Behavioral Questions Flashcards
What makes you a good Business Analyst? Or Name the skills which Business Analyst should have?
I am great in communication, and I always think critically.
I am resourceful and I know how to find the answers to questions and don’t wait for the answers to come to me. I find alternative paths through the organization and involve the right people at the right time.
I always select the most appropriate approach for the job by using the wide variety of business analysis techniques.
I create clarity within the requirements and get clients’ buy-in, not just a sign-off, during the verification and validation process.
- What are the key responsibilities of Business Analyst?
As a Business Analyst I see myself as a liaison among the stakeholders and the development teams in order to elicit, communicate, and validate requirements for changes to business processes and information systems. I see my key responsibilities as help the business to
Define and scope Business Area (vision and scope- context diagram, use case diagram)
Elicit Requirements (JAD Session)
Analyze the Requirements
Document Requirements (BRD, SRD, SDD), and Make sure there is clear communication between business stakeholders and technical team.
As a business analyst, describe your ideal project environment.
A workplace that is open to communication, staff that is approachable and willing to listen as well as give feedback.
Why are you leaving your current job?
My contract with (company name) is ending by the end of this month.
You had a project delivery and your team was not able to meet deadline. How do you handle the situation?
We need to acknowledge the missed deadline and resulting delay as soon as possible, evaluate the consequences, and Communicate to the end user the alternative remedies. Once alternative remedies have been identified, acceptance and approval must be obtained from all key project stakeholders.
You are assigned a new project that you have no idea about. The workshop is starting in one week. Your actions?
I start reviewing all available documentation, starting high level (project charter, Context and/or use case diagrams), talk to technical staff assigned to the project to get the main objectives and the scope of the project. I also identify who my stakeholders are, and put together a RACI checklist for everyone that joins the workshop meeting. Then I put together the meeting invite, underline the meeting objectives and send available materials to the group at least 24 hours prior the meeting.
What is the largest $ project where you were the leading the business analysis?
I wasn’t involved with the budget discussions in any of my previous projects, but from the project scope and organizational impact perspective I might say that almost every one of my projects were the enterprise wide, with the scope of either completely redesigning the legacy systems, or onboarding a new off shelf product, or the development of a new system in support of the business processes.
Can you tell me about the time where you experienced a challenging interpersonal conflict on your project? What happened, what actions did you take and how did you resolve it?
When thinking about my projects, all of them might seem like having some stressful sides- for example the clients of my current project might seem pretty demanding, as they require to address their questions or suggestions almost immediately. In previous projects I worked with some developers that were quite short tempered and did not appreciate any out of box ideas for feature implementation. So, pretty much every project had some sort of stress involved. The way I deal with these types of situations, I listen to what they have to say, and listening, I mean I truly listen and try to understand their concern, and then provide my opinion on how we can mitigate these issues. Not always my suggestions are well taken, but as long as they see my genuine desire to help, the tension comes down, and we are back to calm discussion.
Tell me about the time that you experienced frustration from a stakeholder regarding your Agile stories that was out of your immediate control. What was it, and what actions did you take to resolve it?
I welcome any requirements feedback from stakeholders and my technical team. I’ve learned that any feedback, being it illogical, contradicting, or irrelevant is much better than no feedback at all. When I receive comments from stakeholders that I might not fully agree with, I tend to open up discussion to clarify what is being asked. Once I understand it, I point out the inconsistency, and always get stakeholder’s agreement with what must and must not be done.
Tell me about the time where you estimated your time to be completely deliverable but then realized it was going to be much longer than originally planned. What actions did you take to make the best of the situation?
Honestly, I don’t recall this happening to me in the past. Whenever I start a new project, my first action is to review everything we have on hand, make some preliminary analysis, and within a few days I have a somewhat clear picture of the overall current state of the project. Going off of this understanding, my estimates for future tasks, that might include the project definitional and scope, requirements elicitation and analysis, as well as requirements documentation were always on point.
Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
My responsibility as a business analyst is not to persuade, but rather open up discussions, and help driving requirements, keep discussion within the scope of the project, and let everyone voice their ideas and opinions. My strong input to project
requirements is how I use visuals during these brainstorming sessions. Context and use case diagrams, and process workflows that I create during the discussions help users to stay focused and provide all their thoughts at the right time.
Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
My current project (Name of your project) has failed at the initial attempt few years back. As centralized Database, it has several thousand downstream applications, and the reason for failure was that too many pieces of the metadata process required manual data entry, and the previous team was not able to account for the entire scope of the amount of manual processes that have to be automated.
When I started to work on this project, I made my goal to define entire project’s current state process, and I spent many days defining and documenting it. My project manager did not agree with my approach at first, since it was taking much more time then they wanted. I was told that the current state is already well defined and documented, but I
went back, discussed with the end users, and found many gaps in documented process flows. I’ve removed the gaps, and then continued same exercise for the future state. As results, I came up with over 50 missing requirements, end we restarted the development effort, that was recently successfully completed.
Give me an example of a time when you set a goal and were able to meet or achieve it.
I’m a business analyst consultant, and I don’t recall when the last time I was putting any personal career goals at my workplace. I come and help organizations to successfully implement their projects. So, I guess, I can say that making each project a success is my goal at every project I worked at. And so far, I’ve achieved that goal in every single project.
Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion.
Again, I don’t try to convince or influence any of my clients, or the technical team members. My job is to bring clarity to the project requirements and eliminate any vagueness and assumptions. My presentation skills are excellent, but I don’t use them influence someone, but rather to present information in clear and concise manner, and help everyone involved in the meeting to understand the topic and stay involved.
Give me a specific example of a time when you had to conform to a policy with which you did not agree.
I’ve learned to follow the Business Rules of organization to the dot, even if I might not agree with it 100%. Business rules and policies is what brought organization to its current growth, so I strongly urge anyone in my team who confronts organizations policies to build the system that support those business rules, and not the other way
around.
