In the implementation of any Salesforce project, business analysts are crucial. They collaborate with stakeholders, work with the technical teams, make sure the solution is tested, change logs are recorded, and UAT is properly carried out. They are truly the show’s stars. There is a huge demand for business analyst positions currently in the market. The average pay is $84,000.
Salesforce has a lot of great certification options, and they recently announced the new Business Analyst certification!
I passed this exam yesterday (July 18th, 2022) and here in this blog post, I am going to share my notes which helped me to crack my 17th Salesforce certification.
You can get notes about my other certifications below
Salesforce Certification Notes
About the Exam
- Content: 60 multiple-choice/single-select questions and 5 non-scored questions
- Time allotted to complete the exam: 105 minutes (time allows for unscored questions)
- Passing Score: 72% (This passing score is higher than the other certifications)
- Registration fee: USD 200 plus applicable taxes as required per local law
- Retake fee: USD 100 plus applicable taxes as required per local law
- Prerequisites: Salesforce Certified Administrator credential
Exam Guide
Exam Outline
Customer Discovery: 17%
- Determine business strategies, goals, initiatives, and challenges to define the scope of business analysis.
- Discover how a customer is leveraging and benefiting from Salesforce products to establish the current state.
- Understand and explain Business Analyst roles and responsibilities in different phases of the implementation lifecycle.
- Apply the implementation lifecycle for planning business analysis activities.
- Analyze the customer’s Salesforce environment to identify opportunities and constraints.
- Demonstrate knowledge of Salesforce capabilities and its potential to recommend solutions to the business.
Collaboration with Stakeholders: 24%
- Plan discovery activities based on the target stakeholders to perform a thorough analysis of business needs.
- Identify key stakeholders and develop relationships with them as a trusted advisor to act as a liaison between business and technical teams.
- Given a scenario, choose the most effective technique for eliciting business needs from stakeholders.
- Explain how to move from current state analysis to an agreed future state design.
- Understand how Salesforce features and best practices impact solution options and business processes.
- Given a scenario, manage competing priorities to obtain sign-off from stakeholders.
Business Process Mapping: 16%
- Demonstrate how to define the scope of a complex business process and break it down into manageable steps.
- Apply understanding of hierarchical process mapping to engage stakeholders at different levels of an organization.
- Analyze and document a business process to elicit requirements and identify resources to visualize a future state.
- Apply governance on agreed future state processes to control scope.
Requirements: 17%
- Distinguish between requirements vs. user stories to engage business and technical stakeholders.
- Verify and prioritize existing requirements and identify new requirements to develop the future state.
- Document requirements in a version controlled repository to manage scope.
User Stories: 18%
- Understand the components of a user story to perform thorough analysis.
- Contrast the difference between acceptance criteria vs. definition of done.
- Document user stories in a version controlled repository to manage scope.
User Acceptance: 8%
- Define and prepare the User Acceptance Test plan to confirm the solution meets the business requirements.
- Guide UAT and manage the results to determine whether the solution meets the requirements.
- Given a scenario, make a go/no-go release decision when new business or technical issues arise.
Exam Trailmix
Important Point
In the Salesforce Business Analyst Certification exam, you will get 3 options per question and you need to select one correct answer. Unlike other certifications, where you might need to select multiple correct answers, in this exam, it is always one correct answer that you need to select. This is true as of today (July 19th, 2022). Things might change so always recommended to go through the exam guide completely.
Study Notes
Customer Discovery: 17% (10 Questions)
- Understand required skills and key activities performed by business analyst
- Required soft skills – There will be a lot of questions about how you would gather requirements.
- Needs analysis
- Eliciting requirements
- Business case definition
- Requirements writing & review
- Flow and process diagramming
- Wireframing
- Business data analytics
- Problem-solving
- Technical Skill is equally important
- AppExchange
- Automation
- Data Management
- Reports and Dashboard
- Knowledge about platform
- Key Activities performed
- Communication
- Elicitation
- Documenting requirements
- Analyzing information
- Facilitating solutions
- Implementing solutions
- Testing
- Required soft skills – There will be a lot of questions about how you would gather requirements.
