2.3 Professional techniques

As a business analyst, following techniques can be used:

• Project management: Understand stages within business analysis is performed such as project initiation and be aware or dependencies between tasks, quality assurance and risk management.
• Strategy analysis: Used for defining and understand business direction, its strengths and weaknesses.
• Stakeholder analysis and management:: technique for discover the stakeholders, their interests, their power and how managing them.
• Investigation techniques: helping to determine the root cause of a business issue and provide guidance to the detailed analysis needed.
• Requirements engineering: defined as a set of processes and practises to respect for ensuring a relevant definition of business requirements.
• Business system modelling: designing conceptual models that describe or give an overview of the business system.
• Business process modelling: same as above but focused on designed business processes.
• Data modelling: technique facilitating data characterisation and analysis within a business system.
• Gap analysis: core activity for business analyst used when comparing 'as is' and 'to be' models or off-the shelf package against defined requirements.
• Facilitation technique: techniques/tools for developing ideas and facilitating decisions.
• Portfolio management: business analyst should understand portfolios, how they are prioritised and delivering benefits.
• Benefits management: business analyst should ensure benefits are delivered by the projects or programmes.
• Agile thinking: providing an agile response to problem and opportunities for selecting the right approach for the situation is key. 
• Managing business change: technique describing how to ensure an efficient and sustainable implementation.