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Day: July 18, 2019

Business Analyst Interview Questions

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

If you’re searching for business analyst interview questions then you could be an interviewer or interviewee. But no matter which side of the table you are the interview itself is your chance to evaluate the answers of each other. Do not be nervous and try to stay calm, positive and genial throughout.

Business Analyst General Interview Questions

One should expect the interviewer will test your knowledge based on your resume and facts stated in them, your solutions in hypothetical situations and Agile related questions where the answers are likely to be based on your applications of Agile to BA situations like macroeconomics, fiscal policies, your ability to work on the team and your ability to creatively resolve tricky issues. General questions may have no right answer. These business analyst interview questions assess your soft skills and interpersonal communication skills.
Some of these are

  • Lead me through your resume.
  • What is your best positive feature or worst negative feature?
  • How would you measure BA success?
  • Would you like to ask us any questions?

In all your answers be brief, keep your answers simple, answer with spontaneity and honesty. Facts are easily verifiable and deceptively simple to answer wrongly.

Business Analyst Technical Interview Questions

  1. Explain differences between the Business Requirements, Functional Requirements and Technical Requirements documents.
    A BRD explains the business requirements. An FRD explains how business requirements can be achieved. A TRD explains how the Technical Designer requirements will be met. This trick question is not just about the answer but tests your Agile knowledge and application of the acronym to the Backlog list and other concepts in Agile from traditional and Agile perspectives.
  2. Where is PESTLE used?
    The PESTLE BA tool acronym expansion is Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Environmental, Legal environments assessed for opportunities, pressures and constraints.
  3. What are “Porter’s 5 Forces”?
    The framework is used to analyze competition levels in an industry, product substitutes, rivalry, new entrant’s threat and such factors for assessing competitiveness to influence organizational strategy. It was built and named after Harvard’s Prof. Porter.
  4. Explain Use Case Model.
    The Use Case model uses case descriptions and a step-by-step use case diagram to define the processes, role of actors and areas of the story.
  5. What does “Swim Lane” diagram mean to you?
    Using swim lanes is a widely used best practice in modelling techniques of processes showing the trigger for a specific event and the task sequences performed by a particular actor in the Use Case model.
  6. Tell us your definition of User Story.
    A User Story is used by Agile teams and is a format requirement from the user point of view got from Extreme Programming with the format:
    As a <user role>, I want
    <requirement> so that
    <business value>
  7. What is INVEST?
    The acronym expansion is Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Sized Appropriately and Testable. It checks the User Story effectiveness and uses it as a criterion for building them.
  8. Explain “Usability”.
    Usability is about the qualities that are end-user suitable. It is about the right system functionality and the user interface. The UX-user experience is the ultimate measure focused on.
  9. Explain non-functional and functional requirements:
    Functional Requirements are those that the solution will do or allow users to do. Non-functional requirements are “Quality Characteristics” like compatibility, security, performance etc, that measure how well the system behaves against the standards set for it and are essential to the system.
  10. Tell us about Kano Analysis:
    The Kano model explains customer satisfaction applied to the theory of product development by Professor Noriaki Kano in the 1980s. Customer preferences are put into five categories namely exciters, satisfiers, dissatisfiers or the wow, will and want factors. The model focuses on customer needs and tries to cash-in on perceived product features differentiated for product and marketing analysis.
  11. Explain MoSCoW prioritization briefly:
    MoSCoW stands for the acronym used in Agile approaches for requirements prioritized on a time-dependent scale in the DSDM Agile Project Framework.
    • Must Have
    • Should Have
    • Could Have
    • Won’t Have this time

Use these business analyst interview questions as a reference and work on your own questions if you were in the interviewer’s shoes.
Interviews need one to be thoroughly knowledgeable on topics related to business analysis, Agile framework and market conditions. One should use creativity in answering business analyst interview questions. Most of the questions tend to test knowledge, attributes of soft-skills, interpersonal communication skills and technical subject knowledge.
Did you know that the Agile and business analyst courses at Imarticus Learning offer mock interviews, assured placements, and soft-skill development too as part of their course learning? Why wait then? Join today!

