You are leading analysis to replace a critical 20-year-old system that nobody fully understands. How do you approach it?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Map stakeholders, including long-serving staff and downstream systems
- Discover hidden rules from data, reports, interfaces and code
- Observe real use and workarounds
- Separate real needs from old limitations
- Plan data migration and transition early
- Reduce risk with phased delivery and parallel running
Model answer
I would start by mapping everyone and everything that depends on the system, including long-serving staff, downstream systems, reports and regulators. Next I would uncover hidden behaviour: analyse the data, batch jobs, interfaces and reports, and work with developers who can read the code to find business rules. I would observe users at work, because their workarounds show both rules and pain points. Then I would separate real needs from steps that only exist because of the old system's limits, so we do not rebuild old problems. Data migration and transition requirements would get attention from day one, including data quality checks and mapping. To reduce risk, I would suggest phased delivery, for example moving one product line first, with parallel running or reconciliation reports to prove the new system gives the same results.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
More hard Business Analyst questions
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