Salesforce is on a roll with „more generic“ certifications. After UX Designer, which was clearly about user interface and experience, and Strategy Designer, which was a bit like project manager to me, they brought the Business Analyst credential.
And it makes sense as these people are at the absolute beginning of the project, their work is the foundation of success for the whole project and they don’t really need to be Salesforce specialist. Actually, the Administrator certification is still a prerequisite, which again makes sense as you can ask better questions when you know the platform.
The exam has its obvious content and some surprising outcomes, I didn’t really realize before. Obviously there is an associated track on Trailhead to prepare you.
The obvious
- you need to know when to use the proper tools such as Journey Map, Process Design, Process Map, waterfall and agile, user stories, release notes, product roadmap, application lifecycle management;
- what well defined requirement means and what it needs to contain;
- what all sign-offs they need to get;
- how to communicate with stakeholders.
What I didn’t realize
What is always tricky – at least to me – is what each person on the project should be doing, where their work finish and other people carry on. To me it is different on every project as every client is different and as every project has different size and needs.
Reading the questions and answers I’ve been surprised with some tasks as I would, as a BA, delegate them to project manager or maybe even more senior people. Things like extra requirements coming in very last minute and the dev team being forced to put them in the release.
Surprisingly BAs are also heavily involved in testing, not just writing the requirements and acceptance criterias, but also writing test scripts, leading the UAT and plenty of other things I would not expect from them.
Here I go
With that I’m happy to announce that I’m Salesforce Certified Business Analyst as well. And you should go for it as well.