Business Analysis: Practical How-Tos by Caroline Julie Honings

When it comes to Business Analysis, Senior Business Analyst Caroline Julie Honings has more than one trick up her sleeve. We asked her if she had practical tips for starting Business Analysts or people wanting to work in the Project Management field.

Here are 5 tips you can apply in your day-to-day to increase your potential:

 

Listen actively to people and their needs

« A Business Analyst should first and foremost listen very carefully to capture as much information as possible without judgement. After careful analysis of the received information, the right questions should be raised to the relevant stakeholders. It is appreciated and useful to have a background in the subject matter but that is not always necessary. Paying attention to and recognizing the people dealing with the said application or product you are working on, also generally referred to as subject matter experts, is very important.

Start from an as-is situation to reach a to-be situation, deal with work pragmatically, and propose alternatives for your clients, if needed. »

 

Trust your common sense

« Follow your gut feeling. Some methodologies can help you analyse complex matters or manage projects more efficiently, but you should be able to apply them in the right context. 

Practical methodologies for business analysis include business process modeling, which comes down to mapping and understanding what needs to be put into place to generate a certain output, or the Ishikawa diagram, which helps you display your ideas into a decision tree. »

 

Embrace critical thinking

« Dare to question your and others’ actions. This will help you work out the intricacies of the project.

Some questions you could ask yourself before starting the project:

→ What solutions can be found to resolve the main issue?

→ Do we have all the elements we need to find solutions?

→ Have we done similar analyses or projects in the past and is there anything we can reuse?

→ Do we need to ask these questions to our stakeholders or do we already have the answer to this? »
 

Test before your implement

« It can be annoying for the end user of your product to find out that the product is not working properly because it has not been tested thoroughly.

Testing your product as soon as possible allows you to notice things that you potentially overlooked in your analysis.

In this case, the Agile method can come in handy because you are included in every step of the creation process and you can see what goes wrong. Moreover, you can anticipate mistakes more rapidly.

Testing the product or the software you’re working on is simply respecting the client. This way, you waste less money and gain time in the process.   

Remember: Treat others how you would want to be treated and make sure that what you deliver meets the expectations.»

 

Adapt to cultural differences

« Even in a small country such as Belgium, cultural differences can occur. 

It is important to have an eye for your audience and adapt your communication style to the people you talk to. Some relational approaches might be more important to some than to others, so it’s important to be open-minded. »

 

Applying these five tips can help you take your potential to the next level and improve your relationships. 

 

---

 

There’s much more to explore! Discover the inspiring stories of the people of Prosource.

Read about the experience of Gert Leroy, Business Change Management Consultant at Colruyt Group via Prosource and how he introduced Agile in a non-agile context, or the experience of Eline Horemans, Project Management Lead at Horta. 

Or check out Ruben Coomans, Junior Consultant at BEA Sensors or Famke Vancoillie: Junior Project Consultant & learn more about what drives them and their passion for Project Management.