Business Analysis: My Professional IQ

I just took this 'how good a BA are you' test at http://www.inquestra.com/baiq/index.html. Take the quiz before you read my responses, below - it will make much more sense.

Julian's BA IQ Test SCORE: 74%

PASSED [Whew. -Ed.]

Congratulations on your Business Analyst IQ rating. (Note: 75th percentile means that you scored higher than 75% of those taking this test.)

 

Category	Percentile
Your overall Business Analyst rating is:	Good
Analytical Thinking & Problem Solving	90
Requirements Elicitation and Analysis	75
Professional Knowledge	50
Logical Reasoning and Systems Thinking	95
Information & Process Modeling	95
Communication	100

 

SPOILER ALERT!

Julian's Answers and Commentary

Q#	Question	My Answer	"Correct" Answer	Commentary
1	The figure is cut out and folded along the lines to form a cube. What is the letter on the face opposite the face labeled A?	F	D	Did the rotation wrong in my head, and deserved the fail - I could have modeled the solution.
9	Which of the following statements do you most agree with:	b) While the sponsor may own the requirements, the analyst is responsible to assist in defining it.	b)	Aside from the grammatical problem (plural in first clause, singular in second), the question is ambiguous. I think they were trying to say: "The BA is responsible for the definition of requirements, regardless of who owns the requirements."
10	The best way to identify data requirements is:	b) Through the description of business activities or use-cases.	b)	This is true if the context for the activity is a Customer or User driven scenario. Like all 'Best Practices' it is only true in context. It is equally "best" to identify process requirements based on information needs - particularly in a highly regulated environment, where the data produced must conform to an external standard - regardless of how you produce it.
12	Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a good Business objective?	b) accurate	b)	Poor question. Presumes that SMART (where A = Achievable) is the sum total of all 'good' attributes for a business objective. These are likely useful. They are not the whole story. I suspect accuracy - or rather, known degree of accuracy - is a fairly critical attribute of an objective.
15	An RRSP (in Canada) or a 401k (in the US) is best described as a:	d) investment	c) account	Um. Okay? I'm pretty sure I've got investments in my RRSP, and that daily withdrawals and deposits are not a big feature of the RRSP, and that it's money I put away to gather interest for a later time, but hey, I'm a bit of a monkey and I don't know what a 401k is.
16	Price is to Order as:	e) Cost is to Product	c) Balance is to Account	What sort of trick question is this? I just took six comparisons to get my answer. I wonder what they did.    Price is: Cost is: Balance is: A a calculated value :) a calculated value :) a calculated value B charged to someone :) charged to someone :( charg… oh. nope. C based on the components of the Order. :) based on the components of the Product. :( based on the transactions to date D unique to the Order :) unique to the Product :) unique to the Account E fixed at time of Order creation :) fixed at time of Product creation :( recalculated with each new transaction F A five letter word - the same length as Order :( A four letter word - not the same length as Product :) A seven letter word - the same length as Account
17	A user enters a person's name to retrieve their customer profile. How many possible types of outcomes could there be?	d) 3	e) 4 or more	Outcomes are (usually) the successful results of the execution of the process - what the process is supposed to achieve. In this case there are 3: match 0, match 1, match many.  Perhaps 'types of outcomes' is the trick. This may mean categories of process termination states. But wait - there are still 3: process completed successfully (built working car), process failed successfully (built car), process failed due to exception (factory evacuated due to weevil infestation). I guess 'types of outcomes' means 'possible effects from the cause and other factors', in which case the answer is infinite. For example: User enters name in Customer Profile Search. System retrieves 0, 1, n matching names to User. Meteor strikes computer centre (exception condition). System displays error message "Iridium overload. Please devolve to dinosaurs." (exception response) User bangs forehead on keyboard until shockwave hits. (exception outcome) Infinite answers are not terribly interesting to me. Fun to tear apart though.
18	How many grammatical errors are their in the following sentance: Except for external documentation that affect legislation, the appropriate supervisor must authorize each document. This policy will effect all personnel and assure that we conform to recent corporate directives.	a) one	d) four	Let's ignore the spelling error in the question. No, really, try. *ahem*   The second sentence is out of scope. (Grammatical errors: 0) Without the context for the first sentence, grammatical integrity may be ensured by pluralizing the word 'affect'. It's still meaningless, but grammar and meaning are separate concepts. (E.g. The sentence "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously." is grammatically correct in English, and also has no coherent meaning.) In this case, I'm not sure what sort of external document might influence legislation, but I do know that supervisors do not authorize them. (Grammatical errors: 1)
20				Did any of you feel ripped off when you discovered that there are really only 19 questions (not the 20 promised at the top of every screen)? Sheesh.

 

Good night.