Also Read: Top 25 Agile Interview Questions

How To Change Career From Retail Banking After Working For a Few Years?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Your decision to take up a career in new-age banking is after being in retail banking is not only logical and laudable but is a great career move.

You will need to do new-age banking courses to catch up with the latest trends in new-age banking which offers some great features like:

  • Job security and working in MNC environments.
  • Super salary packages topped with great benefits
  • Jobs for retired bankers and career-changers within the banking areas are never a problem.
  • Wide variety of jobs experiences and roles.
  • Banking industry jobs are prestigious and have a thriving ecosystem.
  • To update knowledge of the latest banking trends and practices New Age Banking Training can help. They also help with certifications and interview skills.
  • Excellent career progression and scope for banking jobs make this career choice great.
  • Community service goals and continued learning opportunities are satisfying and enriching.
  • The working hours are good and the environment is conducive to career progression.
  • Certifications gained to add to your resume and knowledge endorsing your skill levels.

EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES TO RIDE THE EDTECH WAVEThe variety of sectors on offer:
New-age banks have evolved which are needs and market-based. Traditionally the roles were related to customer-service and teller areas in banks. This means multi-tasking banking professionals are in high demand.

The trending opportunities in new-age banking are: 

  • Investment and Trust Banking help with investments, issuances, property, and fund management for both individual and institutional clients.
  • Operations roles deal with the everyday handling of banking operations from bookkeeping, record keeping, financial analysis, strategy meetings, client presentations, etc.
  • Personalized Consumer Banking division roles deal with customized services and financial advice to priority individual HNI customers.
  • Commercial Banking roles have clients like organizations, schools, businesses, churches, etc to cater to customized banking financial solutions.
  • IT, systems, and security cover areas that aid the banking operation accumulate technology, data, and records, store them safely and maintain the safety of the entire banking environment and assets.
  • Accounting and administration roles handle policies, routine due diligence, strategy and planning, internal operations, and such tasks.
  • HR and PR Resources are the bloodlines and while HR is employee management related the PRO is client-facing and strives to improve customer experience and feedback.
  • Regulatory and Accounting and administration roles handle policies, routine due diligence, strategy and planning, internal operations, and such tasks.
  • Marketing is an important role and helps win new customers into the fold with the bank’s product information, managing the customer database, advertising, media, and press releases, and much more.

What is new-age banking?
The term ‘new-age banking’ is applied to traditional banking offering a re-packaged combination of services in Forex, online lending, and banking services.

Online Lending: 
IndusInd Bank has set the right example for new-age banking. Their loans are now pre-approved and the ETB users log into the portal and get instant loans after meeting the online eligibility criteria. Besides, they have ramped up the loans on consumer durables, securitized loans, and more digitizing those long and time-consuming loan processes into paper-less, pre-approved seamlessly online instant transactions.

Transactions in FOREX:
This trending market also covers multi-currency travel cards, currency exchange at market rates, and delivery of local currency at kiosks or the airport for foreign travelers. The easy on-boarding and reloading, blockchain-based security, direct product deliveries against cash-on-receipt; easy conversions of FOREX, etc are some of the USPs.

Personalized Banking Services:
Customization of banking services through requests has made visiting the bank unnecessarily. Almost all banks have portals for account management, and payment platforms like BHIM and QR scans like PayTM have meant digitization and cashless transactions leading to higher C-SAT ratings.

Skills for a new-age banker:
To become career-prepared you need to undertake new-age banking training and work hard in the New-Age Banking Courses on the following attributes. An academic bachelor’s degree would be essential and experience in banking practices help.

Fluency in English communication and excellent skills in presentations using Microsoft Excel Macros and financial software is critical to presenting a report of insights that help decision-making based on predictive analysis foresight and data analytical skills. Yes, conceptual knowledge and expertise in the domain enable you to stand out.

