BUSINESS ANALYST MCQS

 

BUSINESS ANALYST QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Section A: Requirements & Elicitation

Q1. Which elicitation technique is best when stakeholders cannot articulate requirements clearly?
a) Document analysis
b) Prototyping
c) Surveys
d) Benchmarking
Answer: b

Q2. Which requirement type specifies “how well” a system performs?
a) Business requirement
b) Functional requirement
c) Non-functional requirement
d) Transition requirement
Answer: c

Q3. The key output of requirements elicitation is:
a) System design document
b) Requirements traceability matrix
c) Elicitation results (requirements captured)
d) Test strategy
Answer: c

Q4. The “5 Whys” technique is primarily used for:
a) Prioritization
b) Root cause analysis
c) Brainstorming
d) Estimation
Answer: b

Q5. Which is the first activity in the requirements life cycle?
a) Trace requirements
b) Elicit requirements
c) Approve requirements
d) Validate requirements
Answer: b

Q6. Volatility in requirements refers to:
a) Unclear definitions
b) Frequent changes
c) Complexity
d) Stakeholder resistance
Answer: b

Q7. Requirements should be SMART. Here SMART stands for:
a) Simple, Measurable, Accurate, Reliable, Testable
b) Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound
c) Standard, Mandatory, Accurate, Reliable, Technical
d) Specific, Manageable, Applicable, Reliable, Trackable
Answer: b

Q8. Which technique is most useful for prioritizing conflicting requirements?
a) Delphi technique
b) Pareto analysis
c) Kano analysis
d) Force field analysis
Answer: c

Q9. Requirements that define how the system interacts with external entities are:
a) Interface requirements
b) Functional requirements
c) Non-functional requirements
d) Business rules
Answer: a

Q10. Which is not a requirement attribute?
a) Priority
b) Complexity
c) Cost
d) Stability
Answer: c

Q11. Transition requirements mainly deal with:
a) Long-term system maintenance
b) User interface expectations
c) Data migration, training, deployment
d) Performance benchmarks
Answer: c

Q12. A requirements baseline can be changed by:
a) Any stakeholder request
b) The business analyst alone
c) A formal change control process
d) The technical team leader
Answer: c

Q13. Which model helps in structuring business requirements into Why, What, and How?
a) Zachman Framework
b) V-Model
c) Business motivation model
d) PESTEL
Answer: a

Q14. Which BABOK knowledge area covers tracking and managing requirements?
a) Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
b) Requirements Life Cycle Management
c) Strategy Analysis
d) Solution Evaluation
Answer: b

Q15. The best way to validate requirements is:
a) Trace them to business objectives and test cases
b) Ensure they follow SMART criteria
c) Confirm with IT architecture
d) Compare with competitor systems
Answer: a

Section B: Business Process Modeling

Q16. In BPMN, a black circle with a thicker border represents:
a) Start event
b) Intermediate event
c) End event
d) Exclusive gateway
Answer: c

Q17. A process that adds no value but is required due to compliance is called:
a) Waste
b) Non-value but mandatory
c) Regulatory step
d) External dependency
Answer: b

Q18. Which diagram best shows how data moves across processes?
a) Use case diagram
b) Data flow diagram
c) ER diagram
d) Swimlane diagram
Answer: b

Q19. RACI matrix defines:
a) Requirements, Activities, Controls, Inputs
b) Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
c) Resources, Activities, Costs, Inputs
d) Roles, Actions, Controls, Issues
Answer: b

Q20. Which Lean tool focuses on identifying non-value activities?
a) Value stream mapping
b) Kaizen
c) Poka-yoke
d) Kanban
Answer: a

Q21. A Level-0 DFD is also known as:
a) Process map
b) Context diagram
c) Swimlane diagram
d) Use case diagram
Answer: b

Q22. Which of the following is not part of Six Sigma DMAIC?
a) Define
b) Measure
c) Analyze
d) Control
e) Implement
Answer: e

Q23. The TO-BE process model represents:
a) Current state
b) Future improved state
c) Ideal theoretical state
d) Outdated workflows
Answer: b

Q24. Bottlenecks are identified in processes by analyzing:
a) Value chain
b) Throughput time
c) Stakeholder engagement
d) Data dictionary
Answer: b

