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.