- Understand Journey Map
- What is Journey Map?
- Benefits of Journey Map
- The architecture of Journey Map
- Plan for Journey Map Workshop
- Trailhead: Journey Mapping
- Understand Discovery
- Different ways to make discovery – Embodying, Shadowing, Interviewing
- Customer-centric discovery steps
- Trailhead: Innovation Customer Discovery
- Consequence Scanning is a way for organizations to consider the potential consequences of their product or service on people, communities, and the planet.
- Application Life Cycle Management
- Trailhead: Learn Application Life Cycle
- Benefits of Center of Excellence
- Prioritize Across Teams
- Streamline Processes
- Plan for Growth
- Reduce Risk
- Types of analyses performed by BA
- Enterprise Analysis – understand the organization’s structure, who reports to whom
- Strategy Analysis – Why strategy is needed
- Stakeholder Analysis – Identify individuals or groups who make decisions and plays important role in deciding the priorities and requirements.
- Understand Elicitation process
- Youtube video: Elicitation Process
- Methods to engage Stakeholders
- Communicate by Making It a Conversation
- Share How You Can Help
- Get Commitment for Next Steps
- Develop Relationships
- Types of Documentation
| Document Type | What It Is |
| Glossary of terms | This list of key terms and definitions boosts understanding across teams involved in the project. |
| RACI chart | RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. It’s a matrix that delineates who is responsible for what in the context of the business analysis effort.
Responsible: A person who performs an activity or does the work. Accountable: A person who is ultimately accountable for the outcome Consulted: A person who needs to provide feedback or contribute to the activity. Informed: A person who needs to know of a decision or action. |
| Interview and elicitation records | These documents capture important information from stakeholders. |
| Stakeholder analysis | This document identifies:
|
| User stories | A user story describes the functionality that a business system should provide so that it can be developed. It is often called a ticket or work item. The format is “As a…. I want to… So that I can…” |
| Use cases | A use case identifies, defines, and organizes the system requirements from a user’s perspective. |
| Business analysis plan | This plan lists all the business analysis activities that will take place throughout the project. |
| Current state analysis | If the current business process or domain is not well understood, the BA analyzes and documents the current state before scoping a project to improve upon it. |
| Scope statement specification | This is the most fundamental deliverable on any project. It clearly defines what needs to be achieved and the work that must be done to deliver the project or product. |
| Functional requirements specification (FRS) | This is the business requirements defined from an end user or business perspective. It will specify the expected outcomes. |
| System requirements specification (SRS) | This document details how the complete system should function and enumerates the system’s hardware, software, and functional and behavioral requirements. |
| Gap analysis document | This document describes the gaps between the current processes and the intended processes. |
| Change request logs | This document logs all the project change requests, including the date of request, requester, and other key information. |
| Wire-frames and other visual documentation | This document contains renderings of the user interface, often in the form of low-fidelity wire-frames. |
| Test plans, test cases, or user acceptance test plans | These documents describe the test plans and detailed test cases the team will use to validate the functional requirements. |
| Change management | This document describes the method for pushing out changes to the business. |
- Salesforce Optimizer
- Trailhead: Salesforce Optimizer
- Lightning Usage App – it helps you monitor adoption metrics, such as daily active users and the most visited pages in Lightning Experience. The available metrics include
- Daily and monthly active users in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app
- Daily and monthly switches to Salesforce Classic by total number of switches and the number of unique users that switched
- Profiles and users that switched to Salesforce Classic the most
- Types of browsers used to access Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app
- Slowest desktop record pages
- Pages viewed most often in Lightning Experience
- Number of active user, feature, and permission set licenses
- Understand Prototype
- Trailhead Module: Innovation Ideation & Prototyping