Q25. The primary goal of process modeling is to:
a) Replace system documentation
b) Create test cases
c) Improve clarity and identify improvement opportunities
d) Eliminate the BA role
Answer: c

 

Section C: Agile & Scrum

Q26. In Scrum, the sprint backlog is owned by:
a) Product Owner
b) Scrum Master
c) Development Team
d) Business Analyst
Answer: c

Q27. Velocity is used to measure:
a) Team speed of decision making
b) Team capacity to deliver work per sprint
c) Stakeholder satisfaction
d) System performance
Answer: b

Q28. Which Agile ceremony focuses on “how to improve collaboration”?
a) Sprint review
b) Retrospective
c) Daily standup
d) Planning session
Answer: b

Q29. INVEST criteria is applied to:
a) Risks
b) User stories
c) Test cases
d) Product roadmap
Answer: b

Q30. Kanban differs from Scrum mainly by:
a) Defined roles
b) Time-boxed sprints
c) Continuous flow
d) Mandatory retrospectives
Answer: c

Q31. Which metric tracks “remaining work over time”?
a) Burndown chart
b) Velocity chart
c) Burn-up chart
d) Gantt chart
Answer: a

Q32. In Agile, a “spike” refers to:
a) Sudden scope increase
b) Short research/prototype task
c) High-priority defect
d) A risk escalation
Answer: b

Q33. Story points are usually based on:
a) Time in hours
b) Business value
c) Relative complexity/effort
d) Cost
Answer: c

Q34. Scrum Master’s role is mainly:
a) Manage requirements
b) Facilitate process and remove impediments
c) Decide technical architecture
d) Approve user stories
Answer: b

Q35. Which Agile framework scales Scrum to enterprise-level?
a) SAFe
b) Kanban
c) Lean UX
d) Design Thinking
Answer: a

Section D: Data Analysis & SQL (36–50)

Q36. Which SQL clause filters rows before aggregation?
a) WHERE
b) HAVING
c) GROUP BY
d) ORDER BY
Answer: a

Q37. To rank rows without skipping numbers in case of ties, you use:
a) RANK()
b) DENSE_RANK()
c) ROW_NUMBER()
d) PARTITION()
Answer: b

Q38. Which visualization best identifies correlation between two variables?
a) Pie chart
b) Scatter plot
c) Line graph
d) Histogram
Answer: b

Q39. Normalization in databases reduces:
a) Data redundancy
b) Indexing speed
c) Query complexity
d) Foreign keys
Answer: a

Q40. Denormalization is useful when:
a) Speed is more important than redundancy
b) Redundancy is unacceptable
c) Storage is limited
d) Foreign keys are required
Answer: a

Q41. In data warehouses, a star schema has:
a) Multiple fact tables with multiple dimensions
b) One fact table with dimension tables
c) Only dimension tables
d) No relationships
Answer: b

Q42. Which statistical measure is least affected by outliers?
a) Mean
b) Median
c) Standard deviation
d) Variance
Answer: b

Q43. Data quality dimensions include all except:
a) Accuracy
b) Completeness
c) Consistency
d) Redundancy
Answer: d

Q44. In SQL, which join returns only matching rows from both tables?
a) LEFT JOIN
b) RIGHT JOIN
c) INNER JOIN
d) FULL JOIN
Answer: c

Q45. Which chart type is most appropriate to display parts of a whole?
a) Pie chart
b) Line chart
c) Histogram
d) Scatter plot
Answer: a

Q46. What is OLAP primarily used for?
a) Transaction processing
b) Operational reporting
c) Multidimensional analysis
d) Data entry
Answer: c

Q47. A BA needs to predict customer churn. Which analytics technique applies?
a) Descriptive
b) Diagnostic
c) Predictive
d) Prescriptive
Answer: c

Q48. SQL function to calculate total salary grouped by department:
a) SUM(salary) GROUP BY department
b) COUNT(salary) GROUP BY department
c) AVG(salary) GROUP BY department
d) TOTAL(salary) GROUP BY department
Answer: a

Q49. Data dictionary primarily contains:
a) Historical transactions
b) Metadata about data elements
c) Customer records
d) System logs
Answer: b

Q50. ETL stands for:
a) Extract, Transform, Load
b) Execute, Transfer, Log
c) Extract, Test, Load
d) Execute, Transform, Log
Answer: a