Why Hire a Business Analyst for Your Startup?

You probably came across this article because you are either deciding whether you need to hire a Business Analyst or you’ve already decided and are trying to dive into the details of the hiring process for this specific position.

In recent years, more and more companies in various fields are looking to hire business analysts. So it’s really important to have an understanding of what these professionals are doing for your business and which BA role (spoiler: yes, there is more than one) will be the best match for your business or project. 

Let’s begin with answering one of the burning questions: “I am a startup founder with a great business idea. Do I need a Business Analyst on my team?” The answer to this one is almost always positive. So let’s not waste any more time and learn more about BA and this position’s role in business.

Who is a Business Analyst?

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis, a Business Analyst is a person responsible for analyzing and reviewing business processes, leading project teams, and connecting tech and business. They help facilitate solutions and digital transformation as well as serve as business change drivers.

Skills and Requirements

One of the first things we should clarify first is what skills should a Business Analyst have and what are the requirements for one.

Skills of a good BA include:

• Analytical thinking — it can be considered the basic skill of any business analyst. Using different analytical techniques and applying logic to draw conclusions is something a Business Analyst does daily.
• Data interpretation and visualization — after analyzing the data, one has to present the results in a concise manner that would be understood by the relevant people.
• Communication skills — daily communication with stakeholders, technical specialists, project managers, and even the financial department is an integral part of the work of a business analyst.
• Ability to solve problems and make decisions — the success of an entire project can often depend on BA’s decisions. Therefore, people in this position should not be afraid to make decisions, work effectively in difficult situations and quickly find ways to solve problems.
• The ability to multitask — since the BA’s work involves different types of tasks, the ability to switch between tasks without losing concentration is very important.

Basic requirements for someone who wants to work as a Business analyst:

• Relevant education. A degree in Management, Business Studies, Business Administration, or Information Technology are the usual requirements for a BA.
• Certification. The International Institute of Business Analysis is the most reputable and well-known organization that offers business analysis certifications for professionals of different levels. Although the certification may not be a strict requirement, they definitely prove the expertise and deep knowledge of a specialist.
• Relevant experience. For the beginner BA, it could be an internship in a certain field or an experience working with decision-makers. For someone, who wants to switch to business analysis, it could be an experience in project management or product management.

Responsibilities

Of course, depending on the industry, the composition of the management team, and the size of the company, the duties of a BA may vary. In addition, it is influenced by numerous external factors in the rapidly changing world of business.

However, there are certain functions that almost any person in a business analyst position has to perform at one point or another. We will focus on them now.

• First and foremost, it is business analysis. But what does it include? Well, it includes a review and analysis of data, outlining risks, opportunities, problems, and possible solutions. 
• Market research. Regular industry and competitor analysis is the key to making the right decisions when it comes to production, sales, and marketing. The obtained information helps to give stakeholders proper recommendations and build the company's strategy.
• Planning and monitoring. BA is actively involved in planning at every stage of product development. From the creation of the general outline of the project and main backlog in the early stages of development to gathering and analyzing the feedback in the maintenance stage — a Business Analyst is the one responsible for these processes. Although the BA usually does not communicate with developers directly on a daily basis, they closely monitor the development process. This helps to make adjustments and changes to backlogs, prioritize the tasks, and redistribute the workload without losing the productivity and efficiency of the whole team.
• Budgeting. Although there is a separate role for a Budgeting Business Analyst, almost all Business Analysts deal with budgets. Understanding the budget, the customer's requirements, knowing the cost of development, and the capabilities of technical specialists gives the BA the opportunity to create the most optimal development scenario that would find a compromise between the best quality, shortest delivery time, and cost-efficiency.
• Reporting. BA is the person who must prepare and present reports on the progress of the project, possible delays and changes during the development. One of the key qualities of a business analyst is the ability to explain complex ideas and concepts in simple words, to interpret the results of one's own research, and perhaps even visualize them to simplify perception. Very often top management, investors, partners, and stakeholders rely on BA's knowledge and skills when making decisions.
• Connecting IT and stakeholders. BA turns clients’ needs and ideas into technical and non-technical requirements for IT departments. The Business Analyst’s goal is to ensure that everyone working on the project is on the same page and understands what is necessary to achieve. They also create appropriate documentation that everyone involved in the project has access to and can use to reach the business goals.

