How to Pass Salesforce Business Analyst Certification Exam

Last Updated on March 17, 2023 by Rakesh Gupta

Today, I appeared for the Salesforce Certified Business Analyst Certification exam and passed!

And, oh yes, I managed to pass it on my first attempt. So, follow along on the ‘Yellow Brick Road’!

👉 As you are here, you may want to check out the How to Pass Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification exam article.

What Does A Business Analyst Do?

A business analyst is a professional responsible for eliciting, documenting, and managing the requirements, facilitating meetings, drafting feasibility studies, and acting as a liaison or bridge between technical and functional groups.

Depending on the organization, business analysts may be responsible for discovering what the user truly wants, designing a solution vision, breaking product development into doable steps, determining what success looks like, and driving iterative evaluation and revision.

The key activities that business analysts perform include:

• Understanding problems and goals
• Analyzing needs and solutions
• Devising strategies
• Driving change
• Facilitating stakeholder collaboration
• and much more

So, Who is an Ideal Candidate for the exam?

There are plenty of benefits of a business analyst certification. A business analysis certification will allow you to focus on gaining knowledge and help to demonstrate professionalism. Learning the commonly used business analysis tools and techniques provides a foundation you can apply in your current role and build as a platform as your career progresses.

You must have experience with common business practices such as eliciting requirements, mapping business processes, writing user stories, validating solutions, user acceptance testing, and facilitating virtual and in-person workshops. 

For instance, the certified business analyst should be able to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and experience in the following areas:

• Knowledge
  • Familiar with the Salesforce implementation lifecycle.
  • Understand Salesforce environment best practices.
  • Experience in a given industry environment.
  • Understand facilitation and documentation techniques.
• Skills
  • Plan discovery activities based on key stakeholders.
  • Map business processes, elicit requirements, and write user stories.
  • Demonstrate effective written and verbal communication skills when working with business and technical stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
  • Apply strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Abilities
  • Move easily between various influencing and communication styles to engage effectively with diverse audiences and maximize impact.
  • Become a trusted advisor with key stakeholders.
  • Break down complex business processes into manageable steps.
  • Evaluate and recommend Salesforce features as part of solution design.

How to prepare for the exam?

Learning styles differ widely – so there is no magic formula that one can follow to clear an exam. The best practice is to study for a few hours daily – rain or shine! Below are some details about the exam and study materials:

• 65 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions – 105 mins
• 72% is the passing score
• The exam Fee is $200 plus applicable taxes
• The Salesforce Certified Administrator certification is a prerequisite for taking this exam.

There are tons of resources to help you prepare for the certified business analyst certification exam.

The following list is not exhaustive; so check it out and use it as a starting point:

1. Salesforce Certified Business Analyst FAQ
2. Salesforce Certified Business Analyst Exam Guide
3. Trailhead Trailmix: Prepare for Your Salesforce Business Analyst Credential
4. Highly recommend watching Tony V Martin’s Business Analyst Summit videos

What you Need to Know to Smoothen your Journey

On a very high level, you have to understand the following topics to clear the exam. All credit goes to the Salesforce Trailhead team; I have taken the below content from there.

