What are the Soft skills required by a Business Analyst?

Some of the skills required are:

  1. Negotiation skills: This will come in handy when facilitating discussions between IT and business users, as well as between you and IT about development resources and between you and the business users about project scope creep.

  2. Active listening: This will come in handy for gathering business requirements, providing excellent internal client service, and compiling data for status reports.

  3. Conflict resolution: This will be useful when IT and users disagree, as well as when deadlines are missed and tensions are high.

  4. Quality client service techniques: As a member of the IT community, offering excellent client service to the business users you assist is vital to your job performance and progress.

  5. Decision-making: There are a variety of formalized decision-making techniques, such as a decision matrix, that can assist you in making quality, business-appropriate, and defendable decisions that will allow you to provide the best service to your internal clients and maximize your job performance.

  6. Problem-solving: There are formalized problem-solving approaches, such as Five Whys and Brainstorming, that can help you find a problem’s fundamental cause and describe viable solutions, much like there are formalized decision-making procedures.

  7. Strategic thinking: A business analyst is frequently required to think outside the box in order to find unique business solutions that fulfill the needs of their internal clients. Understanding strategic thinking approaches help make this process go more smoothly.