Who Can Become a Business Analyst?

As mentioned previously, a person with a degree in a relevant field (such as business analysis, finance, data science, business administration, or information management) can make a great BA. 

But what if one is already working in IT but wants to try adopting a new role? Well, people with the experience of working as a Project Manager, Tech Lead, or Product Manager can try themselves in the role of Business Analyst and do so quite successfully.

Project Manager

Very often, Project Managers grow in their careers by becoming Business Analysts. Basically, communication of the customer's requirements and expectations, organization of the work process, evaluation of results, and reporting in one way or another are usually included in the responsibilities of the Project Manager.

Therefore, a Project Manager will do well in the role of a Business Analyst if their main responsibilities on the project include setting up workflows and following deadlines.

Product Manager

Usually, project managers are a part of the top management team so switching to BA might seem to be downshifting. However, the position of a business analyst can bring new challenges and possibilities to former product managers. 

As product managers often deal with strategizing, planning, and road mapping they can utilize their skills in a role of a BA helping the project to grow and evolve. Deep knowledge and experience of working in specific business fields can also contribute to a successful switch from product manager to business analyst as they will make brilliant business representatives.

Tech Lead

Although at first glance it may seem a very unlikely career switch, IT Team Leads make great BA specialists. 

Why? Usually, a Tech Lead position requires years of experience in IT, knowledge of several programming languages, a deep understanding of customer needs and business logic, as well as the ability to evaluate productivity and organize the work of a team.

All this allows Tech Leads to successfully fulfill the duties of a Business Analyst, qualitatively and quickly turning customer requirements into solutions using their own experience and recommending the most suitable technologies and realistic deadlines, giving advice on further software product development, and maintaining constant communication with the technical team and stakeholders.

Business Analyst Roles

As was mentioned previously, a person in a position of a Business Analyst can perform numerous different roles. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

IT Business Analyst

Combining knowledge of business administration and IT, these professionals are responsible for identifying and validating customer’s business idea and possibilities, turning them into requirements, and communicating them to an IT team.

The IT BA plays an important role at every stage of the software development life cycle and acts as an intermediary between the customer’s representatives and the development team.

IT Business Analyst can make important suggestions and recommendations that would decide the fate of the project when working with a startup. Therefore, it is crucial for the startups to find a specialist they would fully trust and whose expertise would be unquestionable.

IT Security Analyst 

As the title suggests, this specialist is responsible for the protection of the company’s information systems. With more and more industries going through digital transformation, this position gains popularity fast.

It is crucial for every company to protect sensitive information (from passwords, employee information, and bank account information to confidential and secret data of customers).

The main responsibilities of IT security analysts include:

• Development of security standards and best practices
• Analysis of the organization’s network systems in order to identify risks and vulnerabilities
• Installment and maintenance of firewalls or data encryption software, 
• And in case a data breach occurs, investigation of the said case and elimination of consequences.

It is clear that the position requires thorough technical knowledge, relevant education, and certifications, as well as a willingness to constantly learn and improve because this is precisely the industry in which breakthroughs and new developments appear almost daily.

Business Intelligence (BI) Specialist 

Another BA role we will talk about is Business Intelligence (BI) Specialist or Business Intelligence Analyst. Simply put, this is the person who analyses data and creates reports that help business owners to make smarter decisions and work more efficiently.

BI specialist collects data from various sources both inside and outside of the organization, maintains the proper data storage, analyzes it, interprets the received results, and communicates them to the relevant decision-makers.