Employment Outlook:
The pay packages, bonuses, and career progression when you make a career in new-age banking are not just lucrative and prestigious. They are performance and certification related enabling continuous learning and very satisfying job roles.

Conclusion:
Bank jobs are open to all graduates and persons making career changes within the banking sector. Doing the new-age banking training course at Imarticus Learning helps you with assured placements, certification, knowledge of the new-age banking procedures, and employable experience.
Hurry! Admissions are limited in every batch.

How Important Is An Application Domain In Regards To Post-Graduate In Machine Learning?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

How Important Is An Application Domain In Regards To Post-Graduate In Machine Learning?

If you wish to do ML research, either academic or in the industry, then you need to be a great coder and get to working with the elite in the ML domain. But, for the following reasons, you would still have the advantage.

  1. ML research is the right path since there is an acute shortage of qualified practical doctorates in ML. Spending a few years under the best in the domain of ML can actually help improve your knowledge and practical skills through effective mentorship. There are ML mentors like Geoffrey Hinton, Nando Freitas, Yann LeCun, Andrew Zisserman, Andrew Ng, etc who are well known for their work and contribution to research.
  2. Attaining proficiency in Machine Learning Training needs proficiency in data, mathematics, statistics, linear algebra, calculus, differentiation, integration, and a host of other subjects to do research in the ML domain. If you have these it still takes 3-5 years before you get to writing effective algorithms.

Most software engineering jobs in industries do not provide you time for reading or research. Further, you will lose out on practicing your development skills. Since the ML programs on the market today are more or less ready to use, it makes perfect sense to learn Machine Learning Course.

To answer which way you should proceed read on. One can opt for any of the two ways of applying ML. To research and applications. Let us explore these choices.

ML research:

Learning about the science of machine learning is actual research. An ML researcher is constantly exploring ways to push the scientific boundaries of the science of ML and its applications to the Artificial Intelligence field. Such aspirants do have a post-graduation or even a Ph.D. in CS with frequent and periodical publications of their research presented at the top ML conferences and seminars. They are visible and popular in these research circles. The ML researcher is looking for something to improve upon and thanks to their efforts technology are always cutting edge and progressing in pace with developments.

When you need to tweak your applications and seem to go nowhere with it, it is these ML researchers who can get you up from 95 to 98 percent accuracies or more by offering you a personalized and customized solution. The ML researcher really knows his wares well. The only drawback is that he may never get the opportunity to actually deploy his solutions in applications. He knows the theory and is devoid of practice in SaaS delivery, deploying to production or translating the research finding into a practical app.

Machine Learning application:

In comparison to the researcher, the ML application is about the engineering of ML. An ML engineer will take off from where the researcher left. He is adept at using the research and turning it into a valuable practical application or service. They are adept at services of cloud computing and services like the GCP of Google or AWS from Amazon. They are fluent in Agile practices and can diagnose and troubleshoot anywhere in the SDLC of the product.

These ML engineers are often not as recognized as the ML researcher for want of a decorated Ph.D. and referral citations. But they are the people you must go to if you want your customers to be happy with ML-driven products. These application engineers have years of experience and deployments of thousands of products to their credit.

Consult an ML application engineer before you deploy products or services in the market. Your decisions should be based on your business domain, the product or services on offer and the methods of delivering it to the targeted market.

Expected payouts:

The Gartner report states that by 2020 the domains of ML and AI will generate 2.3 million jobs. Digital Vidya claims the ML career is great since the inexperienced freshmen land jobs that pay 699,807- 891,326 Rs. If your domain expertise is in data analysis and algorithms your salary could be 9 lakh to Rs 1.8 crore Rs pa.

