Quotes For Business Analysts

On Requirements

The customer might not always be right, but the BA needs to understand and respect whatever point each customer is trying to make through his request for certain product features or attributes. The BA must be alert for situations in which the customer could be in the wrong. Rather than simply promising anything a customer requests, strive to understand the rationale behind the customer’s thinking and negotiate an acceptable outcome - Karl Wiegers

You need to determine who will serve as the literal voice of the customer for each user class. I call these people product champions. Ideally, product champions are actual users who represent their user-class peers - Karl Wiegers

People who must work together rarely discuss the nature of their collaboration. The BA should negotiate with the customer representatives early in the project to agree on the responsibilities each party has with respect to the requirements process. An agreed-upon collaboration strategy is a strong contributor to the participants’ mutual success - Karl Wiegers

On Assumptions

it’s vital that assumptions aren’t left to fester—they should be revisited regularly by the owner to make sure they are still valid. In addition to keeping a central log, it is also worth explicitly stating any relevant assumptions up-front in any terms of reference that you write for your analysis work and also explicitly stating them within requirement specifications - Adrian Reed