Business Analyst Full Course In 2 Hours | Business Analyst Training For Beginners | Simplilearn

hey everyone this is shruti from simply learn welcome to this video on the business analyst full course in this full course video we will learn all about the currently trending topic which is business analytics for all the aspiring business analysts out there this video will help you learn more about the job role of a business analyst so without further ado let's get started we'll begin this full course video by understanding the need for a business analyst in an organization we will have a close look at the duties carried out by a business analyst through an interesting story after this we will have an in-depth understanding of the various skills required to become a business analyst following which we will look at the business analysis knowledge areas after this we will look into a hands-on demo on business analysis with excel we will then conclude this video by drawing a brief comparison between the two most popular job roles today business analyst and data analyst for this training with me i have avijjeet and we will take you through the various topics in business analytics all of this in under two hours so let's start with an interesting story on business analytics but before we begin make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell icon to never miss an update from simplylearn we will understand the importance of business analyst with a sort and interesting story so meet rob he runs a cafe in a small town far away his cafe is one of the oldest and most popular eateries in town rob's cafe was hugely popular amongst customers and it was doing very well until the onset of the deadly coronavirus due to kovite 19 like other eateries rob was forced to shut down his cafe too this took a heavy toll on his business and subsequently he lost his customers none of his customers visited his cafe and this resulted in a huge loss for him he knew he couldn't afford to close his business forever as it would take time for coronavirus to be eradicated but he was lost this situation was new to him and he didn't know how to reopen his business amidst this pandemic after a lot of brainstorming he recollected reading about business analysts he remembered that business analysts are professionals who enable a change in an organization he felt like a business analyst could help him sort out his current business problems hence without wasting any time he set out to hire a business analyst he hired ted the business analyst to help him with his ongoing business problems rob entrusted ted with reopening the business the first step ted took was to have a discussion with rob and understand the business problems and the objectives that is ideally the first step a business analyst would take on discussion with rob ted learned that the business objective was to reopen the business and get at least 80 percent of the customer base back in addition to that rob also wanted ted to look for sustainable ways to reopen and continue the business in the long run amidst the pandemic ted studied the case and he came up with a few suggestions that he thought was fit for rob's business his first suggestion was to develop an exclusive home delivery app for rob's cafe this way ted knew that business will improve as customers prefer home delivery in the current scenario next ted suggested that rob has work from home meal boxes added to his menu many professionals are working from home currently and having work from home meal boxes would be a good pick for such professionals in the middle of a busy day ted's third suggestion was to bring down the selling cost by providing discount coupons that can be utilized by customers having a discount will enable more customers to order from rob's cafe of course it was not possible to get the customer base back without any short of price cuts in the current situation finally ted suggested the drop staff would facilitate home delivery orders this way he didn't have to lay off his staff and at the same time get the home delivery running so these were a few suggestions given by ted yes depending on the situation business analysts can take up different approaches so after the suggestions were accepted by rob for the app ted began to make sure that the development went well by collaborating with the i.t team that became the intermediary between the iit team and rob he provided suggestions to the team checked the app through user interface testing and made sure that the requirements met well the same applied to the other business requirements and changes as well ted held regular meetings to gaze the progress and also kept robb in the loop and updated him with the status of the project attending regular catch-ups helped rob gain an insight into the progress and gave his feedback from time to time ted made sure that the entire case was well documented by doing so he could always refer to the documents in the future with similar cases as well ted made presentations that showed rob the business growth after implementing the changes and ted always supported his presentations with data rob was very impressed with ted's business approach such an approach not only helped rob reopen his business amidst the cove at 19 but also helped him get 80 percent of his customer base back ted successfully brought about a positive change in rob's business which was highly beneficial so that is how ted the business analyst helped rob make a business sustainable this was the importance of having a business analyst in rob's organization don't you think every organization should have a business analyst well yes depending on the business domain and the situation the roles and responsibilities may vary let's start off and have a look at a day in the life of a business analyst through a small story so meet angela who is working as a business analyst in an application development firm her firm builds applications for clients depending on their requirements our next character is rob he is a budding entrepreneur with a vision of setting up his own e-commerce app he plans on selling several electronic gadgets like phones laptops cameras etc on his app so what is rob's first step well he approaches angela's firm one day with the vision of creating his e-commerce app angela and rob start talking business and angela promises to help rob with his app creation she assures him that she will look into his business requirements and coordinate with him to get the app running rob is happy about it and increased to cooperate with angela regarding all the business requirements from his end angela as we know is the business analyst she starts planning rob's project and without any delay she embarks on this project's journey she has a set of planned steps that will help her fulfill rob's requirements but what are the steps she takes is her approach going to be effective and quick let's find out the answers to these questions now up next you can learn about angela's approach that helps her deliver rob's projects smoothly and without any hassles these steps that we are going to look at are the typical roles and responsibilities of a business analyst here we will understand these roles better with respect to angela's and drop story first and foremost angela understands rob's business objectives problems and requirements without understanding this do you think angela will be able to proceed no hence a business analyst like angela understands the problems related to rob's business and comes up with the right solution to achieve the goals of the business she brainstorms around what is best suited for an e-commerce app focusing on electronic gadgets in the next step angela gathers all the necessary requirements here she understands rob's requirements and makes sure that they are on the same page regarding the project and its goals both of them together arrive at a stipulator deadline for the project completion she gathers relevant information based on security of the app the payment setup ways to login cost of the products and style to name a few once angela has an in-depth understanding of rob's project and gathers all the necessary requirements she starts allocating resources by keeping in mind the budget of the project here she recognizes and allocates tasks and resources to the development team bas work closely with the development team to design the solution for a problem angela ensures that the development team doesn't spend their time understanding rob's requirements in this step along with the development team she finalizes the software and tools required to build the project angela doesn't rest until the project is delivered to rob she continuously monitors the progress and constantly provides her feedback to the development team with respect to the app's layout design and other features she gives them suggestions in order to improve the application in the next step angela collects feedback of the prototype version of the app from the users she notes down if the prototype is fine or if it requires more work pas validate if the project is running fine with the help of use acceptance testing they verify if the solution being worked on is in line with the requirements and ensure that the final product satisfies the use expectations bas also assess the functional and non-functional requirements after collecting feedback angela moves to one of her most crucial duties and that is building reports data visualization is a key skill for any ba in order to gauge the performance of the app and get valuable insights from it angela builds reports using various data visualization tools like tableau power bi and quick view reports can be general reports such as detailed reports or it can be dashboard reports such as visualized reports with multi-dimensional analysis based on display of business indicators it is not uncommon for issues to crop up amidst this entire process hence angela conducts regular meetings with the development team and rob to solve problems quickly having these meetings will help rob understand the status of the project and it will also help the teams proceed in the right path throughout this project phase angela makes sure to maintain transparency on completion of the project angela documents and presents the project findings to rob generally business analysts present the project outcomes to the stakeholders and clients along with maintenance reports angela notes on all the project learnings and details in a concise manner this will help her take better decisions in the future and these documents will save her time while implementing the next project now that she has completed all her duties and responsibilities with respect to rob's project she is ready to deliver the final e-commerce application to rob for use rob is rest assured that the application developed by angela's firm is apt for his business and just what he wanted angela's streamlined approach made it easier for the project to be delivered within the stipulated time period rob is happy and i'm sure he will come back to angela's firm for projects in the future so those responsibilities that we saw angela carry out are ideally the roles and responsibilities for any business analyst out there yes some may vary depending on the company you work for and the project you're working on if getting your learning started is half the battle what if you could do that for free visit scale up by simply learn click on the link in the description to know more business analyst is a professional who is responsible for bridging the gap between i.t and business teams they use analytics to evaluate processes determine requirements deliver data-driven solutions and generate reports to executives and stakeholders business analyst is an individual who is a part of the business operation and works closely with the technology team to improve the quality of the services being delivered they also help in assisting in integration and testing of new solutions growing a career in a field with high demand such as business