Best 150+ Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers for free (2020)

Agile Manifesto is a guide for software developers about Agile development principles to ensure iterative solutions.

They are Flow Objects, Data, Connecting Objects, Swimlanes, and Artifacts.

The features and standards of a good requirement can be pointed out using a rule called SMART rule.

• Specific – The description of a requirement should be perfect and specific enough to understand it.

• Measurable – There are various parameters through which the requirement’s success can be measured.

• Attainable – Resources should be able to achieve success with the requirement.

• Relevant – States that what results are realistically achieved.

• Timely – Requirements of a project should be revealed in time.

Customers, Actors, Transformation process, Worldview, Owners, and Environmental constraints (CATWOE) helps in making decisions ahead of time. It includes analyzing how those decisions will affect customers (C); who are involved as actors (A); what different transformation (T) processes are which might affect the system, global picture, and worldwide (W) issues; who is responsible/has ownership (O) for the business; and what the environmental (E) impacts will be of the project/business.

Activity diagram is a graphical depiction/flowchart of actions, representing a stepwise listing of activities. We use activity diagrams for the description of those business processes that describe the functionality of the business system.

• Activity Diagram – This represents the flow from one activity to the other activity. Activity refers to the operation of the system. Below shown is an example of activity diagram.

• Data Flow Diagram – Graphical representation of the flow of data into and out of the system. This diagram represents how data is shared between organizations. How a DFD looks like is shown below

• Use case Diagram – This diagram describes the set of actions that systems perform with one or more actors (users) of the systems. Use case diagram is also called as a Behavioral diagram. Sample use case diagram is shown below

• Class Diagram – This is the structural diagram that represents the structure of the system by showing its classes, objects, methods or operations, attributes etc. A class diagram is the main building block for detailed modeling which is used for programming. Below shown is an example of a class diagram.

• Entity Relationship Diagram – ER Diagram is the graphical representation of entities and the relationships between them. This is a data modeling technique. The example of an ER diagram is as below

• Sequence Diagram – Sequence diagram describes the interaction between the objects like how they operate and in what time sequence the messages flow from one object to the other. Example for sequence diagram

• Collaboration Diagram – Collaboration diagram represents the communication that occurs between the objects by showing the messages flow among them.

Feasibility study is identifying the possibility (success rate) of the proposed idea for a business problem. It helps identify new opportunities and focus on the project.

• documenting the scope of the project.
• By following proper change management.
• Informing the effects of the change to the affected parties before making a change.
• documenting the new requirements in the project log.

Pugh Matrix is used to decide about the most optimal and alternate solutions. This technique is now a standard part of Six Sigma technique. It is also known as a problem or design matrix.

Important areas in a Kano analysis are:

• Unexpected Delighters
• Performance Attributes
• Must Have Attributes

Personas are used instead of real users that assist developers and technical team in judging the user behavior in different scenarios. Personas are social roles, performed by any actor or character. It is derived from a Latin word meaning ""character."" In marketing terminology, it represents a group of customers/end users.

Pareto Analysis is a decision-making technique, also known as the 80/20 rule. It is used for quality control and defect resolution. It explains a few factors that can be responsible for big problems. It is named as 80/20 rule, because as per this rule, 80 % effects in the system, arises from 20 % causes.

Requirement elicitation is a technique of requirements gathering from users, stakeholders, users, clients by conducting interviews, sessions, brainstorming, etc.

1. Information gathering
2. Identify the key stakeholders
3. Identify the business objective
4. Determine the available options
5. Scope definition
6. Define the delivery plan
7. Define the requirements for a project
8. Implementation and evaluation

The process of measuring the quality of policies, programs, products, rules and other measures of an organization against the standard measures or against the other companies is termed as Benchmarking. This is used to the measure the performance of a company to compete in the industry.

A risk is a future event which negatively impacts business objective, while the issue is a result of events currently happening.

• Risk mitigation is what to do when a risk occurs.It reduces the probability of risk occurrence.
• It checks whether any impact occurs for the project/business.
• Cost is high in case any risk occurs.

• FRD (Functional Requirement document)
• SDD (System Design document)

It means Political, Economic, Social, and Technological. It is used to analyze the business environment, in which it has to be operated.

