A question might arise in your mind, what is testing and why business analyst is required to involve in it? So first we will discuss here what is software testing? People from the non-technical background may not aware of the software development life cycle i.e. commonly known as SDLC. SDLC specifically involves,
- Requirement gathering
- Designing
- Coding or Implementation
- Testing
- Deployment
- Maintainance and support
Basically from the third phase i.e. coding, the testing will start which is known as unit testing and it is done by developers. After implementing a few modules or parts of the software, integration testing takes place where the actual work of functional testing starts. In this testing phase, different test cases have to design to check the functionality of the software.These test cases usually designed by the functional consultant or business analysts. In a few organizations, there is a specific designation for functional consultants if the product is highly integrated. This again depends on the depth of the software and the organization as well.
The role of business analysts is crucial while handling the testing phase. He is the person who has a thorough knowledge of the domain and has a hold on the functional requirements, he can assist testers properly while designing the test cases and help them to understand the functionality.
The purpose of testing to check whether the developed product is meeting the functional requirements of the customer. So, once the finished product gets out of this phase, the business analyst has to involve in the UAT i.e. user acceptance testing.
Business analyst has to write different sets of test cases that need to design for UAT.
Once UAT has done successfully the deployment will start at the customer’s place, and the actual end-user will start using the software.
Though everything went well, there may be chance to arise bugs as end-user start working on the software practically. At this phase, the team has to give support to the customer by resolving the issues.
So we have seen that a business analyst needs to involve in the SDLC end to end and he is a vital part of the team.