8 Major Roles and Responsibilities Of A Business Analyst

Before we start with the major roles and responsibilities of the business analyst or job description of the business analyst,  let’s see who exactly the Business Analyst is?

Well, “Business Analyst is the one, who analyzes the organization or business domain (real or hypothetical) and documents its business or processes or systems, assessing the business model or its integration with technology.” Business Analysts are seen as a communication bridge between the IT team and Client/business stakeholders.

Collectively from BABOK®;
"A business analyst is any person who performs business analysis activities, no matter what their job title or organizational role may be. Business analysis practitioners include not only people with the job title of business analyst, but may also include business systems analysts, systems analysts, requirements engineers, process analysts, product managers, product owners, enterprise analysts, business architects, management consultants, or any other person who performs the tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, including those who also perform related disciplines such as project management, software development, quality assurance, and interaction design."

What does a Business Analyst do? What are the roles and responsibilities of the Business Analyst? These are most commonly asked questions, especially by newbies looking for Business Analysts opportunities. In this article, I will explain the common job description of a business analyst. To be frank, you cannot restrict the Business Analyst’s roles and responsibilities and whatever job description you define, it will expand.

However, the specific job deliverable of a business analyst varies according to the employer’s needs. Some may be limited to IT-related projects only, while others may be involved in areas such as finance or accounting, marketing or operations. Business analysts are typically required to assess and validate their activities and to determine if a solution has fulfilled the requirements. They may use sophisticated methods, metrics, and tools to achieve business benefits and corporate goals in areas such as billing, production, workflow, customer relationship management, and manufacturing.

Let's look at how business analysts spend their day;
It’s very difficult to explain the exact roles and responsibilities of Business Analyst because it may vary depending on the nature of organization he or she is working in, but there are many common tasks or activities which each business analyst does. Below are some major roles and responsibilities of the business analyst but not limited to

Major Roles and Responsibilities of the Business Analyst:

  1. Gathering & Analyzing the Business Requirements
  2. Identifying goals and major pain point/GAP analysis
  3. Planning, Monitoring and Managing the Projects and Change Requests
  4. Impact and Risk Analysis
  5. Managing and Communication with stakeholders
  6. Conducting Meetings
  7. Maintaining the Documentation
  8. Evaluating the solution
  9. Training users & UAT assistance.


1. Gathering, Analyzing and Validating Business Requirements:

The primary objective of a Business Analyst is to collect business requirements or needs from the business stakeholders by using various Business Requirement Gathering Techniques (9 Successful Requirement Gathering Techniques of BA).

As a part of eliciting business requirement responsibility, you may need to perform below tasks:
  • Liaise with key stakeholders and conduct brainstorming sessions to get exact requirements.
  • Document exact business needs along with both functional and non-functional requirements.
  • Based on system needs, create prototype, wireframes, mockups, and screens.
  • For large projects, data and process models also need to be created.
  • Investigate the operational system of an organization/business to detect opportunities for change
  • Assess whether business benefits are realized post-implementation of solutions
  • Taking BRD sign off and communicating requirements to the development and QA team.
  • Also, prioritize the requirements.

Evaluating the Business Requirement

After the project or business requirement has been gathered, it's a responsibility of a business analyst is to validate the solution before taking the final sign off. This helps to make sure that all aspects have been considered well before deciding the final solution.

2. Identifying Business Objective / GAP analysis:

Identifying the business objective is another task of a business analyst. Identifying and analyzing the current and future state i.e. AS Is and To Be process and performing the GAP analysis ([GAP Analysis] What and How? - All You Need To Know) to identify the root cause of the problem and possible solution to address the organization's pain. Convert analytic data into the decision. Perform root cause analysis and Provide the consultancy to the client to provide a suitable solution to their problem.

This is one of the important tasks from the list of major roles and responsibilities of the business analyst and it is often required while working on Business Case (read more about Business Case).

3. Planning, Monitoring and Managing the Projects and Change Requests

Business Analyst is responsible for assisting in preparing project plan and tracking of all defined tasks. Business Analyst is also responsible for handling change requests to support the current system. This deliverable includes project and change request analysis, defining tasks and task owner and monitoring each task to follow the defined timeline to deliver the solution within agreed or planned time-frame.

4. Impact and Risk Analysis

Changes or Projects cannot be accepted until there is proper impact analysis, hence before taking any project or change request, it's a responsibility of the business analyst to perform overall impact analysis i.e. identifying the impact on other linked or dependent processes because of the proposed change. There could be the possibility of risk on other systems because of the current change request or project, hence business analyst also needs to take care of the risk assessment and find a possible solution to address the same. Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment supports the project while taking the approvals from the business and It also helps to avoid any problem after the deployment.

5. Managing and Communication with stakeholders

Business Analyst is responsible for managing all stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle and also keeping all project stakeholders on the same page to avoid any miscommunication which may cause a problem at the later stage of the project. Communications could be verbal or written but it has to be maintained by Business Analyst.

One of the major role and responsibility of the Business Analyst it to be the point of contact for the client for any business requirement.

6. Conducting Meetings

Business Analyst often involved in the various meeting conducted and required as a part of the project plan. They should be able to drive the meeting and take the most out of it. The meeting includes a JAD session, brainstorming sessions, user training workshop, etc. Business Analyst needs to be active in all meetings and take note wherever required and send minutes of the meeting.

7. Maintaining the Documentation

Documentation is Business Analyst is responsible for preparing and maintaining all required documents i.e. Business Requirement Document, Functional Requirement Document, Use Case, etc.

You may consider reading the article:- Top 10 Documents Created By Business Analyst


8. Training the users & UAT assistance

Training the end users whenever required is another important task of a Business Analyst. This is a required task especially in major changes or a totally new version of the process. Business Analyst may also be required to assist in completing User Acceptance Testing. Business Analyst also participates in reviewing test cases or scenarios prepared by the QA team.


To wrap it up, major roles and responsibilities of the business analyst lie in:
  • Facilitating the negotiation of requirements from the multiple stakeholders.
  • Assisting in preparing the business case
  • Identifying the current AS-Is and future state TO-Be of business processes.
  • Helping the business stakeholders envision the future and how their work will need to change to support the future.
  • Performing GAP, Impact, and Risk analysis.
  • Facilitating design sessions with the implementation team to define the solution.
  • Skilled business analysts also use requirements to drive the design or review of test cases, process change requests, and manage a project’s scope, acceptance, installation, and deployment.
  • Creating, analyzing and validating detailed functional specifications.
  • Assisting Business Users in completing User Acceptance Testing.

These are my listing of major roles and responsibilities of the business analyst and I would love to hear yours. Please share your views in the comment section and don't forget to share if you found it useful.

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2 Comments

  1. Very interesting subject, regards for posting.

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