Business process modeling is a part of business process management, which is used to improve the business process. It is the representation of an organization’s business process.

The pair-Choice Technique is used to give priority to various items in a process. It is mainly used when distinctive stakeholders are involved in the project. This technique asks the group to compare each item with others and select the one having the highest priority.

It is a business framework that is mainly being adopted by firms and organizations for the betterment of their business. Its key factors are Strategy, People, Process, and Technology.

1. Market analysis
2. SWOT analysis
3. Personas
4. Competitor analysis
5. Identifying the strategic vision

Use-case points are used to evaluate the cost of work done to develop the system.

1. Make sure that your key deliverables are met.
2. The budget and time for the project should not be extended.
3. Quality deliverables are maintained.

It is a term derived from use-case. Unlike use case, a misuse case is something that shows -what kind of malicious activities can be performed by an actor that may result in system failure.

1. Vision
2. Mission
3. Objectives
4. Strategies
5. Action plan

Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) is used to record all the requirements given by a client, so the purpose of RTM is to ensure that all of the mentioned requirements are met.

A requirement is a capability possessed by a solution to solve a problem or achieve an objective. Requirements are input to various stages of SDLC and must be properly documented and validated by the business users/stakeholders.

BPMN is the Business Process Model and Notation. It is a graphical representation of business processes.

It means Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. It is a failure analysis, that is used mainly in product development, system engineering, and operations management. This analysis is performed to figure out various failure modes and their severity in any system.

• Analytical thinking and decision-making
• Business and industry knowledge
• Business process management
• Technical and soft skills
• Problem solving and negotiation skills

Kano Analysis helps you to analyze a system. It helps to identify its impact on customers' satisfaction.

Business modeling is identifying the value proposition for a business and then building a step-by-step approach for operating the business. This step-by-step approach is known as business modeling. It includes vision, mission, and strategies to achieve the goals.

• It displays information graphically which is both clearer and easy to grasp.
• Helps in process documentation.
• Helps programmers to write the logic.
• Aids testing and troubleshooting.

SaaS means Software as a Service. It is related to cloud computing. It is different from other software bundles as you don't need this type of software to be installed on your machine. All you need is the Internet connection and a Web Browser to use it.

Project deliverables are a set of measurable goods and services that are delivered to the end customer at the completion of a project. It is the outcome of the project.

• Profit Gap – It is the gap between the estimated and actual profit of a company.
• Manpower Gap – It denotes the gap between the required number and quality of workforce and actual workforce strength in a company.
• Performance Gap – It is the difference between the actual performance and the expected performance.
• Product/Market Gap – It is the gap between estimated sales and actual sales.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix is developed to analyze several business processes and new product offerings from companies. It is a useful tool that can be used in portfolio analysis, strategic management, product management, and brand marketing.

• Risk avoidance is what to do to avoid the risk.
• It avoids the risk by eliminating the cause.
• Impact of the threat occurrence is reduced to 0%.
• Cost is eliminated in risk avoidance.

A Business Requirement document is a formal contract between the client and the organization for the development of the specific product.

1. MS Office and SQL
2. Blueprint
3. Python and R
4. QlikView and Tableau
5. Axure

A critical path is the set of activities which includes the longest path in the whole project. So, a critical path analysis is a key component in reducing project timelines and controlling cost.

BPMN Gateway is a processing modeling component that is used to control the flow of interaction, the sequence of processes.

Two types of actors can be depicted in a use-case, viz. primary and secondary actors. Primary actors start the process, and secondary actors assist them. Moreover, actors can be of four types such as Human, System, Hardware, and Timer.

This method is used to assign priority to different steps in a process. Each group member is supposed to assign points to different steps. In the end, all the points for each step are calculated. The step having the highest points has the highest priority.

It is a process of comparing and determining the difference between two things or processes.

Scope creep is defined as the uncontrolled or sudden changes or deviations in the project’s scope without changes in other resources of the project. It is due to the failure in proper monitoring, miscommunication, etc.

SQUARE stands for Security Quality Requirements Engineering. It is one of the software engineering steps that mainly focus on documenting the security requirements of the system.

