BA INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Question 1

Tell me about yourself?

Answer 1

Hi So my name is Jessica Ahenkorah I graduated from Old Dominion University in 2018 with a Bachelors in Communications. I’ve been a business analyst now for 4 years. I started my career as a BA at Marriott International where some of my roles included
- [ ] Gathering and documenting requirements
- [ ] Creating user stories and defining acceptance criteria
- [ ] Managing communication between cross functional teams and stakeholders
- [ ] Conducting on site interviews with real customers to identify pain points and areas to provide more value
- [ ] As well as utilizing CRM software such as salesforce to generate, gather, and translate reports into data visualizations and dashboards.

In 2020, I took on a new position as a Business Analyst with Navy federal where
- [ ] I performed in-depth analysis on an existing systems and provided recommendations and solutions to improve efficiency in workflow processes
- [ ] managed sprints from stakeholder requirement elicitation to creating test plans and making sure all deliverables met requirement standards
- [ ] Developed various documentation including use cases, BRDs, activity diagrams, uml diagrams, change requests
- [ ] aided project manager with backlog prioritization
- [ ] And I presented data findings and system functionalities and capabilities to my team, stakeholders, and executives

Question 2

Walk me through your most recent project

Answer 2

So I worked in the loans department and for this project, the stakeholder wanted to streamline the process of assigning leads to the appropriate sellers. We have 4 main types of loans, each of them have different sellers and we have 3 main ways of importing leads. 1) Google Ads, 2) Website Form, 3) Phone so the goal was to find a solution to get these leads assigned to the appropriate seller. So after gathering all the requirements from the stakeholder and analyzing and defining past data, I set out to find a solution using Salesforce. The solutions I concluded on was to use an integration to connect Google Ads with Salesforce so that now the leads will automatically be uploaded and assigned. We integrated the website form with using a Salesforce web to lead form and for our leads by phone, we switched over to a cloud based phone system that integrated with Salesforce. Before we developed the new process, leads would come in and then be manually assigned by the sales manager. Now the leads will be automatically assigned to the appropriate salesperson.

Automating the process of assigning leads to the correct sales associate

So, on my most recent project, we were modernizing Navy Federal’s fraud investigative system. The existing system was 12 years old so as you can imagine, it was very outdated. Had lots of bugs and ran really slow.

Question 3

What is your day-to-day like?

Answer 3

Absolutely! So typically each day will start off with a short stand up meeting with the team to get a quick overview of what everyone is working on and making sure we are on schedule to finish all tasks by the given deadline. After that, I am on to my day of work. That could involve anything from meeting with stakeholders to conduct requirement workshops, reviewing test cases to make sure they fully capture the project’s need and stakeholder expectations, working on Salesforce configuration changes including custom settings, approval processes, creating dashboards to display key metrics for our Sales team, remaining on high alert to answer any questions that may come in from stakeholders or the development team, designing mock-ups, creating UML diagrams, developing business case documents that outline the scope of work, benefits, estimated costs, and risks of a project, and prioritizing requirements based on impact and urgency.

Question 4

When you need to convey complex, technical information to non-tech-savvy stakeholders, what materials or diagrams do you use and why?

Answer 4

From my experience, the most effective way of presenting information to stakeholders is through flow diagrams and data visualization charts. It simplifies the entire process and makes it easy to digest. I like to create diagrams and dashboards that can tell the story of the data within 10 seconds of being looked at

Question 5

Tell me about an interesting project that you worked on from beginning to end

Answer 5

Navy Federal Fraud Investigation System

I had to learn how the existing system worked so I could find solutions that would cater to their needs. My knowledge of the system helped me clarify any questions that arose during development as well as locate and understand different workflows and how we could automate them in the new system. I heavily worked with stakeholders to capture requirements, I was in charge of keeping them up to speed on the project’s progression, Organizing meetings with ux/ui team members to present various look and feel options for the interface. I created various diagrams to aid in the usability of the system including user guides and glossaries. I aided in backlog prioritization. And writing clear test plans for QA team members

Question 6

Why did you or are you leaving your company?

Answer 6

The project I was working on ended

The company downsized and my team and I were cut

Question 7

If a new product was proposed, how would you determine if it was a wise business move?

Answer 7

I would look for the following points:

1. Competition: The first thing to keep in mind is the competition. See how they have done things and do them better
2. Customer preferences: Is this something your customers really want? Will it be a great fit with them?
3. and the scope: Where will the product stand in the near future? Does the product adapt to changes?

Question 8

Can you tell me about your day to day activities at your previous job?

Answer 8

Absolutely! So typically each day will start off with a short stand up meeting with the team to get a quick overview of what everyone is working on and making sure we are on schedule to finish all tasks by the given deadline. After that, I am on to my day of work. That could involve anything from meeting with stakeholders to conduct requirement workshops, reviewing test cases to make sure they have fully captured the project’s need and stakeholder expectations, working on Salesforce configuration changes including custom settings, approval processes, creating dashboards to display key metrics for our Sales team, remaining on high alert to answer any questions that may come in from stakeholders or the development team, designing mock-ups, creating UML diagrams, developing business case documents that outline the scope of work, benefits, estimated costs, and risks of a project, and digging in to Jira doing some backlog grooming, prioritizing requirements based on impact and urgency.