analysis could be a challenge and competition for business analyst positions can be intense so you should have a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of a business analyst a ba should successfully identify and recognize the organization's business objective they should understand the business problems and think of a lucrative business solution they need to understand and collect the business requirements from clients and stakeholders allocate the right resources and improve the existing business documentation of business findings is another important key role of a business analyst bas interact with the development team to design the solution for solving a particular problem they often need to spend a certain amount of time in meetings in order to save the development team from spending their time and understanding the stakeholders requirement they often give feedback on the layout of a software application as to what all features need to be added and what functionalities should the application contain and also implement the newly designed features that a business needs while bas identify the needs define the features right use cases uncover business rules and manage issues they should also gauge the functional and non-functional requirements in a business business analysts run meeting with stakeholders and other authorities hence discussing issues with the client face to face can do wonders and even help in solving problems quickly they engage with business leaders and users to understand how data driven changes to products services software and hardware can improve efficiency and add value they verify and validate if the project is running well with the help of user acceptance testing and the solutions are in line with the client's requirements they also ensure that the product delivered satisfies the user requirements finally bas write documentations and build visualizations to explain all the findings and draw business insights they also deliver maintenance reports they need to develop informative coherent and usable documents for the success of a project business analyst skills are a combination of technical as well as non-technical skills often referred to as soft skills the skills for a business analyst are not only acquired through training but through experience and combined with the ability to understand situations and the motive behind the problem so let's have a look at the top skills to become a successful business analyst the first skill we have is understanding the business objective for a business analyst it is important to know the goals and objectives of the business it is advised that business analysts should have a good knowledge of the business operations in his or her organization a business analyst should understand the problems related to the business and come up with the right solution business analysts will resolve the problems that have been identified and not avoid them they work on individual actions and tasks that will build towards the achievement of the goals of the business objectives of the business can be to expand customer base in order to increase sales scale up production so that it is in line with the revenue growth improve revenue streams through increasing perceived product value or increasing marketing budget according to the revenue business analysts would have the natural curiosity and determination to continue learning and figuring out how things fit together even as business analysts become managers it is important to stay in touch with the industry and its changes the next important skill a business analyst would have is analytical and critical thinking now there is a famous quote by thomas elva edition which says five percent of the people think 10 percent of the people think they think and the other 85 percent would rather die than think business analysts are paid to think a business analyst would be able to analyze and interpret the client's requirements clearly business analysts require good focus in order to collect and understand the needs of the client critical thinking involves evaluating several options before arriving at the desired solution in certain situations a stakeholder may give a requirement that's not necessarily tied up to any business value but rather to their own increased convenience applying critical thinking demands not taking all the statements of the stakeholders for granted critical thinking allows the business analyst to distinguish between requirements that add value to the business and those that should be given a low priority a business analyst must be creative in order to reach stated goals but resources are limited and the conditions are non-ideal the third important skill for a business analyst is communication and interpersonal skills understanding and being properly understood is key to any profession if you are unable to clearly specify and communicate requirements to any stakeholder then you may not fully understand the requirements yourself being a business analyst is like being multilingual you have to speak several different languages while conveying the same message business analysts apply communication skills at every point they use communication and interpersonal skills when the project is launched while gathering requirements when collaborating with stakeholders and also while validating the final solution listening reading and writing skills are very critical for a business analyst this would be capable of facilitating meetings business analysts use verbal and written communication to convey ideas concepts facts and opinions to a variety of stakeholders non-verbal communication skills enable the effective sending and receiving of messages but not limited to body movement posture facial expressions gestures and eye contact effective listening allows the business analyst to accurately understand information that has been communicated verbally fourth in our list of skills we have negotiation and cost benefit analysis being a successful business analyst requires working with and interacting with many people these people include clients business leaders project team members project stakeholders vendors private sector representatives industry leaders and so forth business analysts negotiate at every turn during the course of a project at the initial stage of a project negotiation skills are used to determine what should be included in the vision of the project as details emerge negotiation skills are used by all parties involved to determine which requests become requirements and which requirements have higher priority as the project progresses negotiation skills help to determine the functional design which fulfill the requirements technical decisions also require negotiation skills business analysts also perform cost benefit analysis to conduct an assessment of the benefits and costs anticipated in a project when organizations undertake new projects it is advisable for business analysts that they use cost benefit analysis to establish whether such projects should be embarked or not business analysts should be able to achieve a profitable outcome for your company while finding a solution for the client that makes them happy this balancing act demands the ability to influence a mutual solution and maintain professional relationship up next we have our fifth skill that is decision making the quality of decisions made by business analyst is what matters a lot because it has a direct impact on the company's business thus it is important for every business analyst to think from all aspects before presenting the decision or strategy they must be having good problem solving skills as well business analysts should have a knack to think out of the box and find a solution to problems majorly a business analyst follows five major steps while making a decision these steps are define the problem find and define the alternative approaches evaluate the alternative approaches make the decision based on these approaches and tests and finally implement the solution while some may argue that the technical team is responsible for designing the solution the business analyst still remains instrumental in ensuring that the design conforms to the requirements that have been approved now that we have reached half way through the skills i would like to ask all our viewers to please subscribe to our channel and hit the bell icon to never miss an update from simply learn moving on we have another really important business analyst skill that is idea about programming languages business analysts would have a good hands-on programming knowledge for performing better and faster analysis of data knowledge of r and python is highly beneficial business analysts can help solve complex problems by writing efficient codes both r and python have a vast collection of libraries and packages for data manipulation data wrangling data visualization and data analytics some of these libraries are numpy pandas deep flyer tita ggplot and matplotlib in addition to these it is good to understand statistical software like sas and spss using these programming languages such as python r and sas you can analyze and visualize large datasets as well as create machine learning models for making future business predictions the seventh skill in our list is creation of reports and dashboards a business analyst should be proficient in using various business intelligence tools for creating reports and dashboards reports created by business analysts can be general reports such as detail report grouped report crosstab report column report query report data entry report etc or it can be dashboard reports such as visualize report with multi-dimensional analysis based on display of business indicators dashboard reports are developed by business analyst to solve business decision making problems different from the tabular interface of the general report the dashboard report adopts the canvas like operation interface knowledge of tableau power bi and click view are required to make different types of reports depending on the business requirements now the eighth skill in our list of skills is database and sql business analysts often work with data that is structured in nature hence to store and process this data they should have knowledge of relational databases such as microsoft sql server oracle database mysql database as well as nosql databases also having hands-on experience with sql is a must for a business analyst to access retrieve manipulate and analyze data so they should be able to write data definition and data manipulation commands such as create update delete and insert microsoft excel is the ninth skill in our list excel is one of the oldest and most popular and powerful analytics and reporting tool used in the industries for working with data business analysts use excel to perform various calculations budget analysis and data analysis to derive meaningful insights and take decisions they sort filter and create pivot tables to summarize the data business analysts can also create different charts and graphs using excel to generate dynamic reports related to a business problem business analysts can use excel to create revenue growth models for new products based on new customer forecasts when planning an editorial calendar for a website business analysts can list out dates and topics in a spreadsheet when creating a budget for a small product they can list expense categories in a spreadsheet update it monthly and create a chart to show how close the product is to budget across each category business analyst can calculate customer discounts based on monthly purchase volume by product they can even summarize customer revenue by product to find areas where to build strong customer relationships and finally in the list of skills we have documentation and presentation you could have all the industry experience in the world but if it's paired with poor business analyst practices you could be more of a risk to the organization than a business analyst with no industry