1. Customer Discovery: 17%
   1. Familiarize yourself with the business analyst role, required skills, and key activities. 
      1. For example, soft skills a Business Analyst should have – YouTube Video
         1. Needs analysis
         2. Eliciting requirements
         3. Business case definition
         4. Requirements Writing
         5. Requirements review
         6. Flow and process diagramming
         7. Wire-framing
         8. Business data analytics
         9. Problem-solving
      2. For example, What are the key activities a Business Analyst performs – YouTube Video.
         1. Communication
         2. Elicitation
         3. Documenting requirements
         4. Analyzing information
         5. Facilitating solutions
         6. Implementing solutions
         7. Testing
      3. Below are some essential questions to better understand business
         1. What Is the Purpose of the Business?
         2. Who Is Our Customer?
         3. What Does Our Customer Value?
         4. What Are Our Results?
         5. What Is Our Plan?
   2. Spend some time understanding Journey Map
      1. Journey maps are documents that visually illustrate the experiences customers have with a business or an organization. A journey map identifies several things.
      2. Check out this video from NNGroup to understand Customer Journey Mapping 
   3. Below are a few benefits of Journey Mapping
      1. Better team alignment
      2. Strategic thinking
      3. Increased empathy
      4. A guide to measuring impact
      5. A strong case for innovation
   4. Who to Invite to the Journey Mapping Workshop – YouTube Video
      1. People who know your customer – salespeople, researchers, customer support, etc.
      2. Generative people – people you know who like coming up with new ideas and have an easy time brainstorming.
      3. Optimists and realists know what’s possible and don’t default to “no” or think of all the reasons why an idea won’t work.
      4. People who bring diversity – people from different cultures, backgrounds, and disciplines.
   5. Understanding the Architecture of a Journey Map is very important. Below are components of a journey map
      1. Phase
      2. Actions
      3. Thoughts
      4. Feelings
      5. Touchpoints
      6. Context
      7. Opportunities
   6. Understand what is discovery and why it is important. 
   7. Different ways to make the deeper discovery
      1. Embodying
      2. Shadowing
      3. Interviewing
   8. Customer-centric discovery steps
      1. Know Your Customer
      2. Be Your Customer
      3. Connect with Your Customer
      4. Create with Your Customer
   9. Consequence Scanning is a way for organizations to consider the potential consequences of their product or service on people, communities, and the planet. This practice is an innovative tool that allows one to mitigate or address potential harms or disasters before they happen.
   10. Different Application Lifecycle management (ALM) development models
       1. Change sets
       2. Org development
       3. package development
   11. Benefits of Center of Excellence (CoE) – YouTube Video
       1. Prioritize Across Teams
       2. Streamline Processes
       3. Plan for Growth
       4. Reduce Risk
   12. Understand the difference between various types of analyses
       1. Enterprise Analysis – learn and understand an organization’s structure, including who reports to whom and the functions and interactions of departments within the organization.
       2. Strategy Analysis  – It’s about understanding. First, you identify the need of strategic or tactical importance—the business need.
       3. Stakeholder Analysis – Stakeholders are the individuals or groups (internal or external to the immediate organization) who make decisions and have an important role in determining the priorities and requirements for your project.
   13. Elicitation is the process of discovering the requirements. In particular, elicitation often refers to engaging stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations regarding the project’s scope and detailed requirements.
       1. Different elicitation techniques used by business analysts. Check out this YouTube video to better understand Elicitation Techniques. 
          1. Brainstorming
          2. Document analysis
          3. Focus groups
          4. Interface analysis
          5. Interviews
          6. Observation
          7. Process modeling
          8. Prototyping
          9. Requirements workshops
          10. Surveys/questionnaires
   14. Various methods of engaging stakeholders
       1. Communicate by Making It a Conversation
       2. Share How You Can Help
       3. Get Commitment for Next Steps
       4. Develop Relationship
   15. These are the main documents produced by a Business Analysts throughout a project – YouTube Video
       

       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: Who you should talk with to understand the business problem Who can help flesh out the requirements The individuals who can give you a range of perspectives
       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.