Collaboration with Stakeholders: 24% (14 Questions)
- Understand Scrum Core Values
- Focus
- Courage
- Openness
- Commitment
- Respect
- Understand Scrum Roles
- ScrumMaster
- Product Owner
- Team
- Shared Service Subject Matter Expert (SMEs)
- Technical Program Manager (TPMs)
- Functional Manager
- Trailhead Modules
- Differences between Scrum and Kanban
| Scrum | Kanban | |
| Who prioritizes it? | The product owner prioritizes the product backlog | The product owner prioritizes the product backlog |
| Where does it go? | The product backlog is reordered for the next sprint. | The product backlog is continuously reordered for the next available person with capacity. |
| When does the work start? | During sprint planning, the team commits to the work in the next sprint. | As soon as there is the capacity to work on it. |
| Why is there a delay? | Scrum focuses on the team delivering on their sprint commitments, and interruptions mid-sprint are discouraged. | Kanban focuses on efficient workflow, so the top of the backlog is always the next thing to be worked on. |
| How long does it take to deliver? | It can be 2 weeks or more, depending on sprint status. | As soon as it is completed. |
- Difference between Sympathy and Empathy
- Sympathy. A sympathetic response can include emotion, but it’s focused on keeping distance, makes a judgement about the person or how they should react, and doesn’t take the other person’s perspective into account.
- Empathy. An empathetic response recognizes the other person’s perspective and emotions, communicates these back to them, and withholds judgement.
- Guidelines for developing positive, healthy relationships at work
- Accept and celebrate a diverse workplace
- Develop active listening skills
- Expand other communication skills
- Take time to support those you lead
- Manage technology and anticipate its impact
- Share your wisdom and invite the wisdom of others
- Develop honesty and trust
- Sales Enablement
- Trailhead Modules: Sales Enablement
- Content
- Trailhead Modules: Content Strategy Development
- V2MOM
- It lets you clarify what you’re doing and then communicate it to the entire company. It boils down to these five questions, which create a framework for alignment and leadership:
- Vision — what do you want to achieve?
- Values — what’s important to you?
- Methods — how do you get it?
- Obstacles — what is preventing you from being successful?
- Measures — how do you know you have it?
- It lets you clarify what you’re doing and then communicate it to the entire company. It boils down to these five questions, which create a framework for alignment and leadership:
Business Process Mapping: 16% (10 Questions)
- Business Process Mapping
- Trailhead Module: Process Mapping for Business Analysts
- Trailhead Module: Business Process Mapping
- UPN (universal process notation)
- Simplest way of visually mapping business processes. By creating simple flows and diagrams, everyone in the company can understand how different aspects of the business works.
- 5 Principles of UPN
- No more than 8-10 activity boxes on a screen
- Drill down from an activity box to a lower level to describe the detail
- Attach supporting information to an activity box
- View and edit controlled by access rights
- Version control and history of changes at a diagram level
- Other Process Diagrams
- Capability Models or Industry Blueprints
- Detailed Process Map
- SIPOC
- Value Stream Map
- Capability Models or Industry Blueprints
- Jobs to Be Done
- It is a framework designed to help us define success from a customer perspective. It starts with a deeper inquiry that seeks to answer a simple question:
- UX Design Process
- Trailhead Module: UX Experience Basics
- Importance of Governance
- Trailhead Module: Governance Basics
Requirements: 17% (10 Questions)
- Requirements elicitation
- Based on information from important stakeholders, business analysts conduct requirements elicitation to determine a project’s business need, scope, assumptions, and hazards. It is a crucial component of requirements management since the conclusion affects how the project’s objective is fundamentally understood. Inadequately defining company needs can have disastrous effects, such as expensive errors or system failure.
- Requirement Elicitation techniques
- Brainstorming
- Document analysis
- Focus groups
- Interface analysis
- Interviews
- Observation
- Process modeling
- Prototyping
- Requirements workshops
- Surveys/questionnaires
- Setup Audit Trail
- It tracks the recent setup changes that you and other admins make
- To view the audit history, from Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter View Setup Audit Trail, then select View Setup Audit Trail.