experience at all a business analyst must be able to document their project learnings and results in a concise and compact form they should also be confident about presenting the findings and conclusions in front of the stakeholders and clients organized documentation will help you communicate technical concepts to non-technical employees it is important that a business analyst notes down all the details that they learn from their projects this will help them take better decisions in the future also if similar problems arise at a later stage they can implement the same solution thereby saving a lot of time and unwanted problems while business analysts are generally not responsible for making decisions regarding project solutions decision making skills are still important for understanding gathering and presenting relevant information to assess decision makers with selecting the optimal solution with that we have covered our top skills for a business analyst if you have any questions related to the skills that we covered then please put it in the chat section our team will help you solve your queries now let me tell you how simply learn can help you grow your career in business analytics and help you become a business analyst so let me search for simply learn here this is the simply learn website and on the search bar let me look for business analyst you can see there are a few courses related to business analyst so let me open these two courses so let's go to the first course so this is the business analyst masters program now this program is endorsed education provider is iiba now if you look on the right we have the different courses that will be covered as part of this master's program so there is introduction to business analysis certified business analytics professional you'll also learn about agile and scrum there's business analytics with excel we'll also get training in sql this tableau training and you will also get to work on business analyst caption projects if i scroll down now here are the tools that will be covered as part of this course so there's microsoft excel zera tableau power bi postgresql then this plan box target process and others here you can see the program advisors and if i scroll further is the entire course content we have these are the different courses that you will be learning in this course and after you finish the course you will receive a certificate which will look similar to this so please go ahead and enroll to this course if you want to start your career in business analytics now let me take you to another program we have post graduate program in business analysis now this is in partnership with podu university and endorsed education provider is iipa if i scroll down you can see here the key features of this course you get purdue post graduate program certification alumni association membership master classes from purdue faculties enrollment in simply learns job assist there's 170 plus hours of blended learning 11 plus hands-on projects custom projects in three domains if i scroll further on the right you can see this is the purdue certification that you will receive after finishing the course and you will also get the certificate received by international institute of business analysis that is iiba let's scroll down you also have the advantage for enrolling to simply learn job assist program so you will get i am jobs pro membership for six months resume assistance and career monitoring you'll also have interview preparation and career affairs now here you can see the program details so you will learn about an introduction to business analysis certified business analysis professional there's a island scrum business analytics with excel tableau training business analyst capstone project and you also have the opportunity to enroll for some electives so we have purdue university business analysis you can also enroll to a power bi course and there is agilent scrum foundation if i scroll down here you can see the skills that will be covered as part of this program so this business analysis there's alicitation and collaboration requirement analysis planning and monitoring let me click on view more you have strategy analysis dashboarding wireframing does data visualization statistical analysis using excel sql database there's requirement lifecycle management and lots more so these are the tools that will be covered in this course we have microsoft excel zera fogburst plan box that's rally power bi pro square sql that's version one target process and others and now this is the important part though these are the industrially related projects that you will get to work on once you enroll to this course so the first project is canteen ordering system for unilever we also have library management system for stanford university there's whatsapp pay and you can see the description of these projects mentioned below and you also have hospital management system for myoclinic there are course advisors for this course now they are directly related to purdue university if we scroll further there's the learner's profile and how the industry trend has been for business analysts so please go ahead and enroll to this program if you really want to start your career or you want to grow your career as a business analyst now here is a quick roadmap that depicts what a fresher needs to possess to become a business analyst first they need to have a graduation degree in a related field then knowledge of sql and relational database is very important thirdly a fresher should have good hands-on experience with programming languages and that's a prerequisite and finally they need to have good communication skills to nail the role of a business analyst up next we have the roadmap that depicts what an experienced professional needs to possess to become a business analyst firstly they should have good knowledge of the domain they are currently working in next they should know how to write sql queries an experienced professional should be good with programming languages in addition to that they need to have good communication and negotiation skills finally they should be good at creating interactive reports using business intelligence tools in addition to that having a certification offered by international institute of business analysis such as certified business analysis professional would be highly beneficial let's now learn the business analysis knowledge areas first up we have business analysis planning and monitoring now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to organize and coordinate business analysis efforts it involves planning business analysis approach stakeholder engagement business analysis governance as well as information management then we have illustration and collaboration now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to prepare and conduct elicitation activities and confirm the results it also includes communicating business analysis information and stakeholder engagement the third knowledge area we have is requirements lifecycle management so this knowledge area describes the tasks that we perform in order to manage and maintain requirements throughout their lifecycle it covers the creation changes prioritization traceability and governance processes fourth in our list we have strategy analysis now this knowledge area describes the tasks used to identify the business need address that need and align the change strategy within the enterprise you need to analyze the current state define the future state assess risk and define change strategy then we have requirements analysis and design definition this knowledge area describes the tasks used to organize requirements specify and model requirements it also validates and verifies information and identifies solution options the final knowledge area we have is solution evaluation this knowledge area measures the solution performance analyzes performance measures assess solution limitations and recommends actions to increase solution value now let's discuss two of the most widely used methodologies in any business analysis process these methods are popularly used in the industries to ensure smooth running of projects the first methodology we are going to talk about is the agile methodology agile is an incremental and iterative approach to project management and software development it helps team deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer obstacles teams can manage a project by breaking it up into several stages and involving constant collaboration with stakeholders along with continuous improvement and iteration at every stage so the steps involved in an agile project development includes planning the project in terms of business goals budget time duration for completing the project and resource needed then we have designing the solution for the problem at hand the third step is developing the solution this could be a software a website an application etc it's done by the development team next we have testing the product in the next step of the life cycle deploying the developed product to check if it's working fine and finally we have reviewing the product and getting feedback from customers clients stakeholders etc now in agile methodology the entire work is broken down into several sprints after each sprint we get a shippable product and that product is reviewed by the client or the stakeholder the suggestions are incorporated in the next sprint here you can see we have sprint 1 sprint 2 and sprint 3 and all of them have the 6 steps that we discussed in the agile methodology process now let's discuss this scrum methodology scrum is a subset of the agile framework it is one of the most widely used lightweight process frameworks for agile development you can easily collaborate develop and deliver complex products of the highest possible value scrum empowers the development team and supports working in small teams like 8 to 10 members scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time this process enables organizations to adjust smoothly to rapidly changing requirements and produce a product that meets evolving business goals okay so the concepts and practices in scrum can be divided into three categories first we have three roles a product owner owns the product backlog and writes user stories and acceptance criteria they are responsible for privatizing the product backlog and deciding the release date and the content a product owner is the one who is responsible for the return on investment or roi of the product a scrum master is a servant who encourages and demands self-organization from the development team they enable close cooperation across all roles and functions addresses resource issues and disobedience of scrum practices a development team comprises individuals working together to develop and deliver the requested and committed product agreements the development team builds the product and includes all the expertise necessary to deliver the potential shippable product each sprint the second category comprises of three artifacts the product backlog is an ordered list of the features and requirements needed to complete the project the list can include bugs or defects that need to be resolved features that must be added another technical or project work your team has to complete before the project is over the sprint backlog includes only what needs to be completed during the current sprint it often has greater detail and more complete user stories than the rest of the product backlog once created no one can add to the sprint backlog except the development team the product increment is the version of the product that will be delivered at the end of each sprint while the sprint backlog outlines what must be completed within a sprint the product increment details the outcome of all that work the increment is a prototype or working version of the final product expected by the customer the final category we have is sprint ceremonies there are four ceremonies in total in sprint planning the