Month: November 2020

What are Scrum Meetings?

What are Scrum Meetings

What are Scrum Meetings
What are Scrum Meetings

We discussed and observed what is Scrum and Scrum Roles, now we look into some other important terms and terminology. That is what is Sprint and what are Scrum Meetings  and what team discuss in Scrum Meetings.

What is Sprint Zero?

What is Sprint Planning?

We can say Sprint is nothing but Time Frame. Team discusses and decides what the prioritized items are and how much effort required achieving that. For example 3 user stories/ Requirements prioritized items are in product backlog, so team discuss about these three user stories, how much effort required and  how many man days required to complete these prioritized user stories in this sprint.

For example Sprint duration is 2 weeks, and then team needs to complete those 3 user stories within this time frame, which includes, Design > Development > Test > Integrate.

Scrum Meetings:

Daily Scrum Meeting: This happens every day where team will just discuss on 3 questions. Everyone should participate in this meeting, and meeting should be completed in 15 to 30 minutes.

  1. What did you do yesterday?

Here you need to explain what you have done yesterday and what the status of tasks assigned to you is.

  1. What will you do today?

Here you need to explain what you will do today to complete the assigned task as per schedule.

  1. Is there any impediments stopping you?

Here you need to explain if you are facing any issues to complete the assigned task. For example your task is depending on another task or functionality and it is pending with some other team. Then you need to explain the same in meeting, then Scrum Master will take a call and discuss with the concerned team to resolve the issue.  Scrum Master Note down these points and discuss offline with concerned teams.

These questions are depending on your scheduled Daily Scrum Meeting. For example if your meeting is at Morning then above questions will applicable.

If your meeting is scheduled at evening then questions as below.

  1. What did you do today?
  2. What will you do tomorrow?
  3. Is there any impediments stopping you?

Every team member of the team should participate in this meeting and need to update the status. As every individual team member should participate in this meeting, Scrum Master will discuss with individuals and schedule meeting as per convenient time.

For example you are working on Indian standard time as you are in India, but if your development team in some other country, then Scrum Master should coordinate and schedule meeting as per convenient time, and Scrum Master is the responsible person to ensure every team member joins in meeting.

Sprint Review Meeting or Scrum Review Meeting: This will happen at the end of the sprint where team will give demo on completed stories to product owner. As per above example Sprint completed in two weeks, then team will have this meeting and give demo on developed product. Usually it will take 3 to 4 hours.

Sprint retrospective Meeting: This will happen at the end of the sprint where team will answer these 3 questions.

What went well in the sprint?

What did not go well?

What are the required areas of improvements in next sprint?

This is continuous process, team discuss at the end of every sprint to improve the quality.

You may get this question in interviews also what are scrum meetings and what team will do in these meetings.

I hope it helped to provide overview of What are Scrum Meetings.

To know more about what are scrum meetings and what is scrum we can visit scrum official website.

What is Scrum in agile methodology?

What is Scrum?

What is Scrum

Scrum:  Scrum is not a methodology, Scrum is a framework. That means it provides opportunity to work as per the project needs or requirements with cross functional team to reach the project goals. It helps us to interact with the people easily.

Scrum is very popular now days and we can say without putting Agile  in your resume you will not get even interview calls also.  Don’t worry and do not think too much to understand what is scrum. Let us discuss in simple words.

Mostly it will use in implementation of projects.

When we are discussing about Scrum, we should understand and remember the ScrumTerminology and terms used. I am trying to explain in simple way.

Product Backlog:

Need to prepare the product backlog, it contains the list of user stories, user story is nothing but requirements.

Once we prepare the Product backlog, will prioritize the user stories which can be implemented in this Sprint.

ScrumRoles:
  1. Product Owner(PO)

    : He will decide what needs to done in this sprint/project and he is the responsible for managing the product backlog. He will be the responsible person for product like how product should be and all.

  2. He interacts with Business Analysts and Customers. This role may be played by BA or any person who is having strong knowledge on product and who works with end users for a long time. Depends on the project client also may play this role.
  1. ScrumMaster (SM)

    He will monitor the performance of the team within the sprint. Team will raise all their concerns and issues to ScrumMaster.