- To download your org’s complete setup history for the past 180 days, click Download. After 180 days, setup entity records are deleted.
- Github Workflow
- Create a branch off of the main
- Make commits
- Open a pull request
- Collaborate
- Make more commits
- Discuss and review code with team members
- Deploy for final testing
- Merge your branch into the main branch
- Whiteboarding
- Trailhead Module: Virtual Whiteboarding: Quick Look
User Stories: 18% (11 Questions)
- User Story
- Trailhead Module: User Story Creation
- 3 Components of User Story
- Who: From whose perspective (aka user persona) will this user story be written within Salesforce?
- What goal will be accomplished or implemented within the Salesforce org as a result of the user story?
- Why does the user need the Salesforce functionality or feature outlined in the user story?
- Format of User Story
- As a < who >
- I want < what >
- So that < why >
- Features of Good User Story
- Independent
- Negotiable
- Valuable
- Estimable
- Small
- Testable
- Acceptance Criteria
- Acceptance criteria are a set of statements, each with a clear pass/fail result, added to a user story.
- Acceptance criteria should state intent, but not a solution.
- Benefits of Acceptance Criteria
- Clarifying the scope for the project team
- Assisting the development/implementation team
- Ensuring testers know what should be tested
- Scaled Agile Center of Excellence’s basic principles
- Integrate every 2 weeks (once per sprint) and test all apps together to demo the new features to the Product Owners on one single sandbox.
- If we need to re-prioritize or move user stories to the next sprint, we must ensure that an equivalent amount of effort with the lowest priority goes back to the backlog.
- The last Sprint is used to stabilize the app, not to add new features. For example, in the end, maybe only 70% of the app will be done on time, but that’s Ok. If the prioritization was done correctly, the MVP would have been achieved with the 70%.
- Low-priority user stories which couldn’t be completed will be moved to the next release window.
User Acceptance: 8% (5 Questions)
- Testing Types
- Unit Tests: Every unit of code in a single component must undergo unit testing, which is a need for software development regardless of the language or platform. Unit tests are carried out at the developer level to verify functionality.
- System/E2E Tests: In organisations with plenty of managed packages or APIs, system and E2E testing are essential. E2E testing can be carried out by a few different types of personnel, but typically it is done by a Salesforce Expert, an outside consultant, or the system owner of an API-connected product.
- Functional Tests: Functional tests ensure that the system is functioning as you would expect in the application’s subsequent use by comparing the code to the system as a whole. Functional tests are frequently carried out by a QA team.
- User Acceptance Tests (UAT): Business end users who are capable of defining the procedure and method the new code is designed to represent carrying out UAT. UAT is carried out in a sandbox during the development phase.
- Performance Tests: Performance testing aims to build confidence by evaluating how a system behaves under use, frequently under increasing loads.
- Large Data Volume (LDV)
- Scope of UAT tests should include –
- Volume: production like data or a sample data
- Average vs. Peak performance: Should the test simulate both average and peak load and measure associated performance
- Load simulation pattern and equipment: How test going to simulate the required loads and how realistic is the simulation?
- Actual production data vs. test data: Does the test have all the variants of data points that an actual production data exhibit?
- Timing of the tests: Tests should be conducted at least three to four weeks before the actual live date, so that there is sufficient time to fix bugs
- Reference: User Acceptance Testing Strategies for Large Data Volume Scenarios
- Scope of UAT tests should include –
- Key responsibilities of Business Analyst during UAT phase
- Validate test data setup
- Identify UAT testers
- Coordinate UAT sessions
- Write UAT test scripts
- Triage UAT defects
- Get UAT sign off
- Reference: Role of the BA in User Acceptance Testing
Thanks for sharing Sudipta
You welcome Nitin
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Very well drafted and concise information for SF BA exam prep. Loved the way its presented. Great job on this Sudipta.
Thank you Yogi. I am happy that it helped you.