Definition of Requirements Analyst
From Requirements Management School
The Requirements Analyst (aka Business Analyst) is a pivotal role in any software development project.
The role of the Requirements Analyst is to effectively manage the requirements process from end to end. This means that they are responsible for:
- Eliciting and defining the business needs and scope of the project.
- Exploring all the sources of requirements and gathering data from them.
- Eliciting comprehensive requirements.
- Analyzing the requirements.
- Issuing a comprehensive and coherent requirements document. This document should preferably include use cases.
- Facilitating the validation and prioritization processes.
- Management of the requirements change control process.
- Management of the bidirectional traceability of the requirements.
The Requirements Analyst role can be a formal or informal role within an organization. It can be a dedicated job within the organization. It could also be a role taken on by the project manager, product manager or another member of one of the stakeholder classes.
It is vitally important that anyone who takes on a Requirement Analysts role is able to view the global picture. They must have a clear understanding of business practices as well as of software engineering. They must also be able to translate different stakeholder’s perspectives into a feasible set of requirements.
In order for a project to have a good chance of being successful the Requirements Analyst must know what they are doing. They must be adequately trained. They must also have the necessary resources made available to them.
You cannot just train someone up and expect them to be an effective Requirements Analyst. Training is important so that they are aware of the organization and structure that must be implemented. However, someone can be very well versed in Requirements Management but make a very bad Requirements Analyst because they do not have the interpersonal skills to be able to complete the tasks effectively.
Prerequisites skills needed to undertake the Requirements Analyst role include being able to:
- effectively communicate,
- elicit information,
- listen,
- analyze,
- facilitate,
- negotiate,
- observe,
- write,
- organize,
- model
At many organizations the term "Requirements Analyst" is used interchangeably with various other terms. These other terms include business analyst, systems analyst, requirements engineer, requirements manager and/or analyst.