  • He is responsible to provide solutions to the team. He will interact with the stake holders to address the issues and concerns raised by the team. This role can be played by any person in team usually Business Analyst will play this role.
  • Development Team (Cross functional team who are self organized)

Scrum Team: Resources who are working in this project are formed as Scrum team which comprises of Business Analyst, Developers and Testers.

If you are looking for Certification, you can refer scrum.org

Business Analyst Job Description Insurance Domain

Business Analyst Job Description Insurance Domain

Business Analyst Job Description Insurance Domain
                        Business Analyst Job Description Insurance Domain

General Accountabilities:

– The Senior Business Systems Analysts will provide technical support and advice to the Client Relationship Managers, Service Managers and/or Operations Executives on business processes and systems issues in both run mode and development of new processes/support. Sr.BSA may also become key resources potentially available to support new clients through block conversions.

– Analysts are liaisons between operations and other areas such as Information Technology, Finance, Marketing, etc. to ensure sound business solutions are formed and implemented with quality. Sr.BSA’s are responsible for facilitating the flow of ideas and information between departments

Duties and Responsibilities:

– Facilitating business need identification

– Completing research and providing analysis as needed to support Management in decision making

– Developing and executing proposed business and technical solutions

– Developing business requirements for the business/technology solutions that will allow the client and internal customer departments to become more efficient and effective

– Largely able to independently write unambiguous, verified requirements to a testable level (functional and non-functional requirements)

– Creation of artifacts such as Illustrationinput, output requirements, Test strategy, Validation rules, Unit Test cases etc;

– Estimating implementation costs and efforts

– Attend client meetings and assist in the coordination of Solution Definition

– Assist Technology Solutions teams in documenting scope, defining gaps and updating implementation estimates

– Documenting flows and procedures for Performance Quality as a results of implementations

– Ensuring quality of solutions delivered (leading user acceptance testing)

– Identifying, developing and executing continuous improvement opportunities

– Other support to operations areas as identified

Experience required:

– 7 – 10 years- work experience in systems or quantitative analysis and business solutions development

– 5+ years- experience in US life insurance products (i.e. In forced Whole Life, Term Life,). Should be able todemonstrate life insurance industry knowledge

– Understanding of various applications used in life insurance industry including Policy administration system, agent management system or peripheral application including web portals.

– Work experience inInforce Illustration is mandatory (Inforce business projection knowledge)

– Strong customer service skills with excellent relationship management skills with the ability to interact positively and successfully with all level of associates and managers to meet business needs

– Basic understanding of technology system interfaces and data integration, networks, and operating systems

– Knowledge of Business Process Modeling using decision tables/trees and data flows, etc.

– Work experience or an education in programming and also knowledge in database

– Microsoft PC software experience (i.e., Excel, Word, Access and Project)

– Experience in project management and/or client/block conversions

– Must be a self-starter, flexible and motivated

– Analytical, organized with excellent written and verbal communication skills

– Willingness to develop industry-related knowledge

– Proven application of analytical skills and solution focused mindset

– Familiarity with project management methods (SDLC, PMI, ITIL, Agile, Waterfall, etc.)

Qualifications :

Should have BE/BTech/MCA or MBA qualification from reputed instituteswork experience in business analysis and application development

– Insurance certifications such as LOMA / FLMI / AAPA / CLU

– CBAP (Certified Business Analyst Professional) certification preferred

I hope it helped you to provide overview of Business Analyst Job Description Insurance Domain

Business Analyst Job Description in Health Care

Business Analyst Job Description in Health Care

Business Analyst Job Description in Health Care

The Business Analyst is required to have good experience in implementing software systems in healthcare domain. He/she should have an experience in creating requirement specification and testing and has good communication skills.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Identify software product needs and create requirements in the form of business specification and use case documents.

Closely work with the client and the software development team in developing the product.

Carry out the testing from the end user perspective before releasing for UAT.

Manage the scope of development in order to align with the business and the project needs.

Create and carry out product demos to the client.

Maintain traceability of requirements to ensure 100% test coverage.