Alternate flow are the alternative actions that can be performed apart for the basic flow and might be considered as an optional flow whereas Exception flow is the path traversed in case of the error or an exception being thrown.

Use case model shows a sequence of events and a stream of actions regarding any process performed by an actor.

In order to understand the impact of customer satisfaction, a Kano analysis must be used. It consists 5 requirements:

• An attractive requirement.
• Performance requirement.
• An obligatory requirement.
• Indifferent requirement.
• Reverse requirements.

Needs are high-level descriptions of the upcoming goals of a business. Whereas, Requirements are the representation of the complete explanation of that business needs.

1. Reason the system behavior.
2. Detect and eliminate errors.
3. Propose design plans to stakeholders.

Rapid Application Development (RAD) model is a kind of incremental model. The phases of a project are produced in parallel as individual projects. The developments in the project are timeboxed, delivered, and afterward assembled into a working model.

Object-oriented analysis and designing. It is used in object-oriented coding languages like Java, c++, etc.

Agile is a technique that uses several light-weight methodologies such as Rapid Application Development (RAD), Extreme Programming (XP) and SCRUM. All these methodologies focus on the development of iterative solutions.

It means Joint Application Development.

• The spring burndown matric
• Work category allocation
• The priority of the work
• Business value delivery
• Defect resolution time
• Work category allocation

A spike is a time bound activity to conduct analysis or answer question rather than producing shippable product. Spikes are usually planned to take place in between sprints.

UAT is User acceptance testing. If the UAR fails, BA did not understand the requirement properly.

A BA along with the client, does the acceptance testing to validate that the system is performing as per the business requirements and the product’s acceptance criteria.

SRS stands for System Requirements Specification/Software Requirements Specification. It is a document/set of documents that describe the features of a system or software application.

A sprint burndown chart is graphic visualization of the rate of progress of the current sprint. This chart is updated daily over the course of a sprint.

It is one of the agile methods, which is used to develop iterative information systems. In this method, a small team works on the assigned tasks for 30 days, usually.

Scrum Team consists of 1) Product Owner, 2) Scrum Master, and 3) Development Team.

A BA along with the testing team, does the beta testing and it is done on a pre-production version of the product. This testing is done to make sure that the functional and non-functional requirements of the system are met.

1. Project initiation
2. Project planning
3. Project execution
4. Project monitoring and control
5. Project closure

A BA is expected to conduct functional testing to validate that the system is achieving the functionality specified in the use case/functional requirement specification document (FRS).

• Waterfall Model
• Iterative Model
• V-Model
• Spiral Model
• Prototype model, etc.

It’s the basic unit of Scrum development and is restricted to a specific duration

Velocity of a sprint is the total work done by the development team is capable of doing over the duration of the sprint. It is agreed upon based on the historical data available about the previous sprint of the project.

Black box testing is a kind of testing where the entire unit is tested as a whole without considering the contents or how the inner components and units are tested. This testing method only focuses on the known input signal and check whether the output behavior is according to expectation or not.

• Planning
• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Maintenance

INVEST means Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Sized Appropriately, Testable. It can assist project managers and technical team in delivering quality products/services.

With Agile methodology, Business Analysts act as a bridge between the development team and stakeholders. They act on key deliverables to prioritize and deliver the project in the stipulated time and budget.

A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules.

SDLC is an acronym stands for Software Development Life Cycle. Sometimes, it is also called System Development Life Cycle or Application Development Life Cycle. It is used to describe the process of planning, creating, testing and deploying an information system.

UML (Unified Modeling Language) is a general-purpose modeling language, which is designed to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.

Rational Unified Process (RUP) is a product application improvement method with numerous devices to help with coding the last product and assignments identified with this objective. RUP is an object-oriented approach that guarantees successful project management and top-notch software production.

SDD stands for System Design document. It is a middle step dividing between business users and developers.

• Scope of Work
• Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
• Dependencies
• Data Model
• Assumptions
• Constraints
• Acceptance Criteria

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Crystal
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Lean Software Development
• Feature Driven Development (FDD)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

It requires programming knowledge and skill to examine the outputs.

A test case is a document which contains listing of all the possible scenarios that could happen based on a respective use case. Thus, every test case is developed with a use case as a base.