Conclusion:

For most teams/businesses and teams, ML has many apps that are applicable to its specific needs. You do not need to reinvent it but must know how to use it better. Its an awesome tool for the enterprise and customer’s too! Learn ML at Imarticus Learning. Besides learning how to tweak the ML algorithm through hands-on assignments, project work, and workshops you get assured placements, soft-skill, and personality development modules with a resume writing exercise. Hurry and start today!

Difference Between Data Analyst and Business Analyst

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Data Science is crucial in today’s modern world where AI, ML, VR, AR and CS rule. These sectors are where most career aspirants are seeking to make their careers because of the ever-increasing demand for professionals and the fact that with an increase in data and development of these core sectors, there are plentiful opportunities to land the well-paid jobs.
In the earlier days, data scientists were obscure and restricted in the IT server rooms and department. Today they are the blue-eyed boys in the business world. According to Indeed.com analysis reports, a 4,000 % was reported in this profession. This then justifies why the demand for a trained Data Analyst with domain expertise, mathematical and data engineering skills (who are considered invaluable organizational assets), has been inordinately high. Supply positions are never catching up and their pay packages have seen many a career aspirant’s dreams fulfilled.
An analyst is a specialist in data analysis processing both facts and figures to gauge trends, get gainful insights and make forecasts using predictive analysis. Most people tend to use the two terms business analyst and data analyst interchangeably. Though this can be applied in terms of smaller businesses the “business analyst” in larger enterprises actually covers both systems and data analysis. The scope of the BA is not limited to being only a data analyst but appropriates roles of a data scientist too. What both the analyst and BA do with the data is entirely different and their job skills, the environment of operation and technical skills will definitely differ.

The Role Differences:

The two roles are at NEVER interchangeable in job-roles, and they definitely aren’t the same in terms of career progression, job-scope, payouts, and skills required for the job among other differentiators. The business analyst is definitely better paid since his role demands more and his skills are relatively wider than that of a Data Analyst. To get a better understanding of the job differentiators one needs to look at the job roles of the scientist, analyst and BA.

Data Analyst Role

To manage such large volumes of data and extract information from such data sourced from multiple origins the data analyst is a necessity and a good analyst is a prized corporate asset. Their role in the enterprise is to sift through the data and provide the information, forecasts, predictions and such to the decision makers. The evolution of business strategy and informed decisions is thus dependent on data and the data analyst.

Business Analyst Role

The BA and data analyst roles focus on the use of data in focused roles. The BA assesses data and system infrastructure requirements from a business-perspective. The data analyst, on the other hand, takes interest in the databases and is more focused on placing his insights in the hands of decision makers.
Data analysts are generalists who score over the BA and can tackle more data analysis problems since they have the multi-disciplinary technical skills that include engineering skills of a database engineer, deal with algorithms using the skills of a statistician and have expertise in the data domain/subject matter proficiencies of the data analyst. They focus on insights for business decision making. The BA in addition to being a data analyst also includes focused analysis related decision making on data, systems and infrastructure in decision making.

Skills Required

It is true that a Data Analyst collects databases, manipulates them for foresight and analyzes data for predictions. His presentations, reports, and insights often comprise the latest trends, visualization of the data, and foresight in the form of charts, tables, graphs, histograms and more.
All data jobs need strong business acumen and domain expertise. The technical skills and the level of influence on the organization’s performance mean a good analyst/BA will find the right solution with the most value to the business problems presented.
Mere technical skills and degrees are not enough. Both streams aspirants need to be excellent communicators with the data scientist and analyst who have a problem-solving attitude and can lead from the front. Soft-skills are very important in all teams.
Both data, as well as BAs roles, calls for problem-solving attitude and technical expertise in SAP, PeopleSoft applications and Microsoft Excel suite. The formal educational credential is graduation or business-related degree. An MBA is a plus point.
Becoming a specialized Data Analyst at the reputed Imarticus Learning helps start careers such as business analyst, data scientists, and data analysts. The certification issued at Imarticus is globally accepted as an index of your knowledge and practical skills. So, don’t toss a coin to decide. Explore your career with an Imarticus Business Analyst Course. All the best!