Ensure the accurate deployment of solutions through review of problem logs, assistance with test plans and test matrices and other analysis activities.

Facilitate the transfer of knowledge about the direction of the business units to others who support them.

Take lead in enterprise level initiatives and drive them from the requirement perspective.

Proactively track developments in healthcare IT, including standards, technologies and workflows.

Key Technical Skills and Knowledge:

Healthcare/RCM domain knowledge ( Medical Billing / Medical Coding/ Accounts Receivable ,Rejections, Appeal

Schedule meets with stake holder/ requester

Understand requirements

Prepare requirement documents

Explain requirements to Testers

Good communication skills

Should have knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel, PPT)

Knowledge of AI / ML / NLP/ OCR is added advantage

It helps to provide overview of Business Analyst Job Description in Health Care

Business Analyst Job Description in Payments

Business Analyst Job Description in Payments

Business Analyst Job Description in Payments
Business Analyst Job Description in Payments
  • Should be able to participate in bank meetings to understand complex requirements or to explain functionality
  • Should assist the project manager and project test manager of delivery projects
  • Is responsible for creating the documentation of high level requirement (HLR) according to the project process
  • Is responsible for any change in functional scope
  • Should present change request to project manager
  • Is responsible for approving team implementation plan together with project test manager and project architects
  • Is required to respond to any questions or clarifications during development, test case preparations and testing and the SMEs should answer questions on issues that can not be solved by the BA?s in the development teams
  • Should participate in planning and tracking
  • Participate in FAT
  • Responsible for describing requirements according to project mission and project master plan
    Tasks:
  • Conducts requirements analysis
  • Create HLR
  • Create work packages and user stories
  • Must define all requirements according to the project process and get them verified by the project manager
  • Get input on described requirements from project architect and test manager
  • Communicate functional scope and requirements to the teams through: Documentation (High level requirements, Capability documents, Flow charts)
  • Makes sure that understanding of functional scope and requirements is verified through quality assurance of team implementation plan
  • Should ensure the requirements are understood by the teams
  • Is responsible for identifying and describing dependencies together with the BA?s and the SME should communicate these dependencies to the SME in the dependent project
  • Is responsible for transferring the functional knowledge of the HLR to the team writing the user stories
  • Should assist in planning and tracking
  • Participate in meetings with the customer
  • Participate in FAT planning and execution
    Competence/Tools / Technology:
    Required:
  • International banking/payment
  • SEPA
  • ISO20022
  • SWIFT
  • AccountingSkills / Experience:
  • 5 years relevant experience
  • Strong domain knowledge payment/banking
  • Requirements analysis and specifications
  • Understand complex value chains and integrations between several systems
  • Understand the bank and customers needs
  • Experience from Agile Project Methodology
  • Excellent communication/collaboration skills
  • Fluent industry language skills in English
  • Structured and process oriented
  • Able to work distributed and in global and multi-cultural teams

I hope it helped you to understand the Business Analyst Job Description in Payments

Business Analyst Job Description BFSI

Business Analyst Job Description BFSI

Business Analyst Job Description BFSI
Business Analyst Job Description BFSI

Business Analyst Job Description BFSI

  • Act as an SME in area of Financial Crime Compliance for all Corporate and Income events
  • Should have strong understanding on various Data Governance model and Data Quality
  • Exception handling of automated interfaces
  • Identify, capture, and track voluntary corporate actions
  • Exception handling on events transactions
  • Coordinate with IT support teams in case of any IT related issues impacting BAU
  • Building core knowledge in team during set up and shaping activities as well running projects, working closely with Operation Leads
  • Ensure the team is resourced with sufficient well trained and well-motivated staff, and are developed to their potential in line with current and predicted operational needs
  • To effectively shape and manage process for the client, ensuring a high level of quality performance across projects.
  • Act as a KYC subject matter expert on compliance, regulatory regulations and global KYC requirements
  • Well verse with KYC documents and good understanding on regulators mainly of US and UK OCC, FATCA, USA PATRIOT ACT, BSA, EU Directives, MIFID I/II
  • Maintaining an external focus and strong network within the industry to identify trends in the project
  • Maintenance of Service Levels in department and by overall engagement, ensuring a high level of customer service at all time
  • Identify and diagnose sub-optimal business performance
  • Reporting of issues of concern to Operations Support, Senior Leadership, and where appropriate, to the client
  • Initiate and promote improvements to processes and techniques to achieve higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness and to maximise productivity gains
  • Aim to operate at industry best practice level, where available
  • Constantly seek opportunities to digitize the existing process
  • Aim to operate at industry best practice level, where available
  • Min 10+ years in an operational environment (KYC/AML/CDD/EDD) domain, with strong knowledge of various Corporate Actions
  • Clear vision, understanding and proven track records of in Risk and Investment Banking Domain
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and the ability to use information to generate creative solutions to benefit the business.
  • Strong in excel and advance excel
  • Good to have SQL knowledge
  • Strong communication and relationship management skills.
  • Strong presentation skills

