with my teammates to discuss how we want to proceed ahead, what pieces we are going to take for next release, any new information that is coming from the market, how better we can make the customer experience with our product, etc. It is actually a fun and learning session for me everyday, since I feel I have expanded my innovative capability at a greater level.
As I said before, that for a BA, every day is something unique in its way, that goes the same for me.
✏️Every Thursday, we have a good 2 hour session with our PM, where we discuss major components of our PRD. In the evening we have our grooming session, where we discuss all the prepared user stories and acceptance criteria with the engineering team.
✏️We have a 2-week Sprint, so after every Sprint on a Friday afternoon, we have our Retro meeting to discuss any good or bad experiences of the previous Sprint and if we need any changes on how to work, for the upcoming ones.
✏️Every day in the evening, we have a quick 15 minute Stand-up call with the team to discuss the progress and blockers of our ongoing Sprint.
This is the basic structure of my day, depending on what day of the week it is. But again, I would say, “it depends” as you don’t know what is the need of the hour and at the end of the day you realize that this whole time you were just in meetings and didn’t get time to work on anything of your own.
I hope you have figured out a bit now what you will be doing in your day once you enter this world of so-called Business Analysts.
Every week I cover the most frequent and common doubts of an aspiring BA to help them land their dream job no matter what prior experience or domain experience they hold.
Go ahead and develop a basic understanding of what a BA role is.
And how it is different or the same as compared to a Project Manager role.
High five!