Also Read: Difference Between Business Analyst & Business System Analyst

Rethinking the Role of Business Analyst

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

The Business Analyst can be found in most enterprises and their job roles can be classified under the heads of

  •  Requirements analysts
  • Systems analysts
  • Business analysts
  • Business system analysts

Good BAs are people-persons with excellent business domain understanding and include proficiency in interviewing, (JAD), modeling sessions, and model reviews.

The Need for Business analyst

The three oft heard justifications in traditional organizations for hiring a Business Analyst are not justifiable.

  • Developers fail in eliciting requirements because of poor modelling and communication skills required for this. This is remediable through training.
  • Stakeholders cannot document and model their requirements. Again training stakeholders using the right techniques and tools can help them do most of the work with a little help and guidance.
  • One need’s expert analysis. This is right and does not imply you need a BA to do just that. Agile BAs may not be good at all aspects of the job and analysis may be one of them.

Role of the Business Analyst

Business analyst on a traditional software development project will perform one or more of the following activities:

  • System scoping
  • Translates needs of the business
  • Technical issues translation
  • Document and model
  • Be the broker for communications
  • Be a political mentor
  • Validation and testing
  •  Stakeholder representation

Common Issues For Business Analyst

Some of the common Business Analyst problems that occur are mentioned below.

  • Lack of the right skills.
  • BAs may influence the project.
  • Outdated BAs.
  • BAs may become communication hurdles.
  • BAs may reduce the influence of stakeholders.
  • BAs over analyze.
  • BAs reduce feedback.
  • BAs reduce developer opportunity for communication skills.

Rethinking for Agile Analysts

Agility is to ensure that the processes and development are done in iterative items on a product backlog where the sprint and responsibilities of delivery of products devolve on the team. That means trouble as there is conflict in the BAs role and team activity.
Hence the following methodologies based on Agile practices were evolved to help to scale Agile in the organization.

  • One room methodology – Developers and Stakeholders are Co-Located
  • Over the wall methodology- Not Co-Located but Single Location
  • Across the network methodology- Dispersed/Distributed Development

Business analyst as Product Owner and the role of the Business analyst in scaling Agile cannot be discounted and are Agile measures to empower the new BAs rather than stick with traditional roles. This should be encouraged just because Agile in order to scale needs the removal of all hurdles and the spread of Agile thinking across every employee in the organization. This, of course, involves the Business analyst and gives them a chance to transform into Agile roles of being stakeholders in the process.

Though it would be impossible to discuss the topic in great detail, suffice to say that rethinking the Agile BAs role is a necessity in large organizations and cross-functional teams. So how would one understand better the benefits of Agility? The answer lies in Agile training and implementation from the grassroots levels. Doing an Agile course with a reputed and accredited training partner like Imarticus would bring in more than one benefit.

Benefits of Doing Business Analyst Course

  • You get trained in a very short time period.
  • Practical skills in the latest technology are enhanced through project work, assignments etc keeping your sports vertical in mind.
  • They have sufficient assignments, tests, hands-on practice and boot-camps to help you revise and learn the tough subjects.
  • They have a variety of subjects like ML, AI, finance, fintech etc in which they offer certification.
  • They use certified instructors and mentors drawn from the industry.
  • They integrate resume writing, personality development, mock interviews and soft-skill development modules in the course.
  • They have convenient modes and timings to learn at your own pace and online for professionals and in the classroom mode for sports analytics career aspirants.
  • They offer assured placements too!

Concluding thoughts:

An experienced Business Analyst will find it hard to settle into Agile teams because they have issues with over-modelling and over-specifying. To be effective members in Agile, they need to rethink, be collaborative, flexible and disciplined. This takes effort and time.
The easiest way is to do an Agile specialist course at Imarticus Learning where one can get acclimatized through industry-relevant assignments and project work.
Become a specialized BA today!