I believe it helped you to provide the overview of Business Analyst Job Description BFSI domain

Business Analyst Job Description & Career Profile: IT

Business Analyst Job Description: IT

Let us observe the sample Business Analyst Job Description.

The Business Analyst (BA) acts as a liaison between either a development group and an external client/vendor, or a development group and an internal business sponsor. The BA is responsible for the collection/analysis, authoring, and communication of requirements in order to satisfy the client/sponsors needs. Depending on the nature of the project, the BA may also undertake a combination of project management, technical implementation and testing analyst tasks. The BA is expected to have either a strong proprietary knowledge base or multiple years of previous BA experience in requirements analysis and authoring. The Lead Business Analyst is additionally expected to exhibit strong leadership in many areas including defining/improving standards, mentoring other Senior and Associate BAs, and implementation / project management of critical projects.

Major Responsibilities / Accountabilities

  • Develops and improves business processes within the technology and business organizations and understands client requirements, specifying and analyzing these to a sufficient level of detail to ensure clarity of definition. Collects, writes formal specifications and communicates business requirements between development and client to design and implement business solutions.
  • Responsible for building and maintaining a relationship with Data Provider e.g. Exchanges, Contributors.
  • Responsible for the collection, analysis and documentation of a client’s business needs and requirements.
  • Participates in short term planning sessions with a client to improve a business process within an assigned client area.
  • Uses a structured requirements process to assess near-term needs.
  • Uses a structured change management process to shepherd projects from requirements gathering through design, testing, implementation, client transition and on-going systems maintenance
  • Provides business process and systems analysis, requirements specifications, consult on development and testing management for implementing technology-based editorial business solutions focusing on increasing productivity, data accuracy, automation and efficiency while reducing redundancy and costs.
  • Responsible for modelling and analysing client and system processes in order to identify opportunities for technological improvements, process synergies, and business efficiencies
  • Identify, recommend and develop methods, tools and metrics for client business process and systems operational support
  • Provide client systems support in order to resolve issues and contribute to on-going systems maintenance and evolution.
  • Identifies business priorities and advises client on options.
  • Ensures change management and communication of change is done in a systematic way for projects where initial requirements may evolve during the lifecycle of the project.
  • Responsible for generating systems documentation for operational support and end user information. Conducts operational and end user training and support transitions of operational support to client.
  • Develops relationships with a client by being proactive, displays a thorough understanding of their business, and provides innovative business solutions. Works with clients to ensure smooth transitions to new systems and/or business processes.
  • Develops a basic awareness and understanding of Thomson Reuters technologies, products, and services.
  • Recommends metrics to ensure customer satisfaction.

Scope and Impact

  • Performs work within several business segments, engaging in moderate to complex business processes across multiple business processes or segments of the business.
  • Project team member for projects of medium to large scope and moderate to high complexity projects.
  • Responsible for coordinating work of development teams, business clients and others and be accountable for the work delivered. Fully responsible for quality of own work, and possibly some accountability for more junior members of the team.
  • Responsible for managing projects through the development lifecycle including requirements gathering, functional specifications, testing, implementation, training, transition and maintenance.
  • May be involved in defining and managing requirements for implementation by remote or third party teams.
  • Responsible for management of own time, and coaching/mentoring more junior team members.
  • Responsible for estimating effort required for own work, and checking other team member estimates.
  • Able to plan tasks necessary to lead to the production of adequate business and system functional requirements.
  • Accountable for compliance with agreed policies, standards and procedures.

