This past week at SPSTCDC I gave a session on the different roles that are required when building your SharePoint team. We spent a bit of time looking at all the different roles and also discussed how to best fill the roles within the team. You can find a copy of my slides here and there is even some recording of the session here. One of the biggest questions that came up was how to hire for the role of the Business Analyst. This analyst is the one that really is the glue on the SharePoint team and really keeps the business and the technology in alignment. They have to know the business enough to understand the issues and they have to know the technology enough that they can build the solutions. In the session I was specifically asked if I would be able to put together what I would consider would be the job requirements of this role. I agreed to follow up with a blog post, so here goes. Keep in mind that what I am providing is a general summary that isn’t all inclusive. You will want to take this and update it and customize it to meet your specific organization’s needs.
SharePoint Business Analyst
The SharePoint Business System Analyst position requires experience as a business analyst with experience in project management. This position will translate business needs into solutions utilizing the Microsoft SharePoint Server and third-party components. The role’s primary focus is on collecting user requirements, planning delivery of those requirements and leading and coordinating with technical team members on delivery and testing. The role requires someone who can assist in the design of a comprehensive user experience with broad categories of information.
Essential Functions:
- Facilitate user meetings to define opportunities, needs and issues
- Use best practices in business analysis and process modeling to analyze define and document business processes, work flows and system requirements
- Define roll out strategies and change management
- Create mockups/wireframes of key user interface components
- Provide guidance to the development team in their design/development approach
- Represent the client user’s needs and goals during development and in review meetings
- Recommend changes to business operations to promote successful integration
- Assist in the development of a business case for projects
- Responsible for documenting business scenarios and use cases for testing and validation of solutions
- Alignment of Internal Projects with the overall Strategic SharePoint goals of the Organization
- Acts as a liaison between the users of the organization and the team that is in place to support the SharePoint environment
Essentials Skills:
- Understanding of SharePoint Server and the Solutions that can be developed using the Out of the Box Features
- Experience with SharePoint Designer, InfoPath, Visio, Excel Services and Access Services
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Limited experience with the Central Administrative functions within SharePoint. While this resource will likely not be responsible for directly configuring the settings they should be aware of the possible configurations and settings
I hope this helps those that were in my session. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to post them in the comments section.
Jennifer Ann Mason 