Financial Reporting or Budgeting Business Analyst 

Although these two roles differ from each other, we will reveal them in one subsection. A financial analyst is responsible for long-term planning through analysis and predictions of market fluctuations. This specialist is employed by large companies to make the right strategic decisions, for example, regarding mergers or acquisitions of companies.

At the same time, the budget analyst deals with the day-to-day financial affairs of the company — the budget, lists of corporate transactions, and the general financial state of the company.

Both roles require a deep understanding of financial data and the ability to analyze and interpret it, and knowledge of budgeting and accounting principles. 

Project Management Office (PMO) Analyst

A person in this position is a multitasking hero. They can be called the command center of the Project management office.

These specialists collect and analyze information from multiple projects to ensure that projects are progressing according to agreed deadlines and budgets and that employees are using their knowledge and expertise in the most productive and efficient way possible.

The main requirements for Project Management Office (PMO) Analyst are knowledge of PM principles and experience in using PM tools, analytical abilities, good communication, and leadership skills, and the ability to quickly switch between tasks.

The main duties of a PMO Analyst usually are:

• Projects monitoring
• Analysis of the monitoring results
• Preparation and delivery of the analysis results to relevant stakeholders
• Management of manpower

Data Warehouse Developer

As the title suggests, this is the person responsible for operating and managing the data warehouses. Data warehouses are systems that store the data from various sources that belong to a certain organization or company. This data comes in handy when it is time to make improvements and important decisions (for example, when top management wants to cut costs or calculate profitability).

Therefore, if a company wants to use such data, they need a Data Warehouse Developer. This position requires strong tech skills (data structures and modeling, SQL skills) with BI knowledge (namely, analysis and reporting). Among main responsibilities of this specialist are:

• Data models creation and development
• Results validation and business reporting
• Data loads and queries monitoring 
• Large databases analysis
• Supporting SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
• Data warehouse work monitoring

As you can see, the position of a business analyst is not limited to a single role. With your business growing and succeeding, you might even need to hire each of the specialists on this list. Luckily, you already know what each is responsible for.

Reasons to Hire a BA for Your Startup

Finally, we’ve got to the main part. If you’re still not convinced that business analysis is an important part of any company’s development, growth, and success, we will look deeper into specific reasons why startups will benefit from hiring a BA. 

Researching the Competition and Target Audience

According to Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founder, competitors are not the biggest threat to a startup’s success. However, it does not mean that startup founders should not pay attention to competitors and market trends in general. That would be a mistake.

Business Analyst will conduct market research, taking into consideration competitors, trends, and forecasts. This will give you a broader understanding of the industry you’re about to enter as well as will help you to see which innovative and special features you should add to your product in order to differentiate it from competitors. You will be able to validate your business idea and make necessary changes before it’s too late.

BA’s research will also help you to create a distinct and clear picture of your target audience. In order to convince your potential customers to try out your product, you need to understand their pains and needs, consumer’s buying power, and reasons that can change the customer's opinion about your product. 

These researches will help you to improve the business idea, offer innovative solutions that would conquer the market and direct your time and investments in the right direction, without scattering attention and energy.

Connection Between Tech and Stakeholders

Think of a business analyst as a special kind of translator. They will communicate with you to understand the vision, idea, peculiarities, and spirit of your project, and later — formulate all this into technical requirements for the development team. It is this person who is responsible for ensuring that everyone involved in the project has the same vision of the future product.

The analyst's duties include the formulation of documentation containing requirements (both functional and non-functional). Functional requirements include detailed information about the features the product will include satisfying the needs of the product’s end-user. While non-functional requirements include the info on scalability, performance, usability, etc.

Also, it is the BA that communicates and conveys information about changes, risks, and problems on the project. Therefore, very often the definition of a business analyst role includes a comparison with a bridge that connects technical specialists and stakeholders.

Development Process Planning 

Before starting the development of the final version of the product, startups often develop an MVP. MVP (minimum viable product) is a version of your product that will include the minimum necessary functionality, which will be enough to show the main idea of ​​your product.  MVP is used both for a demonstration to investors and for a demonstration to first end-users.