Skills

  • Demonstrated expertise in requirements management best practice and ensures these practices are used.
  • Demonstrated expertise in business process re-engineering
  • Demonstrated expertise in business process analytics and understanding of six-sigma process improvement techniques
  • Demonstrated expertise in Business Process Modelling preferable with experience in Oracle BPMS/BAM nomenclature & tool sets
  • Experience working with an Agile development methodology
  • Experience working with a globally distributed team of customers, stakeholders, business owners, developers and QA staff
  • Experience working with a Services-oriented application architecture
  • Understands principles in performance requirements and helps formulate Key Performance Indicators for a project.
  • Understands principles of usability and helps ensure products are fit for purpose.
  • Understands the effects of technology used within Development, and the impact on the business client.
  • Understands basic financial information and markets and the future direction of the industry.
  • Understands the development organization and other specialized areas such as Product Management and Data and future direction of the business for an assigned client area

Relationships: Internal / External

  • Development leads (e.g. Managers, Project Managers, Project Leaders, Technical Leads)
  • Architects
  • Development staff
  • Third party Development Leads & Architects
  • Customer Segments
  • Customer Segment Partners
  • Data Providers
  • May include external clients, Capability Managers and Business users.

Professional Experience

Must have a solid understanding of the client’s existing business processes, the key drivers and measures of success of the business, and the short and long term direction of the business and technology. Demonstrated ability to understand project business requirements and facilitate implementation of team member’s understanding of these as well. Demonstrated expertise in information systems, business operations, requirements analysis, and integration/design of client solutions. Needs to have a high level understanding of the overall Thomson Reuters Development or internal systems architecture in order to understand the issues & implications of proposed systems & hardware solutions. Requires some relevant technical or business work experience, ideally a background in business area supported. Requires experience with and understanding of Business Operations and requirement management processes, as well as expertise business modeling concepts utilizing BPMS . Must have experience in information systems, development life cycle, Agile development methodology, business process development and leadership skills. Must have exceptional communication skills, ability to work independently and drive for results.

Must have experience

  • Are senior level with ~5+ year experience as a business/system analyst
  • Have experience with new product development
  • Experienced in an environment where the BA drives from Ideation through requirements/specifications, supports dev & QA, supports UAT, supports/guides business implementation
  • Experience with back-end specifications/ technical requirements (Databases, API, services, service integration, JSON/message queues)

I hope it provided you the overview of Business Analyst Job Description.

What is JIRA Tool ?

What is JIRA Tool?

What is JIRA

What is JIRA?

Initially I was also thinking what is JIRA and how to use JIRA, JIRA is a project management tool. It can be used to track the requirements status like what is the current status of the requirement assigned to user whether it is open or closed or under processing.

We will discuss in detail what is JIRA and advantages of using JIRA?

Here I am not going to explain how to use JIRA and all, I am trying to provide overview about JIRA tool.

What is JIRA?

JIRAis a tool developed by Australian Company Atlassian. This software is used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. The name “JIRA” is actually inherited from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla”. The basic use of this tool is to track issue and bugs related to our project.

Jira is especially useful for software development because it has built in templates that can be used to help you create a software development project.

For example Jira has a Scrum template that can be customized to fit in with your requirements.

The template can be used to create the development project, once your development project is created, then you can create your backlog, plan your sprints, and your software releases.

A Scrum board would also be created with different columns. The columns show the different status that the cards are in such as backlog, development, Quality Assurance (Q & A), demo and closed which shows the status of the cards.

A kanban board also already available, we can customize as per our requirement. We can use Scrum board or Kanban board as per our requirement.

Has below standard formats.

  • Scrum board tracking.
  • Kanban board tracking
  • Cumulative flow charts.
  • Burn down charts.
  • Sprint reports.

We can create customized boards as per our requirement. It helps us to understand how many tasks we have and what the status of each task is.