   16. Salesforce Optimizer is a powerful, free, and simple tool that takes a snapshot of your Salesforce org and looks for potential problems in your implementation. Salesforce Optimizer gives you detailed data right inside your org on more than 50 metrics covering everything from storage, fields, custom code, custom layouts for objects, reports, dashboards, and much more.
   17. Salesforce Optimizer can help you address the common admin challenges, such as
       1. I want to clean up my org, but I don’t know where to start
       2. My users are complaining about slow performance and busy page layouts
       3. What Salesforce governor limits am I approaching?
       4. I can barely keep up with Salesforce’s releases. What new features am I missing out on?
       5. We’re planning the move from Classic to Lightning Experience.
   18. The metrics available in the Lightning Usage App include
       1. Daily and monthly active users in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app
       2. Daily and monthly switches to Salesforce Classic by the total number of switches and the number of unique users that switched
       3. Profiles and users that switched to Salesforce Classic the most
       4. Types of browsers used to access Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app
       5. Slowest desktop record pages
       6. Pages viewed most often in Lightning Experience
       7. Number of active user, feature, and permission set licenses
   19. Best stories have these four key elements – YouTube Video
       1. Hero
       2. Challenge
       3. Helper
       4. Victory 
   20. Understand what Is Prototyping and Why Is It Important?
       1. Advantage of prototype
          1. Validating your business idea
          2. Confirming a shared vision among users and stakeholders
          3. Saving time and resources during development
2. Collaboration with Stakeholders: 24%
   1. What are the five Scrum values? 
      1. The five Scrum values are commitment, focus, openness, respect, and courage. According to the Scrum guide, “Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living these five values.”
   2. Scrum team structure involves these distinct roles.
      1. Scrum Master – Scrum Master is the person who is responsible for facilitating/coaching the Development Team and the Product Owner to work on the day-to-day development activities.
      2. Product Owner – The product owner is the voice of the customer /stakeholders and hence is responsible for bridging the gap between the development team and stakeholders
      3. Development Team – The Development Team comprises developers proficient in their area of expertise. The development team works on implementing the potentially deliverable software/increment, which will be delivered at the end of each Sprint.
      4. Subject Matter Experts – Subject matter experts, also called SMEs, are professionals with advanced knowledge in a specific field. As an authority in a particular area or topic, they are uniquely qualified to provide guidance and strategy. 
      5. Technical Program Manager – They focus on the work of program managers from a technical standpoint, often playing a more hands-on role than traditional Program Managers – 
      6. Functional Manager – The functional manager is the person who has management authority within a business unit/department with direct supervision over one or more resources on the project/program team and/or direct responsibility for the functions affected by or that affect the project/program deliverable(s)
   3. Scrum uses three artifacts to help manage work. All three are defined and described below.
      1. Product Backlog – The product backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in a product based on the product goal. It is constantly evolving and is never complete.
      2. Sprint Backlog – The sprint backlog is a list of everything the team commits to achieve in a given sprint. Once created, no one can add to the sprint backlog except the development team. 
      3. Potentially Shippable Work – At the end of every sprint, the team delivers a product increment that is potentially releasable, meaning that it meets their agreed-upon definition of done.
   4. Scrum Workflow
      1. Scrum workflow is the series of meetings, processes, and tools teams complete to deliver products in Scrum methodology. These processes enable teams to deliver the highest quality and value to stakeholders and customers. 
      2. Four events occur during a Sprint workflow cycle. The four Scrum workflow events are: 
         1. Product Backlog
         2. Sprint Backlog
         3. Daily Scrum Meeting
         4. Potentially Shippable Work
   5. Types of Scrum meetings
      1. Scrum meetings are an integral component of a work environment that adopts the Scrum methodology. They are an invaluable source of information and feedback from the development team and help keep the team aligned with the Sprint goals. 
      2. Look at the types of Scrum meetings
         1. Planning Meeting
            1. Release Planning Every 4 Months
            2. Backlog Refinement Planning Happens Every 2 Weeks
            3. Sprint Planning Happens Every 2 Weeks
            4. Daily Stand-Up Happens (Almost!) Every Day 
         2. Inspect and adapt meetings
            1. Retrospective: A Look Back at the End of Every Sprint
            2. Sprint Demo Happens Each Sprint
   6. Different Agile Methodologies – Check out YouTube video to better understand scrum and kanban. 
      1. What is Agile?
      2. Agile User Stories
      3. Why Have A Daily Standup – Agile Practices
      4. Talk To Users – Agile Principle of Face-to-face Communication
      5. Scrum
         1. What Is Scrum?
         2. Is Scrum Agile?
      6. Kanban

         

   7. Benefits of Kanban – A good Kanban system goes a long way in helping teams understand how their time is being spent. 
      1. Visualize workflow
      2. Limit work in progress (WIP)
      3. Kanban Embraces Last-Minute Change
      4. Measure Success
         
         1. Lead time: Average time to complete one item, sometimes called cycle time
         2. Throughput: Amount of work completed in a single period
      5. Improve Collaboratively
   8. Key differences between the 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.