team meets and decides what they need to complete in the coming sprint sprint review is a type of meeting in which the team demonstrates what they shipped in the sprint in the sprint retrospective the team reviews their work identifying what they did well and what didn't go as planned so that they can make the next print better daily scrum is a stand-up meeting or a very short like 15 to 20 minutes meeting for the team to make sure that they are all on the same page now let's talk about the average annual salary of a business analyst according to pay scale the average annual salary of a business analyst in the united states is eight thousand nine hundred and seventy three dollars while in india a business analyst can earn nearly six lakh rupees per annum now talking about the companies hiring for business analysts we have the indian e-commerce payment system and financial technology company paytm american mnc cognigent and british dutch multinational oil and gas company shell we also have cisco the search engine giant google and dell finally in our list of companies we have arnstein young global limited american multinational computer technology corporation oracle and british multinational investment bank and financial services company barclays with that let's discuss the top business analysis tools and software used by business analysts we have the widely used spreadsheet application microsoft excel web-based kanban style list making application trello relational database management systems such as mysql microsoft sql server and postgresql then we have bug tracking and agile project management product zera and tableau software for data visualization okay so let's look at our demo on business analyst training often times business analysts work on structured data using excel to prepare reports and dashboards they do create pivot tables and pivot charts to summarize and analyze data find trends and insights to make critical decisions so in this demo we will work on a sales data set from the united states and analyze the total revenue total profit the quantity sold for different categories and subcategories of products across various regions segments cities etc now let me show you the data set first okay so here is my data set you can see there are nearly 9994 rows and we have 17 columns you can see this is a sales data set and the first column is of order date then we have the shipment date we have the shipment mode next we have the customer name that is the customer who purchased the product we have the segment the country name there's only united states then we have the different cities from the u.s we have the state names and if i go to the right you can see the categories of product we also have the sub categories next we have the product name then we have our sales value now you can assume this to be in dollars then we have the quantity that was sold for each product then we have the discount column and finally we have the profit column so let's analyze this data set using different charts and graphs first let's create a pivot table to see the sales by region and year so here we want to see the sales of all the years in different regions of the united states so for that i'll click on any cell inside this data set go to the insert tab and here i have the option to create a pivot table i'll click on this create pivot table option and you can see it has selected my entire data and here i'll choose new worksheet that is the place where i want to place this pivot table and let's click on ok so you can see it has created a new sheet which is sheet2 and let's drag our columns onto the different sections in this pivot table fields so since i want to know the region and the year so let's drag the order date first and let's delete the quarter column so i'll click on remove field i don't want this field so i have my ears first and then let's drag region column under columns and we want to know the sales for all the years in different regions so i'll drag sales onto values you can see here we have our pivot table ready if you want you can go ahead and rename this row labels and column labels now with this table ready let's create a line chart this will help you analyze your data better so what you can do is go to the insert tab and here under recommended charts you can go for line chart you can see the line chart preview here and click on ok there you go how easily excel has created a pivot chart for us based on this pivot table now if you notice the lines in this graph you can see the different regions and here is the legend now if you see the yellow line which is actually for the west region so the sales had declined from 2014 to 2015 and then it gradually started increasing from 2015 to 2017 onwards and if you see the orange line or the red line it is for the east region the sales have been continuously increasing you can see the trend here similarly if you see the central region the sales generated was steady from 2014 till 2015 then it increased in 2016 and after 2016 it became constant similarly you can analyze the south region as well now let's say you want to know the sales by each category of product and the different segments so you can do that as well let's go to our sheet one where we have our data set let me click on any cell i'll go to insert and i'll choose pivot table here let it be new worksheet i'll click on ok all right so since we want to know the sales value again so let's drag sales onto values field and now i'll choose category under rows so let's select category under rows and then we want to know for each segment also so what i can do is i'll choose segment under columns you can see i have my pivot table ready so here you have the furniture office supplies and technology as the categories of products and on the top you can see consumer corporate home office has the different segments now let's create a visual out of this pivot table so i'll go to recommended charts and let's say this time i want to create a bar chart now this is a horizontal bar chart let's click on ok if i close this and i bring it to here you can see this is a nice bar chart and below you can see the sales values and on the y-axis you can see the different categories of products and in the legend we have the segments now if you want you can edit this chart as well so let's delete or hide all field buttons on the chart all right similarly let's do this for our line chart as well let's hide these field buttons okay all right now let's suppose you want to know which segment made the highest and the lowest profits so for that you can create a pivot table as well so i'll click on any cell go to the insert tab and choose pivot table i click on ok all right now say we want to know the profit by each segment so i'll first choose profit on to values and let's drag the segment column onto rows so we have our pivot table ready now here if you want to know which segment made the highest or the lowest profit you can sort this data so click on any cell under sum of profit right click and here you have the short option so let's do sort smallest to largest which is in ascending order okay so here you can see consumer segment made the highest amount of profit while the home office segment made the lowest amount of profit now based on this pivot table you can create a pie chart let's do that i'll go to insert and here under recommended charts i'll select pi and let's click on ok there you go we have a nice pie chart ready now the gray color pi represents your consumer segment which made the highest amount of profit you can also validate it from the pivot table while the blue segment which is actually home office made the lowest amount of profit now let's remove this field from here i'll right click and select hide all field buttons on the chart now one thing you can do is you can edit the chart title here by default it has shown total we can rename it to let's say profit by segment and hit enter okay now you can adjust the size of this and the color of the text if you want you can do it from here similarly let's add a title to our bar graph as well so here if you see there's an option to choose chart title and i'll say sales by segment and category okay similarly let's add a title to our first line chart that we created i'll click on the chat title and here i'll write sales by year and region okay now let me go back to my data sheet now suppose let's say you want to know the total units that were sold for each sub category of products and the shipment mode so here we have the shipment mode and you want to know the total units that were sold which is basically this column the quantity column for each sub categories of product you can see we have different sub categories like bookcases this chairs labels this tables furnacings art phones binders etc so let's create a pivot table for this i'll go to the insert tab click on pivot table and click on ok all right now since we want to know the total units that were sold let's drag the quantity column under values and i'll choose the ship mode field under columns and let's select subcategory under rows so i have my pivot table ready now based on this pivot table let's create a line chart i'll go to the insert tab click on recommended charts and let's go to line chart all right you can see the preview here and the legends which show the shipment mode let's click on ok i close this now first let's remove these fields i'll right click and i'll hide all field buttons now if you see this one you can add some styles to your chart let's modify our chart a bit let's see i'll select yeah this one you can see it has given dots for each endpoints which means this is my first sub category as you can see the second sub category the third subcategory which is art then we have binders so it's really easy to read and understand the chart well okay now let's add a chart title i'll write quantity sold by subcategory and ship mode now you can reduce the size of the chart title text let's keep it 10 okay now you also have the feature to create different kinds of maps in excel so suppose you want to see the states that made the highest and the lowest sales in the united states so you can create a field map for that so first of all let's go to our data sheet i'll click on any cell go to insert and create a pivot table and click on ok alright so since we want the state and the country so let me first drag country field under rows and then i'll choose the state field under rows now let's drag sales under values okay so we have our pivot table ready now if i sort this data you can easily know that california state made the highest amount of sales now if i scroll down below you can see north dakota made the lowest amount of sales now let's do one thing let's remove the grand total so you can go to the design tab and under grand totals you can select the first option you can see the grand total has gone and in order to create a map we need to adjust this pivot table so i'll click on united states i'll right click and i'll go to field settings here under layout and print i'll click on show item labels in tabular format and i'll also click on repeat item labels you can see it will populate united states for all the rows if i click on ok you can see the united states have been populated for all the states now let me select this table or before that let's remove the subtotal from here i'll close this go to the design tab under subtotals i'll choose do not show subtotals okay now let's select the table and i'll actually paste it somewhere here now with this data i can go to the insert tab and choose maps let's select field map there you go you see we have a nice field map of the united states and here you can see the color scale so it goes from light gray all the way up to dark blue so the states that are in dark blue let's say california made the highest amount of sales you can also validate it from the pivot table similarly the lighter the color the amount of sales were less for that state now let's give a chart title here i'll