1. Gathering of requirements
2. Analyzing
3. Designing
4. Implementing
5. Testing
6. Deploying in the business environment

Extraction, Transformation, and load is a data processing method mainly used in data warehousing.

Self JOIN is a query that joins a table with itself. This is used to compare the values of a particular column with other values in the same column of the same table. Self JOIN uses aliases to name the original and duplicate tables.

SQL is short for Structured Query Language and is used to communicate with relational databases. It is the standard language used to retrieve, update, insert, and delete data when working with relational databases.

Though both WHERE and HAVING are used to filter records, there is a subtle difference between the two. The WHERE clause is used to filter records from a result, whereas HAVING is used to filter groups. If the two are used together, the WHERE clause is applied first to filter rows; only after grouping finishes is the HAVING clause applied.

CROSS JOIN defines a Cartesian product on the sets of records from two or more joined tables, where the number of rows in the first table is multiplied by the number of rows in the second table.

Aggregate functions perform calculations on a set of values and return a single value. The common aggregate functions are:

• COUNT (counts the number of rows in the table)
• SUM (returns the sum of all values of a numeric column)
• AVG (returns the average of all values of a numeric column)
• MIN (returns the lowest value of a numeric column)
• MAX (returns the highest value of a numeric column)Aggregate functions are frequently used in combination with the GROUP BY statement.

A subquery is, as the name suggests, a query within another query. The outer query is called the main query, while the inner query is the subquery. You can think of this in terms of composition of functions. A subquery is always executed first, and its result is then passed on to the main query.

When we perform any activity in a database, such as addition, deletion, modification, searching, etc. is said to be a database transaction.

A LEFT JOIN returns all records from the left table, even when they do not match in the right table. Missing values become NULL. In a similar manner, a RIGHT JOIN returns all records from the right table, even when they do not match those in the left table. Missing values become NULL.

An SQL statement has three parts. There is the Data Definition Language or DDL, the Data Manipulation Language or DML, and the Data Control Language or DCL.

OLTP stands for On-Line Transaction Processing. Such systems are capable of performing database transactions and are meant to provide good speed for database transactions. These systems are mainly used for data entry and retrieving data from the database.

GROUP BY is a statement that divides the result for a particular query into groups of rows. It is often used with aggregate functions such as SUM, AVG, MAX, MIN, and COUNT, which calculate information about each group. The SELECT statement returns one row for each group.

INNER JOIN is the most common type of join. It returns all rows that are shared by two tables. Visually, it’s analogous to identifying the overlap, or intersection, between two sets of data.

UNION will omit duplicate records, whereas UNION ALL will include duplicate records. UNION requires the server to do the additional work of removing any duplicates.

A primary key is a unique identifier for a particular record in a table. The primary key can’t be NULL. A primary key can be a single column or a combination of columns in a table. Each table can contain only one primary key.

R operates on named data structures. The simplest such structure is the numeric vector, which is a single entity consisting of an ordered collection of numbers.

As well as numerical vectors, R allows manipulation of logical quantities. The elements of a logical vector can have the values TRUE, FALSE, and NA

cbind() and rbind() are concatenation functions in R.

Produce four plots, showing residuals, fitted values, and some diagnostics.

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories. R can be considered as a different implementation of S. There are some important differences, but much code written for S runs unaltered under R.

A data frame is a list with class ""data.frame"".

formula() function extract the model formula.

Coefficient() function extract the regression coefficient (matrix).

anova() function compare a submodel with an outer model and produce an analysis of variance table.

To read an entire data frame directly, the external file will normally have a special form.

The first line of the file should have a name for each variable in the data frame.

Each additional line of the file has as its first item a row label and the values for each variable.

residuals() function extract the (matrix of) residuals, weighted as appropriate.

deviance() function finds the residual sum of squares, weighted if appropriate.

print() function print a concise version of the object. Most often used implicitly.

• Measures: The measure values are the quantifiable values which we use in calculations. Thus, all the measure values are predominantly numeric values as it is only them that are processed and calculated to give results that can be analyzed.
• Dimensions: The dimension values are the values of specific characteristics or attributes. The fields having dimension values known as the dimensions fields. We do not use them in calculations. They only assign specific attributes to fields such as date, product, area, category, city, etc.