   9. Differentiate Between Sympathy and Empathy
      1. Sympathy – A sympathetic response can include emotion. Still, it’s focused on keeping distance, makes a judgment about the person or how they should react, and doesn’t consider the other person’s perspective.
      2. Empathy – An empathetic response recognizes the other person’s perspective and emotions, communicates these back to them, and withholds judgment.
   10. Guidelines for developing positive, healthy relationships at work
       1. Accept and celebrate a diverse workplace
       2. Develop active listening skills
       3. Expand other communication skills
       4. Take time to support those you lead
       5. Manage technology and anticipate its impact
       6. Share your wisdom and invite the wisdom of others
       7. Develop honesty and trust
   11. Sales enablement is the process of giving your sales team everything they need to close deals. Quite literally, it’s how sales leaders enable their teams to win more business.
   12. 9 Tips for creating a successful sales enablement strategy
       1. Goal Setting
       2. Communication
       3. Time Management
       4. Content Creation
       5. Learning and Development
       6. Digital Transformation
       7. Sales Enablement Plan
       8. Stakeholder Commitment
       9. Sales Enablement Team
   13. 6 best practices for sales enablement
       1. Your sales process must always be tailored to the buyer’s journey
       2. Always use data to understand what’s working and what’s not
       3. Create different content for different funnel stages
       4. Marry Sales and Marketing
       5. Always be results-driven
       6. Designate a driver
   14. Content is:
       1. A product requires research, design, development, delivery, and iteration.
       2. A system that connects people, processes, and technologies.
       3. A set of data that must be structured and modeled.
       4. A business asset can be tied to objectives, metrics, and results.
   15. Useful deliverables when developing a content strategy
       

       Deliverable	Description
       Personas (or Jobs-to-Be-Done)	Both personas and jobs-to-be-done capture customer data and identify their needs and goals in specific contexts. This information is the key to creating personalized, customer-centric content.
       Top Tasks	The top tasks are the ones that matter most to customers. It’s important to provide stellar content that assists customers with completing those tasks.
       Journey Map	A journey map is a diagram that illustrates all the stages and touchpoints in the customer’s journey. An effective content experience delivers the right information at each stage of that journey.

   16. Tips for making a successful audit
       1. Objective
          1. Audience
          2. Journey Stage
          3. Calls to action
          4. Content type
          5. Keywords and tags
          6. The content owner (if known)
          7. Attached are files, downloads, or media
          8. Connected content (for example, links to recommended or related information)
          9. Engagement and performance metrics
       2. Subjective
          1. Customer need (what the content helps customers achieve or understand)
          2. Business impact
          3. Accuracy
          4. Findability
          5. Usability (whether the content is clear, useful, readable, relevant, and consistent)
          6. Recommendation (keep, improve, delete, or merge)
   17. Tips for delivering applause-worthy whiteboard presentation
       1. Engages the audience
       2. Builds trust
       3. Sparks dialogue
       4. Disarms even the most skeptical audience members
       5. Ultimately, it elevates your relationship with your audience
   18. The V2MOM 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:
       1. 1. Vision — what do you want to achieve?
          2. Values — what’s important to you?
          3. Methods — how do you get it?
          4. Obstacles — what is preventing you from being successful?
          5. Measures — how do you know you have it?
3. Business Process Mapping: 16%
   1. Understand Process Mapping
      1. Process mapping creates visual representations of business processes. It includes any activity that defines what a business does, who is responsible for what, how standard business processes are completed, and how success is measured. 
   2. Benefits of Process Mapping
      1. Process mapping spotlights waste, streamlines work processes, and builds understanding. Process mapping allows you to visually communicate the important details of a process rather than writing extensive directions.
         1. Flowcharts and process maps are used to:
            1. Increase understanding of a process
            2. Analyze how a process could be improved
            3. Show others how a process is done
            4. Improve communication between individuals engaged in the same process
            5. Provide process documentation
            6. Plan project
         2. Process maps can save time and simplify projects because they:
            1. Create and speed up the project design
            2. Provide effective visual communication of ideas, information, and data
            3. Help with problem-solving and decision making
            4. Identify problems and possible solutions
            5. Can be built quickly and economically
            6. Show processes are broken down into steps and use symbols that are easy to follow
            7. Show detailed connections and sequences
            8. Show an entire process from the beginning to the end
   3. UPN stands for Universal Process Notation and is the 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.
   4. Why Business Analysis skills are important
      1. The business analysis increases Salesforce adoption
      2. Business analysis reduces rework
      3. Business analysis impacts architecture
      4. The business analysis increases agility and drives digital transformation
   5. Principles of UPN
      1. No more than 8-10 activity boxes on a screen
      2. Drill down from an activity box to a lower level to describe the detail
      3. Attach supporting information to an activity box
      4. View and edit controlled by access rights
      5. Version control and history of changes at a diagram level
   6. Other process diagrams
      1. Capability Model – Capability models or industry blueprints list high-level process areas. These are useful for scoping out the specific area you are mapping and showing the context within the overall business.
      2. Detailed Process Map – A detailed process map is a flowchart that shows a drill-down version of a process that contains all the details of each step of the process and any subsequent steps along the way.
      3. SIPOC – SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers. SIPOC is a process mapping and improvement method that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more processes using a SIPOC diagram.
      4. Value Stream Map – A value stream map is used to visualize the flow of material and information needed to bring a product to the customer.
   7. Tips for identifying business process mapping tools and software
      1. Drag-and-drop interface
      2. Formatting capabilities
      3. Security and versioning
      4. Publishing and sharing capabilities
      5. Intuitive design
   8. Business process mapping steps
      1. Identify the process you need to map
      2. Create a winning team
      3. Gather all necessary information
      4. Develop the process map
      5. Analyze the process map
      6. Develop new, better steps
      7. Manage the process
   9. Best practices of process mapping
      1. Apply business process mapping to the right types of processes
      2. Be clear about the focus of your process mapping
      3. Get someone skilled to map your processes
      4. Validate your maps.
      5. Don’t fix your processes until they are fully mapped
      6. Build the right team
      7. Keep it simple
      8. Work with your stakeholders.
   10. The stages of the UX design process
       