give a chart title as sales by states and let's remove this legend now you can format this map so here you can change colors and let's see if i choose this one you can see the color has changed and you can see the california state is shaded in dark which means it made the highest amount of sales you can also add data labels you can see it will show the sales values for each of the states and if you want you can keep the legend as well i'll just remove these two all right now similarly you can also create a field map to see the profits by each state so you can analyze which states made the highest amount of profit and the state that made the lowest amount of profit so let's do that i'll go to my data sheet i'll click on insert and select pivot table let's click on ok now first and foremost let's drag country under rows and then i'll choose state under rows next let's drag the profit column under values so i have my pivot table ready let's go to the design tab and remove the subtotals i'll select do not show subtotals if i scroll down okay i have my grand total now so let's go to the design tab under grand totals we'll remove it okay now let's just populate the united states which is the country name for all the rows i'll right click on united states go to field settings click on layout and print i'll choose select item labels in tabular form and select repeat item labels let's click on ok so i have my country name populated throughout let's select the pivot table i'll paste it somewhere here and now let's go to the insert tab i'll choose map let's select field map there you go now we have the profits for each of the states let's first delete this and edit our chart title which is profit by states okay let's close this let's say we'll use this one now okay let's edit the color of the chart title i'll make it as white and let's say we'll choose the color as say this one okay now let me go ahead and remove the legend here and just delete it all right so we have our field map ready which shows profit by each state now that we are done with our analysis and creating our different pivot tables and pivot charts let's build the final dashboard so let's create a new sheet here okay the first thing i need to do is i'll go to the view tab and i'll remove the grid lines all right now let's go to the insert tab and here we have text let me choose text box let's create a text box here okay now you can reduce the size actually let's reduce it okay and you can move it to the top all right let's pull this a little down and this to little right let's fill the text box color with blue color and let's give the text as sales dashboard and we'll give a white color to the text and i'll select my font you can select any font you want so i'll go with let's say britannic bold okay we have it here and let's increase the size to 30 and we'll center align it all right now the next step is to bring all our pivot charts to this dashboard sheet so i'll first copy my pivot chart and i'll paste it in sheet 8 let's paste it here and we can reduce the size okay now similarly let's do it for the other charts as well i'll copy this and let's paste it somewhere here okay now let me just reduce the size and if you want you can reduce the chart title font size as well let's make it 11 okay and let's drag this a bit all right now let's copy the pie chart and let me paste it here let's reduce the size of this pie chart okay see we have our pie chart here now let me take my line chart which shows the quantity sold by different sub categories of product i'll copy it and let me paste it somewhere here i'll close this and we need to reduce the size so that we can fit in our other charts as well okay let me reduce a bit more all right now we are left with the two maps that we created let's copy this and let's paste it here i'll go to the right let's reduce the size similarly we'll do it for sales by profit map as well let's copy this and paste it onto our dashboard let's reduce the size first and let's increase it towards the bottom so we have our dashboard ready you can see the different pivot charts that we created now let's add slicers and timelines to this dashboard so that we can filter our tables and the charts so i'll click on this first chart which is our line chart i'll go to the insert tab here you can see under filters we have slicers and timeline first let me click on timeline and here i'll choose my order date column let me click on ok all right let's drag this a bit here on to the right and i'll show you how you can use this let's first choose years instead of months and let me reduce the size a bit okay now another thing to do here is let me right click and i'll go to report connections here i'll select all my pivot tables instead of just one so that any manipulation you do in the order year it will reflect for all the tables or the charts we have on the dashboard i click on ok now that we have seen how to add a timeline i'll reduce this a bit let's now add a few slicers let's click on any of the charts i'll go to insert click on slicer now let's add a region slicer i'll click on ok and let's take it to the right we'll reduce the size of this region slicer slicers are nothing but filters which have advanced filtering options and we can add one more filter or a slicer let's say we want to do this time on the segment so i'll go to slicer i'll choose segment here and click on ok so you can see i have my segment slicer here let me just reduce the size and let's drag it here at the bottom all right okay now if you want to know the sales and profit for a particular year so you can choose that particular year here on the timeline suppose i want to know the sales only for 2014 and 2015. so the way to do is you can select one of the years so i'll click on 2014 and now i'll drag this to select 2015 as well if i go to left the figures that you see only reflect the sales and the profit for 2014 and 15. similarly if you mark here or let me just bring it to the middle suppose say i want to have 2016 year included as well i can just drag it to the right you can see the charts will change i'll just remove the filter and place it here similarly if you want to see the sales and profit for a particular region you can do that too for example let me just bring this region slicer here and let's say you want to know the sales and profit only for the east region you see here it shows only for the east region and suppose you want to see for east and west region also you can see it changes here okay we just cancel this now you might be wondering when we selected the different regions only the pie chart changed but the rest of the charts were the same now the reason was we did not apply this slicer to all the pivot tables so let me right click and go to report connections here i'll choose the remaining pivot tables as well i click on ok all right now let me just bring this to the middle and let's say we want to know the sales and the profits and the quantities sold for let's say south region if i select this you can see it shows only for the south region let's see you also want to know for the central region now we have selected both central and south you can see the variations in the graph we cancel this similarly we have our another slicer which is the segment i'll populate the slicer for all the other pivot tables let me choose all of them and click on ok i'll bring this to the middle so that you can see the variations in the graph let's say i want to know the seals the unit sold and the profit for home office segment so i'll only select home office you can see the variations here now the slices actually don't work for the maps so you can't see any change here now suppose you want to know for the corporate segment you can select cooperate or if you want to select for multiple segments you can do that as well just cancel this and let me place it here all right now we are done with our demo so if you want to get a copy of the data set and the demo file that we are using here in this video you can put your email ids in the comments section our team will send you the files over email we'll compare the two most popular job roles in the field of information technology that is business analyst versus data analyst business analyst is a professional who bridges the gap between the it and the business teams in an organization they use data analytics and modern technologies to assess processes and deliver data-driven solutions they understand and solve a business problem and validate business requirements a business analyst generates reports for executives and stakeholders they are part of the business operation and work closely with the technology team to improve the quality of the services being delivered they also assist in the integration and testing of new solutions now let's talk about the job description of a data analyst with a rapid increase in data generation today the term data analyst has found its prominence a data analyst collects processes and performs analysis of large data sets every business generates data in several formats this data can be in the form of customer information and feedback log files transaction data marketing research and so on it is the duty of a data analyst to transform these business data into valuable insights some of the problems that can be addressed are how to improve a business how to provide good customer experience what would be the ideal price for a new product how to reduce transportation costs and so on data analysts deal with data handling data modeling and reporting with this brief understanding of the job description for a business analyst and a data analyst let's now shift our focus towards the various responsibilities of a business analyst a business analyst identifies the business goals understands the problems faced by an organization and comes up with a cost-effective solution to tackle the issues they thoroughly understand the requirements from the clients and assign the right resources bas communicate and work closely with the development team to design the solution for a problem they ensure that the development team doesn't spend their time understanding the stakeholders requirements and often give iterative feedback on the solution being developed they check and validate if the project is running fine with the help of user acceptance testing they also verify if the solution being worked on is in line with the requirements and ensure that the final product satisfies the user expectations bas assess the functional and non-functional requirements a business analyst documents the project findings and results they present the project conclusions to the stakeholders and clients along with delivering maintenance reports and building visualizations to make decisions now let's take a look at the responsibilities of a data analyst first and foremost a data analyst must identify and understand the organization's goal and requirements this helps to plan and streamline the analysis process data analysts collect data from various heterogeneous sources they assess the available resources comprehend the business problem and gather the right data for analysis they work closely with different team members like programmers business analysts and data scientists data filtering and data wrangling are vital jobs of a data analyst the data collected is often noisy and it contains missing values hence it is crucial to clean the collected data and remove invalid values to make it ready for analysis they use a variety of analytical statistical and business intelligence tools to spot trends and patterns in complex data sets discover hidden insights and prepare summary reports for the leadership team they also use programming languages for data mining and data manipulation now it's time for us to understand the difference between a business analyst and a data analyst based on the skill set they possess first let's look at the skills that can help you become a ba a business analyst should have a graduation degree in any relevant field such as