Data extracts are portions of data that we take from the data source. The data extracts are also called the subsets of data that we extract from the main data source.

The data blending brings data from two different data sources together in a single view or in a single Tableau worksheet.

The data extract files are the ones that contain a local copy of the entire dataset or in other words, we take a subset of data from the source. The Tableau Data Extract files have a “.tde” extension.

Yes, we can create custom territories on Tableau maps.

The hierarchical fields are those which have data arranged in hierarchies. Hierarchies organize relevant data on different levels.

Tableau gives us the option to Quick Sort data present in our visualizations. We can instantly sort data from the visualization by simply clicking on the sort button present on the axes of a graph or chart. An ascending sort is performed upon one click, the descending sort is performed on two clicks and an applied sort is cleared on three clicks on the Quick Sort icon.

1. Extract filters
2. Data Source filters
3. Context filters
4. Dimension filters
5. Measure filters

The Shelves on a Tableau worksheet are demarcated areas used for specific purposes. There are several shelves on a Tableau sheet like, Page shelf, Filter shelf, Marks shelf, Rows and Column shelf.

The user functions in Tableau are unique functions that we use to perform operations on the registered users on Tableau Server or Tableau Online.

Context filters are used to apply context on the data under analysis. By applying a context we set a perspective according to which we can see the charts and graphs.

The maximum number of tables that we can join in Tableau is 32.

CAL stands for Client Access License that offers different licenses depending on the user type.

Interval match is one of the functions that are useful for the tables containing numeric values because it is used to match a numeric value from one table to another table.

A buffer load is used to create a file using a buffer prefix in Qlikview's memory for future use.

A Sheet divides a QlikView document into multiple sections. Every document will have at least one sheet in it, if needed, we can add more from the Sheet Properties option.

OLEDB, ODBC, and SAP connectors.

The Match() function checks whether the value of a string on expression is matching with data value present in a column. The Pick() function is used to return the nth expression along with string in the list.

Delimited files are text files in which data fields and data values are separated by commas, semicolons and tabs, and that is why they are also called Comma Separated Values files. These files are saved with .csv extension.

A dashboard is a QlikView document which displays values from many fields simultaneously and makes the analysis process easier.

Auto-Generated function automatically generates the numbers between the given range

Bar chart, Mekko Chart, Grid chart, Funnel chart, Line chart, Gauge chart, Combo Chart, Scatter Chart, Radar chart, Block chart, Straight table chart, Pie chart, and Pivot table chart.

• Named CAL
• document CAl
• Session CAL
• Usage CAL

Inline data is created on the spot and to load inline data in QlikView we need to open the Script Editor and then select the Insert option. After that, select Load Statement followed by Load from Inline.

y using ODBC, OLEDB or SAP connectors as a data connection, we can load data using Select statement.

Qlikview Incremental load is used for loading new or changed records from the database, whereas resident load is a part of loading data which already present in the Qlikview application.

QVD files can be read in two modes- the standard and the optimized mode. The optimized load is a faster process and is preferable for large sets of data.

Yes, it is possible to load web files into QlikView. It is done through the Script Editor.

• Let: It assigns a variable to a value after assessing the expression.

• Set: It assigns a variable to a value without assessing the expression.

By using the Comparative Analysis option, users can quickly gain new insights to analyze their information in Qlikview.

Fact Constellation Schema is a collection of multiple facts tables sharing common dimension tables. It is made up of several star schemas and hence also called galaxy schema.

Script Editor can be invoked in two ways- either by the shortcut keys Ctrl+E or by the icon for Edit Script.

The synthetic key is created to avoid confusion when two rows of the table are the same. In QlikView, automatically, this scenario is detected, and a synthetic key is created to make the process faster.

QVW- It is a QlikView file saved in binary format with default expression QVW containing tables, charts script etc.

QVD: It is a binary CSV file that contains one data table, no layout and no security.

In QlikView Set Analysis, a P() function is used to return all possible values while an E() function is used for returning a set of all excluded values.

RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System, and it stores data into rows and columns of tables and data is retrieved through SQL queries. An associative database model is comprised of two tables: one for items and one for links.