       Stage	Goals
       Empathize	Learn about the audience you’re designing for by observation and interview techniques.
       Define	Create a point of view based on your users’ needs and insights.
       Ideate	Brainstorm as many creative solutions as possible to solve the problem you defined in the previous stage.
       Prototype and Test	Build and share a representation of one or more of your ideas from the Ideate stage. Test a rough draft out on others. Refine and test again.

   11. Jobs to Be Done, or JTBD for short, is a framework designed to help us define success from a customer perspective. It starts with a deeper inquiry that answers a simple question: What jobs are customers hiring your product or service to do for them? JTBD empowers you to focus on the outcomes that people using your product want. It’s a great way to stand in the users’ shoes.
   12. Different Map-types
       1. Journey Map – A journey map visualizes each step of a persona’s experience with a product or service over time.
       2. Service Blueprint – A service blueprint extends a journey map by diagramming the before and after states.
       3. Ecosystem Map – An ecosystem map helps visualize complex relationships among multiple systems. 
       4. Empathy Map – An empathy map visualizes how users think, feel, act, and speak. This map helps you consider user psychology and identify the motivations behind your product or service’s persona.
   13. Different types of UX design prototypes
       1. Low-fidelity Sketches – Use low-fidelity sketches so you can evolve your design quickly. You don’t need a vector drawing tool; you can also design using code and design systems.
       2. Wireframe – Use wireframes to share the design with users as your design matures. Their feedback helps you identify rock-solid areas of your design and others that may need more work. 
       3. High-fidelity Sketches – When you’ve received enough feedback to feel confident that an area of your design is rock-solid, create a high-fidelity screen for it.
   14. Importance of governance in a technology organizations
       1. Compliance
       2. Risk assessment
       3. Cost efficiencies
       4. Velocity
   15. Different stakeholders that should be involved in a Salesforce lean governance framework
       1. Information Technology
       2. Business Units
       3. End Users
4. Requirements: 17%
   1. Alignment is important
      1. Aligning IT and business help streamline IT operations and development by focusing IT’s efforts on projects and deployments that move the organization forward.
   2. Requirement elicitation
      1. Business analysts conduct requirements elicitation to identify a project’s business need, scope, assumptions, and risks based on data from key stakeholders. It’s an imperative part of requirements management as the outcome impacts the fundamental understanding of the project’s goal. Failure to clearly define business needs can lead to catastrophic results, such as costly mistakes or system failure.
   3. There are a variety of requirement elicitation techniques; here are some of the most popular methods.
      1. Stakeholder analysis
      2. Brainstorming
      3. Focus groups
      4. Interviews
      5. Observation
      6. Prototyping
      7. Requirements workshops
      8. Surveys/questionnaires
      9. Document analysis/review
      10. Interface analysis
      11. Process modeling

