Post on 18-Jan-2016
Topic
System Analyst
Skills
Role of system analyst
Analyst user differences
System Analyst:
A person who conducts study and evaluation of an activity to identify
its desired objectives in order to determine procedures by which these
objectives can be achieved. An analyst must possess various skills to
effectively carry out the job.
Required Skills:
1. Interpersonal Skills
2. Technical Skills
Interpersonal Skills: These include skills which are used in
establishing relationship, interface & communication of analyst with
people. These skills include:
i.Communication: Ability to understand and speak language of user as
well as management. It is related to talking, listening, feeling & sharing.
ii.Understanding: Ability to identifying problems & accessing their
impact. Identifying company goals and objectives.
iii. Teaching: Educating people in use of computer system and giving
support when needed.
iv. Selling: Selling ideas and promoting innovations or implementing
new ideas in problem solving.
Technical Skills: These skills focus on procedure and techniques for
operation. These include
i. Creativity: Helping in converting user ideas into plans to develop
candidate system.
ii. Problem solving: Reducing level of problem, developing
alternative solutions and analysing benefits and limitations of
candidate system.
iii. Project Management: Scheduling, co-ordinating team effort and
managing cost & expenditure.
iv. Questioning Attitude and inquiring mind: Knowing what, when,
why, where, who and how.
v. Dynamic Interface: Combining technical and non-technical
considerations in functional specifications and general design.
The analyst must also have knowledge of computer, business functions,
system tools, experience of H/W and S/W specifications, working
knowledge of project management.
Role of System Analyst: Following roles are performed by system
analyst-
1.Change Agent-. The analyst may have various styles as change agent
to convince the user to accept the changes that are to be introduced by
new system. These styles may be
Persuader (Small intervention), Imposer(Small intervention) or in
between catalyst and confronter.
2. Investigator and Monitor-. In defining the problem the analyst
collects information to determine why the present system does not
work well. Here the analyst works as investigator. To successfully
complete a project, the analyst must monitor the system in relation
to time, cost and quality.
3. Architect- As architect system analyst creates a physical design of
candidate system to help user in implementing ideas to fulfil user’s
requirements.
4. Psychologist- As a psychologist the analyst approaches people,
interpret their thoughts, assesses their behaviour and then draws
conclusions from these interactions.
5. Salesperson- Sales skills of system analyst are crucial to the
success of the system. Selling the system take place at each step in
system life cycle.
6. Motivator- Proposed system must be well designed and acceptable
to the user. This can be achieved by user participation in
development. For this system analyst must motivate the user.
7. Politician- In implementing proposed system, analyst tries to satisfy
all the persons involved. Diplomacy in dealing with a person can
improve acceptance of the system. Like Politician analyst must have
the support of the user as well as the management.
Analyst User differences
The analyst and user can differ in education, experience and language.
The analyst may be impatient with the user’s ignorance about the terms
like chip, ram etc and user may be impatient with the analyst’s limited
understanding of the business functions.
These differences often leads to conflicts during system development
which cam create hindrance in the development process. So these
differences must be understood and removed. This can be achieved by
involvement of the user & support of the analyst.