A Day in the Life of a Business
Systems Analyst

Grab a coffee on my way to work to get ready for a busy day. Review my "To-Do" list, check emails and peek at calendar for any meetings scheduled for today.

Begin analysis on an urgent system issue that was assigned to me this morning. Call the business owner who reported the issue to have a detailed discussion. I need to fully understand the scope of the problem so I can document it properly before submitting to our system vendor for further investigation. This may require a quick visit with the business owner to watch them perform the steps to recreate the problem and ensure supporting screen prints are provided. Obtain approval from project manager that this issue can be sent to vendor as a Priority 1 item.

Prepare my weekly status update for my manager. Every Monday morning each BSA prepares this update for her in preparation for our weekly meeting to be held later in the day.

Meet with the Quality Assurance Analyst assigned to a project I am working on. We work together to design test scenarios that will be used to ensure the success of the project. Our ideas are used as a starting point. They are vetted by the project business owners, and we will rework them so that we can get their sign off before we start testing.

I have been assigned a new project. I need to schedule a requirements gathering session with the business owners this week so I can complete the requirements document and obtain business sign off. I prepare a meeting agenda and schedule the meeting with the affected business teams for Friday. I review the documentation that has already been provided for this project so I can start to understand what is required.

I am meeting some of my former colleagues from the Operations department today for lunch on the 3rd floor lunch room. We eat while we chat and get caught up on each other's latest news.

I have received the Business Requirements Document for another project I am working on. I check to make sure that everything I listed in the Client Requirements Document is included as being "in scope" for this project. I have a few items that need clarification so I draft a Comments Document in response. I can't get sign off until I receive clarification to my questions.

Attend team meeting to discuss updates on projects and any urgent priorities for the week. This team meeting is also an opportunity to share ideas and exchange experiences so that we can learn from each other. I have a list of a few items I want to discuss with the team.

I am assigned a request from the business to prepare an ad-hoc query report for internal use. I call the business owner to ensure I understand their request and make some suggestions on how we can better meet their needs with some minor changes to the query output. I log into the test database and prepare the SQL statement. I then vet the query results to ensure it captures what the business is looking for. I follow up with the business owner regarding my findings. If we agree the solution meets their needs, I will arrange to have this query run in production.

I update the business owner that the vendor is expected to provide a fix to their system issue tomorrow. We will arrange to test the fix as soon as it is received and provide another update by noon tomorrow. The business owner is satisfied with this update.

I check to make sure I don't have anything urgent that needs to be dealt with before I leave. Once I log off my computer I'm ready to walk the short distance to Union station and head home.