A Business Analyst, guided by the understanding of your business idea, as well as by using market and competitor research and understanding the target audience, can highlight the functionality that needs to be included in the MVP and the functionality the development of which can be postponed and included in the final version of the product.

Developing an MVP before developing the full version of the product helps to save time and money, focus on what is important, and maybe even make adjustments to the functionality that was planned for the final version of the product.

In addition, BA actively participates in the discovery phase and planning of the remaining stages of the development process, combining the expectations and requirements of the customer and the capabilities and time of the technical team.

Budget Planning

Budget planning is another task in which BA is actively involved. As this specialist is deeply immersed in the development process, they can plan your expenses intelligently and efficiently. 

Even if your budget is limited (which is often a case for startups), a Business Analyst is exactly the person who will be able to prioritize the development of functionality, form a technical team, and, for example, propose the development of an MVP instead of immediately starting work on the final version of the product.

Since early-stage savings are very important for startups, BA's experience and expertise are very important and can help you avoid many pitfalls.

Hiring a Business Analyst 

Try New Hiring Approach

First of all, one of the most important things you should know about hiring a Business Analyst — BAs are not tech specialists. Therefore, while looking for a BA to add to your team, you should shift your focus and change your hiring approach a bit.

What matters in a good BA? Soft skills, first and foremost. Therefore, try to help your candidates to reveal their personalities by establishing a more relaxed atmosphere during the interview or even conducting an unusual interview (in a cafe instead of the office). Also, ask the candidates to fill in a few tests that would help you to assess their emotional intelligence and soft skills.

Prepare Role-Specific Questions 

You would definitely prepare meticulously for an interview with the tech specialist. Then it means you should pay as much attention to the preparations for the interview with your potential BAs.

What we mean is to prepare a list of specific questions that would allow you objectively assess a candidate's skills. For example, try to start with the following questions:

• Please, explain the role of a business analyst in a company (assuming I know nothing about it)?
• What do you do first when starting a new project?
• How do you handle changes to requirements?
• How do you manage multiple deliverables?
• Which business analytics systems or tools do you use?
• How would you approach a complicated coworker relationship that could potentially affect the project?

Good BA is reflective, has strong verbal communication skills, and is extremely good at putting complex concepts into simple words. 

Forget Your Biases

If you are looking for a Business Analyst for a tech startup, you probably have added “relevant experience in IT company” to the list of requirements. However, we would like to advise you to overcome your bias. 

BA is the position where background experience in tech companies plays little to no role in general. So you definitely need to consider the resumes of BAs with the background in other fields as well.

Also, considering what was previously mentioned in this article, you could also think of the candidates with the product manager, tech lead, or project management experience in their sleeves. 

All in all, keep an open mind — look for a person not only with relevant experience but also with similar values and strong business acumen.

Words, Words, Words

Although it is actually great to have a BA that speaks three or more languages, it is not at all necessary. However, if you’re certain about the markets you will be working with, you should try to find a specialist who has either an upper intermediate level of language proficiency or even fluently speaks a certain language. And of course, a good level of English is now a must for almost any position in IT.

On the other hand, knowing a language may not be enough. What is more important is the ability to articulate and convey complex ideas, data, and information. You may want to test such an ability in your candidates during the interview by asking them to decipher and explain some intricate information to the interlocutors with a different knowledge level.

Conclusion

Whether you decide to hire a Business Analyst for your startup or not, it is important to understand that you will need a certain amount of business analysis done on every stage of your company development. Therefore, a person with the relevant experience, vision, and skills, without a doubt, will complement your team and make a serious contribution.

And while there is no right or wrong answer to the question “Should I hire a BA for my startup?” as each business is unique, hiring one might definitely help you to avoid common mistakes, avoid risks, and grow your business more efficiently.

If you are looking for a reliable software development partner who offers BA services and is eager to make your product a success — contact Impressit!