Typically, business analysts are not required to know
A technical functional business analyst doesn’t write code per se in the day to day job, but has sufficient knowledge of how the system works technically as well as functionally. Therefore knows the capabilities and constraints of the system when gathering the requirements. This helps to manage client expectations as the client would prefer to know what’s possible / not possible up front rather than 2–3 months down the line during the development phase.
A techno functional business analyst can effectively give an eyeball estimate of the project for costing. Because it is not always possible for the development team to be engaged for a ballpark estimate.
Analysis of any technical issues that affect the system functionally is also a good skill to have in the repertoire of a technical functional business analyst.
A technical functional business analyst can drive meetings with 3rd party software vendors and can gauge the ROI of a product purchase with respect to integrating with an in-house product.
Using SQL is also a very good skill to have for a business analyst to understand how the data is structured.
A technical functional business analyst is not only a key project team member for the development team but also for the front end User Experience team providing the team support from a technical point of view and keeping a hawk eye on the constraints and capabilities criteria while designing the system. This saves a lot of back and forth effort between the User Experience and development team.
The bottom line is that it’s always good to have a technical background and understand the system for all the aforementioned advantages. This does not mean one needs to know programming languages and should know how to code. If this was indeed the criteria then developers would be out of their job.
Even without a technical background, doing a simple research on the internet on some key technical disciplines in your project be it SQL, Cloud computing, web services etc whichever is appropriate is enough for a business analyst. Start with the class diagrams, data flow diagrams, technical architecture whenever embarking on a new project.
A simple understanding of the technical structure of the project and how each part functions holistically will give a business analyst a lot of leverage.
