This document contains information for an assessment of business analyst candidates. It includes descriptions of two projects - implementing new payroll software and a training scheduling system. It asks what departments would be involved in the payroll software project and what questions would be asked to understand the requirements of the training scheduling system project. Finally, it provides example requirements for a payroll system and asks to group the requirements and explain the groupings.

1. Assessment for Business Analyst Candidates
I. Review the project description below.
“The payroll department wants to purchase new payroll software
package. Human Resources has received many complaints regarding
inconsistent calculations and delays in payment due to the current
manually intensive process. Senior management has approved this as a top
priority for the company.”
What departments would be involved with this project and
why?
1. Payroll Department: They would be involved to provide information on the current
process and what problems they are facing with the manual process.
They would also be involved in using the new software.
2. HR Team: Validates the pay and the employee information and provides the
information to payroll department.
3. Testing Team: To work on end to end testing to make sure that the new application is
tested and delivered with no defects.
4. Business Analyst: To understand scope, high level business needs and feasibility of
the project. To provide functional, non-functional, technical requirements based on the
business requirements gathered. Also responsible to put the training material together and
assists in testing. They are also involved in assisting the users for any problems that come up
during the project
5. Project Manager: Develop project management plans, resource management, risk
management, Time and budget estimation. They are responsible for overall delivery of the
project. He is also involved in the procurement process.
6. Senior Management: Involved in business case and budget approval. They also
support the project along with issues and exceptions handling.
7. Sourcing Team: Mostly involved in purchasing of the new payroll software and
procurement process
8. Training Department: Involved in training end users for the new payroll software
package with the assistance from business analyst.
9. Security Department: As payroll is a very sensitive area, they will need to signoff on
any security aspects concerned with new system.
10. Production Support Team: Supporting the users with any issues that come up with
after the project go live.
II. Review the project description below.
Project: Implement Training Scheduling Software

2. Project Statement of Purpose:
Our organization’s training department has become very large, often
holding several classes per week. We need a software application that can
register students for scheduled classes, print student rosters, reserve
classrooms, print student certificates, and report on department training
expenditures. The software should streamline the administration of the
training department and allow even more classes to be conducted in the
coming years. This application may be purchased or written in-house. It
must be installed by the beginning of our next fiscal year.
This project has been initiated because we have more demand for training
than our administrative personnel can handle. Classrooms and instructors
are available to meet this increased demand.
Project Objectives:
 Increase the number of classes by 30% that can be scheduled by the
existing number of administration personnel
 Allow student certificates to be printed and distributed on the last day
of class
 Provide instructors with an accurate list of students on the first
morning of each class
 Remind students of their registration one week before each class via
e-mail
 Notify students and instructors if a class is changed or cancelled via e-
mail
What questions would you ask to begin to understand the
requirements of this project? Who would you ask them of?
Questions asked for requirements gathering:
1. Student:
 What is the current process they are using to register for the courses?
 What is the problem they are facing when they have to register for the
courses?
 Are they looking for any reminders prior to their training classes? If so then
how many days in advance?
 What are the other conveniences that they are looking for regarding
registration?
 What are the different information that they want to see regarding a particular
training program prior to registration?
2. Training Head:
 What is the problem that they are currently facing with the training registration
process?
 What are the current activities that they are involved with registration process
 Do they have a limit that they want for a particular class?
 What is their convenience regarding posting the certification after class
completion

3.  Is there any requirement for them to see the students on first day of class?
3. Administration:
 What is the problem that they are currently facing?
 What is the different activities that they will perform for training registration
 How sooner can the students add/drop out of classes?
 How do they currently process the registrants?
 What is the notification process that they want to have in the system for any
changes/cancellations of the training classes?
4. IT department/ Project Manager:
 What are the hardware/software requirements based on the needs of the user?
 How much is it going to cost to build the application?
 How much time would it take to build the system?
 If decided the purchase how much could it cost and what would be the time
line to make it available?
 How are we going to manage risk and resources for the project?
5. Upper Management:
 Based on the costs calculated for the software, how much budget is allotted for
the project.
III. Example Requirements for a Payroll System
1. We need to use an Oracle database
2. Employees are not allowed to be paid for more than 80 hours
in one week.
3. The employee id number should be 6 digits long and assigned sequentially by employee
original hire date.
4. We pay about 10,000 employees per week.
5. Employees must be able to choose between direct deposit or
printed checks.
6. We must be able to withhold Federal, State, and City taxes.
7. Some employees reside in a different state than the one they
work in.
8. Payroll checks are 8 ½ by 11 inch voucher checks with a stub

4. and should be printed onsite on the existing Hewlett Packard
laser printer.
9. Employee timesheets must be approved by their supervisor
before being entered into the system.
Group the requirements into two logical subsets (List the
requirements numbers in the boxes below). Explain you
reasons for the groupings.
G1-IT Driven G2-Business driven
1 2
3 4
8 5
6
7
9
Explanation: G1 requirements are related to IT.
G2 requirements are driven by business/business rules.
IV. Review this dataflow diagram and answer the following
questions:
1. Give at least two examples of data elements that
would be flowing through the dataflow arrow called
“employee pay info”.
Enployee Id/ Name, pay rate, employee type, worked hrs
2. Why does the process “Calculate net pay” have two
input arrows?

5. Net pay is calculated by subtracting tax withholding amount from Gross Pay. It would need
both this information to calculate net pay.
3. Would this diagram support an employee requesting
direct deposit of their pay?
No. This diagram does not talk about an employee requesting for Direct deposit or related
process.