Prachit Parikh: what a business analyst actually does all day
People ask me what a business analyst actually does, and the honest answer is that I translate. Someone in finance, operations or customer service has a problem. A development team has the skills to fix it. Between those two groups sits a lot of room for misunderstanding, and that gap is where a business analyst works. I'm Prachit Parikh, and I've worked as a business analyst on banking and business systems projects. This post walks through what the job looks like week to week, the tools involved, and what separates a useful BA from someone who just takes notes in meetings. The short definition A business analyst makes sure the thing a team builds is the thing the business needed. That breaks down into four jobs: understanding the problem, writing requirements a team can build and test, checking the data those requirements depend on, and making sure the finished change is tested properly before it goes live. A typical week as a business analyst Discovery: finding the real probl...