Intelligence (BI) and after executing several end-to-end BI projects, I have barely come across a handful of ‘good’ BI Business Analysts (BI BA).   Aren’t there enough in the industry?  I am not sure. What makes them so scarce? ‘BI Business Analyst’ to me looks like a commonly found role in most of the end-to-end BI projects. If this role is an absolute must on BI projects and I haven’t found many ‘good’ ones, what does that mean? Haven’t these projects been ‘successfully’ implemented? Well…they have been implemented….but whether they were ‘successful’ is the real question.

Most of us think that a BI BA is someone who talks to the business users and gathers reporting requirements; documents them in the form of a Requirements Document or a Functional Spec.; participates in preparation of test scenarios and often helps during the User Acceptance Testing.  Perfect! This is exactly what the BI BA does….but what makes a BI BA… ‘good’? or let me use a superlative here…’great’?  Let’s come back to answer that a little later. 


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