Assume we have 5 developers in our team, and we have 50 requirements in our hand, and out of 50 requirements 20 prioritized. So here we need to assign these tasks to our developers.

So here I can customize the boards and fields as per my requirement. If we observe in above example 30 requirements yet to prioritized so I can mark status as “to be process” and 20 requirements I need to assign to my developers. So we can assign 4 tasks to each of the developers and I can give the due dates also as per the requirement.

As per above example 4 I  assigned to X and 4 assigned to Z, so here I can track the requirements x is having how many tasks in his bucket and how much time required to complete the task and actual hours taken to complete the task.

We can track the same for Issues also.

Issue Tracking : Jira can also be used to track issues during software development. It can be used to identify and create new issue tasks, prioritize issues for completion, and track them using a workflow.

You can specify details about the issue which helps with replications and resolution.

Time tracking: Jira can be used to keep track of the the time spent on tasks and issues. This would help with future sprints planning. The time tracking views available include :

  • Working hours per day
  • Working hours per week

WorkFlows

A JIRA workflow is a set of statuses and transitions that an issue goes through during its lifecycle. JIRA workflow encompasses five main stages once the issue is created.

  • Open Issue
  • Resolved Issue
  • InProgress Issue
  • ReOpened Issue
  • Close Issue

What is an API or Application Programming Interface ?

What is an API? (Application Programming Interface)

What is an API
What is an API

API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface. In simple words we can say it is the communicator between two software applications. It allows software applications to talk each other.

Every day we are interacting with the multiple applications which are integrated with other applications. Example : Amazon, Flipkart, Phonepe etc.. It means every day we are using an API but the thing is we do not know that this is API.

Let us try to discuss and understand what an API with using some examples. I feel by using examples we can understand what is an API is.

For example some applications will allow you to login and use application with using gmail account. And for some applications which will allow you to login and access the application by using your Facebook account.

It means that applications have integration with gmail and Facebook. Here these two applications talk each other and how the request should be and in which format they are expecting request from the sender.

We will discuss in detail with another example to understand what is an API? :

What Is an API and Example?

For example I want to book train tickets, to book train tickets I need not go to IRCTC portal. If you observe by using other applications also we can book the tickets. So here we can understand these two applications are talking each other to execute your request.

Here the main concept is to understand is “Request and Response” How we need to pass the Request and how we are going to get response.

Or how we will give the response and how we are expecting request to give correct response.

If you observe our website, if you register with your email id you will get the immediate response or message. To send email messages I am using some other applications means I am using API to pass values as per their request.

Let us observe one more example which we are using on daily basis to make you understand what is an API in detail.

Here is a real-life API example. We will search for flights online to check the availability and all.  We will have a multiple options to choose from, including different cities, departure and return dates, and more.

Let us imagine that you’re booking you are flight on an airline website. You choose a departure city and date, a return city and date, cabin class, as well as other variables.

In order to book your flight, you interact with the airline’s website to access their database and see if any seats are available on those dates and what the costs might be.

However, what if you are not using the airline’s website–– and you are using some other applications to book the tickets. As all you know now days we are using multiple applications to book flight tickets or some other needs.

The travel service, in this case, interacts with the airline’s API. The API is the interface that,, can be asked by that online travel service to get information from the airline’s database to book seats, baggage options, etc.

The API then takes the airline’s response to your request and delivers it right back to the online travel service, which then shows you the most updated, relevant information.

Software developers or organizations are using below API’s

  1. SOAP Service (API)
  2. REST API (Service)

Developers will write code and use json format or .xml format to form request and response.

As a Business Analyst you need not have deep knowledge on this like how to write code and how developers frame request and response in json or .xml format.  But you should have at least knowledge to how to understand the request and response. It helps you to understand based on the response received.

For example any application or website down usually we receive message as “404 error” based on this response or message we can understand website is down.

I hope it helped you to provide a overview about what is an API?

If you want to know more about what is an API and how to develop API, you can browse on google to understand. Enough material is available in google and youtube.

For Business Analyst perspective it provides overview on what is an API ?

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)