business accounting information systems human resources or engineering you can apply for entry level business analyst positions or with professional experience excel is a powerful analytics and reporting tool for working with data bas use excel to perform various calculations data analysis plan an editorial calendar and calculate customer discounts to derive meaningful insights and take decisions base sql to retrieve manipulate and analyze data stored in relational databases critical thinking skills are important to understand customers business needs it allows them to distinguish between requirements that add value to the business and those that should be given a lower priority base should find different ways to address each challenge data visualization is a key skill for bas to build interactive dashboards and reports to convey the outcomes of a project knowledge of tableau power bi and qlikview is required to make different types of reports depending on the business requirements business analysts should have a good hands-on programming experience to solve complex tasks and perform faster analysis of data hence knowledge of programming languages such as r and python is a prerequisite finally they should have good presentation skills they should also be confident about their findings and conclusions and communicate it in front of the stakeholders and clients let's now understand the skills that a data analyst should possess you must have a bachelor's degree in any relevant field or be a graduate in statistics economics or science you're eligible to become a data analyst being a fresher or as an experienced professional you should have domain knowledge in the field you are working in once again knowledge of excel is another basic requirement for a data analyst data analysts often work with structured data so they should be proficient in writing sql queries using data manipulation and data definition commands they should know how to create stored procedures another crucial skill for a data analyst is to have hands-on experience with programming languages such as python r sas and javascript you can analyze and visualize large data sets and create predictive models for making business decisions data analysts create data visualizations using libraries such as matplotlib c-bond ggplot and plotly this helps them to perform exploratory data analysis knowledge of tableau and power bi is required to create different business reports with the help of graphs and charts data analysts should have knowledge of machine learning algorithms to build sophisticated models and make future predictions so they should know about linear regression logistic regression support vector machines k-mean clustering and other supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms finally data analysts should also possess good communication and presentation skills now let's discuss a salary structure for both of these job roles according to pay scale a business analyst in the united states earns an average salary of 69 000 while in india you can earn nearly 6 lakh rupees per annum now talking about the salary of a data analyst according to pay scale in the us a data analyst earns an average salary of sixty thousand seven hundred and ten dollars per annum and in india you can earn around four lakhs twenty four thousand rupees per annum let's now move on and look at the different companies hiring for business analyst roles here we have oracle the search engine giant google the american mnc cognizant and e-commerce company amazon in addition to that we have ernest and young technology giant ibm dell and cisco hiring business analysts talking about the companies hiring for data analysts we have twitter google the social media leader facebook and amazon we also have the american oil company shell the electric vehicle company tesla apple and the american credit reporting agency equifax now choosing the right field that is to become a business analyst or a data analyst could be a challenging task the key points that you have to keep in mind before making a decision is first review your background and see what qualifications you have check what skills you possess and the domain knowledge you have then gauge your interest to see what suits you best and finally consider your long-term goals and see the job roles that will help you grow in your career in the long run now let me tell you how simply learn can help you grow your career as a business analyst and a data analyst simplylearn offers a postgraduate program in business analysis that is in collaboration with purdue university the endorsed education provider is iiba some of the skills that will be covered in this course are strategy analysis wireframing evaluation dashboarding data visualization agile scrum methodology scrum artifacts statistical analysis using excel and sql database some of the tools covered in this course are microsoft excel tableau power bi jira postgresql planbox and others some of the key features of this business analysis program are you will receive purdue post graduate program certification master classes from purdue faculty you can enroll in simply learns job assist where you will get im jobs pro membership for 6 months and obtain 35 iiba pd cdus and 25 pmi pdus you will get 170 plus hours of blended learning along with capstone projects in three domains to become a data analyst you can enroll in the postgraduate program in data analytics offered by simply learn this program is in collaboration with purge university and ibm the skills that will be covered as a part of the course are statistical analysis using excel data analysis in python and our data visualization using tableau and power bi linear and logistic regression modules clustering using k-means supervised learning and others the tools that you will learn are numpy pandas scipy scikit-learn excel and others some of the key features of this course are you will get purge your post graduate program certification industry recognized ibm certificates enrollment and simply learns job assist and master classes from purdue faculty you have 180 plus hours of blended learning 14 plus hands-on projects on integrated labs and capstone projects in three domains so please go ahead and enroll for these programs if you want to grow your career as a business analyst or a data analyst business analyst interview questions my name is richard kirschner with the simply learn team we'll go over some beginner intermediate and advanced level questions to expect in interviews when you're looking at business analytics let's start with the differentiation between a risk and an issue and this should be a very fundamental question dealing with business because in business they want to make money and we really want to understand where the split is on a lot of these things always ask yourself where is the bottom dollar on this and what does this mean risk is your potential and an issue is something that's actually happening so risk is a potential problem that can be predicted risk may or may not happen in the future a proactive response plan is formulated and kept ready to mitigate risks so these are things you plan for and the issue refers to a risk that is occurring or about to happen there is no response plan in place to solve an issue you can only respond reactively to an issue what are the various tools a business analyst works on this is very company specific and so when you start looking for work you start going in for interviews you should start really asking yourself what are these companies looking for that i'm interested in clearly if you work with ibm you want to have your tools that are central to ibm and the ibm setup same thing with google with you know just across the whole field some of the more basic ones obviously an excel spreadsheet which isn't on this list but your python your sql you should really know your sql it's going to come up in no matter what format you're in your tableau your xur your balsamic all these are different platforms there's a lot more out there but you should be aware on which platforms your proficiencies are on and those also that you might not be proficient on but you at least know what they do and what their performance is so you can answer questions and a lot of companies will pay for you to be certified if their platform isn't on your list what are the various stages of a business project and we look at project initiation project planning project execution project control and monitoring project closure and it's really important to understand any one of these in a little bit more detail than just knowing the list what is feasibility study a feasibility study is a method of gauging the success rate of proposed business solution it enables business analysts to discover new business opportunities and uh really a lot of businesses when they're looking at a for a business analyst this is really what they want to know what's the feasibility uh that is a very central question that comes up in most business plans what's the feasibility of doing something and getting it done what is business model analysis business model analysis is a technique that helps you analyze if a business is financially economically and socially viable or not i know a number of contractors that this is their sole career is to go in and analyze ski resorts in colorado to find out whether it's going to make it this year or not and what they need to do to fix that so it's a very high-end job niche where you really need to know your stuff and understand what it means what do you understand by requirement differentiate between requirements and needs we look at requirements requirement is a targeted solution that is required to achieve the set business objectives business requirements are data used for business processes needs needs are the high level representation of the terms and the result business needs include identifying and comprehending the businesses goals and articulating its strategic direction and you can think of needs are what do we need to succeed requirements are well these are the things we need to put into place this is what's required to achieve a business objective suppose you have been given a list of zip pin codes from different countries using those codes find the city and the state names using excel and so if you're given a list of zip codes pin codes of various cities from the us and india here's how you can find the city and the country names select all the codes go to the data tab under data types select geography click on the insert data option choosing city from the field list click on the insert data option and select state from the field list really you do need to know your way around excel no matter what other packages you're working with excel is such a base package in business analysis so much people are giving that back and forth still it's still kind of a baseline below our sales data that has information on different items sold across various regions and countries what was the total revenue generated for all the items in india you can use the sum if function to find the total revenue generated from india you can see here equals some f and then of course b2 to b100 india l2 to l1001 and that will give you the sum you can also use a filter option to filter the data only for india and use subtotal by pressing alt plus equals nice short hotkey to remember there create a highlight table to visualize the revenue generated from offline and online cells for different items across the region using tableau now not all companies use tab blue but it is becoming a very highly used tool because it's so easy to use you drag the region onto columns drag the cells channel and item type fields onto rows select the total revenue column and drag it on to color and label cards select square as the mark type drag the total revenue filled onto columns drag the total profit column onto rows place item type column on to colors under the size card place a total profit drag the region column into the filters card and