Question 9

How long do your Sprints typically last?

Answer 9

2 weeks

Question 10

What are user stories?

Answer 10

are simplified versions of requirements for developers to easily understand

Requirements are turned into user stories for developers

Question 11

Can new stories be made?

Answer 11

New requirements can immerse weekly. You meet with stakeholder weekly, so you’re consistently adding new stories whole point of Agile

Question 12

What do you do once requirements are gathered?

Answer 12

Once information is gathered, it is time to review and analyze the information to make sure that we are not missing any information regarding the project and its objectives. After reviewing and analyzing is complete, it is taken to the stakeholder for sign-off. Once the sign off is complete, the requirements are converted into user stories, once user stories are written and in the product backlog, the grooming session begins.

Question 13

Responsibilities in service cloud

Answer 13

creating case rules, case assignment rules. Case escalation rules, occasionally updating our self-service articles, defining solutions, and adding solutions to cases

Question 14

day to day salesforce activities

Answer 14

making sure team was maintaining data hygiene, making sure records were kept up to date, no mistaken duplicates, resolving any issues with user accounts

Question 15

What are some of the most important skills as a business analyst?

Answer 15

I have a top 5: Problem-solving, strategic thinking, innovative, attention to detail, organizational, and effective communication

Question 16

What data analysis tools do you use?

Answer 16

Tableau, Power BI

I have experience with Power BI but my primary data analysis tool is Tableau,
I like Tableau better because of all the various visualization options I get to chose from. It’s easier to integrate Not only am I able to get the data across in a more digestible manner but I can also have more of an interactive presentation. Which I believe helps tremendously when communicating and presenting to executives.

For example you can link two sheets in a dashboard and apply filters that can display unique data at specified and related periods in time

Power BI is great too and easy to use when coming from a MS Excel background but takes longer processing the data of a larger business

Question 17

Difference between Salesforce dashboards and Tableau

Answer 17

Salesforce dashboards are quicker more convenient real time data visualizers and can only be seen by SF users. Great for showing your team. Tableau provides the ability to make wider range data sets and can be used and seen by anyone. Great for larger and more executive analyzation presentations

You can connect your MS SQL server to Tableau to integrate the data and start visualizing

Question 18

What do you mean by requirement elicitation and how do you elicit requirements?

Answer 18

I like to first conduct a document analysis by taking a deep dive into current workflows processes, looking into background and past information about the business and the project, before setting up a meeting or workshop with subject matter experts and stakeholders. I ask a series of who, what, where, when, and why questions that are relavant to the stakeholders request. I ask as many questions as I can think of to make sure I have a clear understanding of what they need done so that I can be well equip to come up with the best solution possible. The more information I have, the better the analysis

Brainstorming, focus groups, requirements workshops, surveys/questionnaires, interviews, interface analysis, document analysis

Question 19

What kind of leadership experience do you have?

Question 20

Have you faced a scenario where the stakeholder didn’t like the outcome of the project or was disappointed by the results?

Answer 20

So before any sprint begins, all stakeholders have to sign off on a BRD that I build so that they will be able to read through our understanding of their expectations, give us feedback if needed, and validate that we got their vision right. Through the entirety of the project I am updating the stakeholder with the progression of the project as well as updating any new requirements they may have or improvements they want to make to existing ones. So with the thoroughness of the initiation process as well as my communication upkeep through the project, its very difficult for a stakeholder to completely dislike the overall outcome of a project. Though, there’s been situations where we’ll have to enhance a requirement because they changed their mind after seeing the result or want to make an improve. For example, I had a project once where we were building a mortgage loan application and in the end after see the login process, the stakeholder decided that they wanted to add an sms pin confirmation. So in a case like that we reviewed the scope of work it would take to add that and figured it was something that could be done and let the stakeholder know that we would add it onto the next sprint.

Question 21

Have you worked in a place where there was no documentation?

Answer 21

No, so all the companies I’ve worked are pretty established business so there’s never been a time where I had to create brand new processes from complete scratch. In the case that I was in a situation like that, I would more than likely speak to my team members, team leads etc to try and put the pieces together to give me a better vision

Question 22

Tell me about your most recent project and what were your roles

Answer 22

So in my most recent project we had a project where the stakeholder wanted to streamline the process of assigning leads to the appropriate sellers. So we had different types of loans which meant leads
my role on this project included leading the entire requirement documentation process, designing mock ups, creating uml diagrams to visualize the project’s processes, communicating with the stakeholder to analyze and determine the project’s needs, creating test cases and test scripts, managing the backlog,

Question 23

Have you ever worked with a difficult stakeholder? How did you handle it

Answer 23

Yes. Resistant to change stakeholder example. 10 year old system has old ways and users are stuck in their ways. Conveying new workflow process through mockups and keeping some of the old process relevant so it feels like a compromise and is easier to accept.