          

   4. Business Alignment – Business alignment is a set of processes that can help a company’s operations, systems, and departments all work together to achieve the organization’s values, mission, and long-term objectives
   5. Key stakeholders for business alignment
      1. Program Executive Sponsor
      2. Senior IT & Business Leaders
      3. Middle Management
      4. End Users
   6. The main steps of GitHub workflow are
      1. Create a branch off of the main
      2. Make commits
      3. Open a pull request
      4. Collaborate
         1. Make more commits
         2. Discuss and review code with team members
      5. Deploy for final testing
      6. Merge your branch into the main branch
5. User Stories: 18%
   1. There are three components of every user story.
      1. Who: From whose perspective (aka user persona) will this user story be written within Salesforce?
      2. What goal will be accomplished or implemented within the Salesforce org as a result of the user story?
      3. Why does the user need the Salesforce functionality or feature outlined in the user story?
   2. The who, what, and why are arranged in a sentence like this:
      1. As a < who >
      2. I want < what >
      3. So that < why >
         1. Example – As a customer care representative, I want to take ownership of new cases and communicate with customers so that I can provide high-touch customer experiences.
   3. A good user story should be:
      1. Independent
      2. Negotiable
      3. Valuable
      4. Estimable
      5. Small
      6. Testable
   4. Well-written acceptance criteria benefit multiple stages and stakeholders of a project, including:
      1. Clarifying the scope for the project team
      2. Assisting the development/implementation team
      3. Ensuring testers know what should be tested
   5. Scaled Agile Center of Excellence’s basic principles are:
      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. 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%.
      4. Low-priority user stories which couldn’t be completed will be moved to the next release window.
6. User Acceptance: 8%
   1. Business Analyst key responsibilities in user acceptance testing (UAT)
      1. Support business SMEs to writes the UAT test scripts (sometimes BA also writes test scripts)
      2. Identifying UAT testers
      3. Validate test data setup
      4. Lead and coordinate the UAT
      5. Triage UAT defects
      6. Obtain sign-off from UAT testers
   2. Who participates in the UAT?
      1. End users
      2. Subject matter experts
      3. Product/Project Manager
      4. Product Owner
      5. Scrum Master ( agile)
      6. Business Analyst
      7. QA team
      8. Developers
   3. Sandbox access consideration

      

   4. Testing Types
      1. Unit Testing – Unit Testing is a staple of software development in any language or platform and has to be done on each unit of code in a single component. Unit Tests are done at the developer level, checking to ensure it works.
      2. Functional Testing – Functional tests check the code against the system as a whole, ensuring that the system is operating as you would expect in the later use of the application. A QA team usually performs functional tests.
      3. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – UAT is performed by business end-users who can define the process and method the new code is supposed to represent. UAT is done in the development stage in a sandbox.
      4. Regression Testing – A regression test is a standard test you can run to see if anything has inadvertently broken something. A regression test ensures changes are not affecting existing features and can be automated. A QA team usually handles regression tests.
      5. System Testing /E2E Testing – System and E2E testing are critical in orgs with many managed packages or APIs. A few different kinds of people can perform E2E testing, but usually, a Salesforce Expert, an external consultant, or a system owner of an API-connected solution performs these tests.
      6. Performance Testing – Performance testing is about establishing confidence by observing how a system performs while it’s being used, often in increasing amounts of utilization. 
   5. When dealing with large data volume (LDV) scope of UAT tests should include
      1. Volume 
      2. Average vs. Peak performance
      3. Load simulation pattern and equipment
      4. Actual production data vs. test data
      5. Timing of the tests
   6. Tips for User Acceptance Test Preparations for Performance Test
      1. Test environment setup
      2. Static load simulator
      3. Dynamic request simulator
      4. Metrics and measuring performance

Formative Assessment:

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