select asia so one of the things about tableau is it looks real complicated but it's all drag and drop and so you should know your way around about doing some very simple drag and drops for doing your query and summation and below is the resulted plot so let's look at some more questions but let's jump to a little more intermediate level differentiate between software development lifecycle and project life cycle so look a little bit more hierarchical towards the top of the list software development lifecycle helps with the development of software products it consists of a single software across multiple phases here phases include requirement gathering coding operations maintenance and documentation where the project life cycle this enables you to develop a new product in the business project lifecycle consists of multiple software in one customer scenario phases here are idea generation screening development testing and analysis how do you perform risk management in your project so again we're dealing with intermediate not just how to pull tables across we start analyzing things and the risk management is a technique wherein risks are identified avoided reduced assessed and mitigated having the appropriate risk management plan decreases losses and optimizes decision making to enhance the organization's performance how does risk mitigation differ from risk avoidance risk mitigation risk mitigation is a plan to be executed when a risk occurs when a risk occurs there might be a business impact and the cost incurred is high risk avoidance whereas risk avoidance is carried out to avoid the risk from occurring meanwhile the business impact here is zero and the cost is fully eliminated and you can think about a brick and mortar store and they have shoplifting you want to mitigate as you want to avoid as much shoplifting as you can but you can only frisk people at the door and have security so much before you start losing customers and so when you mitigate it you're gonna have to pay for your lost merchandise where you avoid it you have your security cameras and people watching to stop uh people from stealing things risk in this case can mean loss of money spent badly spent on equipment certifications there's all kinds of areas where you want to mitigate and avoid risk what are project deliverables project deliverables represent a collection of measurable services and goods that are to be delivered to the end user in the project completion stage this is so important we start talking about any of our when you sign a contract any of our online contracts cloud computing all of that make sure you're very clear what the deliverables are who owns it who is the responsibility of the service and the security around it those are all very important questions to know differentiate between the agile and waterfall model two of our biggest or most basic models used today the agile model which is slowly taking over especially in software the agile model is adaptable to requirement changes and has an incremental approach in the agile mile model testing can be performed in every phase with the waterfall model the waterfall model is referred as a structured software development methodology changes and requirements are difficult to implement meanwhile in the waterfall model testing is performed only in the final phase and you can look at this as a lot of the software today has to be ready to change quickly when the waterfall uh setup you're not looking for fast changes you're looking for a very solid it's going to work no matter what kind of view this is something that we can build it doesn't have to make major changes but it better work correctly describe the different analytical techniques like moscow and swat moscow analysis it is a prioritization technique that highlights a requirements significance question like is it a must-have or it should have could the demand be made better would a specific idea be useful in the future are asked here in the swot analysis it discovers the strengths and weaknesses of a firm and evaluates them as opportunities and threats swot analysis consists of strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and you cannot kind of think of it as like the swat team coming in uh to you know be worried about threats here so we're talking about policing or in moscow really what is um what can we get out of this you know is this do we have to have it to succeed is it going to be useful in the future so you're looking more for a general value attached to it list various components of strategy analysis for developing a strategic plan for an organization the vital components are vision objectives mission strategies action plan what is benchmarking benchmarking is a process of evaluating an organization's measures like the quality of policies programs etc against the standard criteria it's so important to have that baseline of what are you measuring against the baseline might not even be a very good one but you can't measure something unless you have something to measure it against it helps with the measuring the performance of the company you can recognize the areas of improvement in a company and analyze how other companies achieve other objectives what is the best approach to work with difficult stakeholders a business analyst interacts with many professionals during his work few of the best approaches to take into consideration while working with difficult stakeholders are before i even jump into this i have a friend who was working with some very high-end individuals who took their private plane uh and he was supposed to meet him at the in location when he arrived they had been in a fist fight while on their private plane the stakeholders had so much difficulty with some particular aspect going on so difficulties are going to arise hopefully not at that level but things happen and of course you want to just assume work with anybody but you want to listen patiently to the stakeholders point of view respond to them politely and diplomatically have a one-on-one discussion to make things more precise comprehend their worries and be transparent make sure to continuously engage such difficult stakeholders i'm going to highlight the last one because if you're working with somebody who's difficult and you just try to ignore them one of the things is that whatever problems are arising they're just going to explode so that is so important not to ignore the ignore somebody who's being difficult but the rest of it is stay focused stay focused on what you're trying to accomplish be goal driven this is a great time to be goal driven not driven by emotion or the problems that arise or how the person communicates name the different types of agile methodologies scrum go get scrum certified important thing to look into if you haven't learn software development and extreme programming xp feature driven development fdd crystal kanban dynamic systems development method dsdm if getting your learning started is half the battle what if you could do that for free visit skill up by simply learn click on the link in the description to know more there is an agile just a ton of different methodologies so knowing at least a few of them inside and out and having a kind of a general idea that the other ones are out there is important to at least know what we're talking about when someone comes up and talks about agile describe the gap analysis gap analysis refers to the analysis of differences between the existing systems functionalities and the targeted system the gap indicates the amount of work required to get the intended result gap analysis is a comparison between the current and proposed functionalities and you can see here we put together an action plan to go from the current state to the desired state how do you import text file data into ms excel and remember excel is one of those things that has been around forever and even though it's like the bottom barrel of a lot of uh analysis that we do most of our data starts in an excel spreadsheet or a comma separated variable file that you then end up with an excel spreadsheet given below is the employee text file it has information about name agent company and here's how you can import this data into excel go to the data tab click on get data drop down under from file select text csv select where the text file is located in your system and click on import click on load data imported into excel you've been given cells data that has information on the cell of different items across the world below is the data create a pivot table to analyze the profit of all the items in each region now remember our pivot table is a table of statistics that summarizes the data of a more extensive table so it takes a full data sheet and we're just going to bring we're going to focus zoom in on something that's what the pro the pivot table means if we want to go ahead and do this what we do is we go ahead and select a cell in the table go to insert and click on pivot table in the create pivot table box choose existing worksheet to place your pivot table drag region and item type onto rows drag total profit onto values sort the sum of the total profit column using the cells table find the percentage contribution of cosmetics to the total revenue and total profit create a pivot table by dragging item type onto rows select the revenue and profit column under values right click on the revenue value under show value as select percentage of grand total right click on a profit value under show value as choose percentage of grand total and you can see here when we do that we end up with cosmetics made a 14.03 percent contributions to the total revenue and an 18.94 contribution to the total profit how do you create a dual axis chart in tableau drag the order data onto columns and convert it into continuous year drag total revenue onto rows and total profit to the right corner of the view until you see the light green rectangle synchronize the right axis by right clicking on the profit axis under the marks card change sum total revenue to bar and sum total profit to line and adjust the size and color they're lots of fun to play with as you start getting into these using the sales data create a view to show the total units sold and the profit generated from each item which item sold the police and has least profit so we'll go ahead and load an excel file data in tableau desktop drag units sold onto columns and item type column under rows place the total profit column under color and choose the desired color palette sort the units sold axis in descending order you can see here it produces a very quick bug figure shows the fruit sold and the least and had the least amount of profit create a map to show the units sold and the profit generated from different middle east and north africa items drag country onto the detail card place a total profit column under size drag units sold under color in the filters card drag the region column and select middle east and north africa bahrain had the maximum number of units sold at the same time iran made the full amount of profit create a visualization to analyze the total revenue and the units sold for clothes meat and baby food across different regions in 2006 and 2017. drag the units sold filled on the columns drag the region and item type fields on to rows under the cooler card place a total revenue column drag item type onto filters and choose clothes meat and baby food drag the order date column onto filters and select 2016 in 2017 meat had the highest units sold and made the maximum profit now with any of these tableau it's good if you have your own hands on for this so that's an important thing to note we kind of zoomed in on tableau again there's a lot of other companies out there using a lot of other packages so if you're not familiar with tableau but you're able to do this in another package that's a good thing so at least you know what we're talking about you've had that hands-on let's go ahead and jump to some advanced level questions what is requirement prioritization name the different techniques used for it requirements prioritization focuses on allocating requirements depending on the business urgencies this is essential for the project to run well requirement prioritization enables various teams to understand what is important and work in sync with the business needs there are several techniques used for requirement prioritization we had moscow technique we mentioned that earlier the requirements are grouped based on must mandatory should high priority could not necessary but preferred and would suggested for the future ranking method here you give each requirement a distinct numerical value based on its importance of course this is at 100 oh well here's kind of similar to ranking is the 100 method multiple stakeholders get a no notional 100 to distribute among the requirements so the 100 method is pretty similar to what the ranking method is top 10 requirements and this approach from a large set the stakeholders simply picked their top 10 requirements this is very popular there's a lot of help books out there about getting things done they say write everything that you want to accomplish put them on three by five cards and narrow it down to five do those five because once you've conquered those five then you can move on to the next ones name the critical agile metrics that should be considered by a business analyst sprint burn down so the sprint burn down is the chart we use when you're tracking usually it's in scrum is where that usually comes from the scrum setup but it's a chart of the work to be completed and what's still going on you have your work category allocation the velocity the cumulative flow diagram defect removal awareness time coverage defect resolution time explain bpmn bpmn business process model and notation gateway controls the flow of interaction and sequence of processes it is a flowchart technique which models the end-to-end business process step the four essential elements of bpmn are flow objects events activities gateways connecting objects sequence messages associations swim lanes pool or lane artifacts data object group annotation list the elicitation techniques the elicitation process is about gathering requirements from users and stakeholders listed below are a few techniques that are used to collaborate with users or clients interviews during how many times i've been on the phone calling competition um potential clients to ask questions uh so one of the elicitation techniques is to ask questions if you're going to call clients to ask questions it can a lot of terms also turn into additional sales document analysis focus group prototyping brainstorming my favorite brainstorming all these are important i just kind of highlight a few of them that i tend to get stuck in observations and workshops again workshops are a great sales technique also so as you're doing your business analysis and you're bringing people into a workshop and do observations in the workshop and working specifically with these people they turn into potential business growth i tell you what if you're a shareholder and someone's doing a business analysis and they turn around and generate a 30 000 sell for your company they're in you know you've already earned your you've already earned your pay and you're doing what you like which is business analysis interface analysis questionnaire and survey questionnaire surveys my least favorite but they are the most popular because they're the easiest to pump out list of documents needed by a business analyst initiation document project vision document use cases system requirements specifications document business requirement document requirements traceability matrix functional requirement document use case specifications document gaap analyst document describe how you would approach a project here's a basic project approach outline which you can use with respect to different situations identifying the project goal formulating the work plan defining the requirements collaborating with other teams tracking the project documenting the progress and really when you start designing your project approach encompassing all the things listed in here so important with the shareholders if you i mean it's great if you can identify your project goal and that's probably the most important thing because if you don't have a goal you might as well walk away but if you don't have the rest well how are you formulating the work plan defining the requirements collaborating with other teams that is such a big step because we're going from everything being on paper and trying to figure out what you're going to do to actually doing it and then tracking and finally documenting very important for the shareholders and what goes back to the top differentiate an alternate flow and exception flow in a use case diagram from a basic flow basic flow represents the operation of activities as required by the company in a use case alternate flow as the name suggests is an alternate solution used in a system failure case different steps are used to complete the goals of a use cases exception flow refers to the various steps executed in case of errors this does not lead to achieving the required goal of a use case critical aspects of creating analytical reporting analytical reporting is a type of business reporting which provides data analysis information and recommendations it enables people to use data to make decisions to create analytical reporting the following points should be kept in mind comprehend business analysis display your analysis skills think critically and i'm going to throw in here the term from big data map and reduce really when we're doing a business analysis you don't want to give them a massive amount of information you want to reduce it down to something that they can see in a single graph a very simple set of notes um and you need to think critically you need to really make it what is it that the shareholders want that's going to make them understand why this is important to the business and what does the business get out of it what is kanban kanban helps agile teams in visually managing work through processes it works as a scheduling system in agile just in time production the kanban methodology is all about real-time communication of capacity and full transparency of work the kanban board describes a current development status and of course when you're working with kanban you got to be very careful about uh inspiring versus coaching versus micromanaging it really can end up in a micro management setup where you want to you want to watch out for that but you also need to track everything a basic kanban board has three-step workflow as the to do in progress and done however depending on a team size structure and objectives the workflow can be mapped to meet any particular team's unique process state the key differences between brd and srs brd business requirements documents is a high-level functional specification of software brd is a formal document to describe the requirement provided by the client business analysts create this post through interaction with the clients srs system requirement specification is a high level functional and technical specification of software srs describes the software's functions and non-functional requirements that are needed to be developed whereas srs is created by the systems architects what is pareto analysis the pareto analysis helps in crucial decision making it helps in prioritizing decisions identifying the most relevant and the least decision concerning the overall goal it is also known as the 80 20 rule as per this rule 82 percent of the project's benefit arises from twenty percent of the work vice versa eighty percent of the case problem can be due to twenty percent of the causes differentiate between the v model and the fish model we talk about the v model it is an sdlc model where the execution of processes happens sequentially in a v shape at every stage the same person reviews but other testers will do software testing in the last step v model consumes less time and costs the fish model is similar to the v model but with more multiple verification teams every stage is tested by another team for completeness and correctness the fish model is comparatively very costly and time-consuming which makes sense because if you have multiple tests on each stage for multiple teams they have to all be spun up on it and so you're literally more than doubling the work because you also have to track all that given the sales data create a chart to show each region's country that made the highest revenue create a pivot table by dragging the region and country onto rows place the total revenue column under values right click on the country value select the filter options and choose top 10 choose top one as shown above and click on ok and you can see here is the pivot table that you will get using the cells data find all the countries where the total units of fruits sold offline were less than three thousand you need to use an advanced filter option in microsoft excel to solve this problem below is a critical based on the question we have go to the data tab select advanced filter option choose copy to another location give your criteria range and the copy to location click on ok here's the final result as we can see below let's create a pivot table to find which countries from each region made the lowest amount profit create a pivot table by dragging the region and the country into rows place the profit column under values right click on any country value select the filter option and choose top ten choose bottom one and click on ok let's create a filled map to analyze the total revenue and profit generated from beverages in north america using tableau drag country under detail card place a total revenue column under the text drag total profit under kalur in the filters card drag the region column and select north america in the filters card drag the item type column and select beverages and you can see from the below map you can see that greenland and the maximum revenue and profit generated from beverages in north america who knew using tableau how will you display the top five and bottom five items based on profit drag the item type filled under rows and total profit onto columns right click on the item type column to create a set give a name to the set and select the top tab to choose the top five items by sum total profit create a set for the bottom five items by some total profit select both the sets right click to create a combined set give a name to the set and choose all members in both sets drag the new set on the filters and the total profit onto calor the above graph depicts the cosmetics made the highest profit while fruits made the lowest and really when we're talking about tools like tabloo or if you're targeting companies working in r or you're targeting companies working in python you should be able to quickly do these kind of displays in any of those packages that you're focused on tableau is one of the biggest ones out there right now because it is a paid for service but it's also very robust and easy to use and uses less programming on the back end so just a quick side note on there really just leads up if you if this does not look right to you you're not able to get through some of these things make sure you are if that's what you're targeting in a company for an interview and with that we have come to the end of this video on business analyst full course i hope it was informative and interesting if you have any questions about the topics covered in this video please ask away in the comments section below our team will help you solve your queries thanks for watching stay safe and keep learning hi there if you like this video subscribe to the simply learn youtube channel and click here to watch similar videos turn it up and get certified 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Id: UBVzucVpG7k

Length: 112min 15sec (6735 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021