A systems analyst is responsible for researching, planning, coordinating and recommending software and system choices to meet an organization's business requirements.
Systems analyst plays a vital role in the systems development process. A successful systems analyst must acquire four skills:analytical,technical,managerial and interpersonal.
Analytical skills enables the systems analyst to understand the organization and its functions which helps him/her to identify opportunities and to analyze and solve problems.
Technical skills helps systems analyst to understand the potential and the limitations of information technology.The systems analyst must be able to work with programming languages,various operating systems and computer hardware platforms.
Management skills helps the systems analyst to manage projects, resources, risk and change.
Interpersonal skills helps systems analyst to work with end users as well as with other analysts,programmers and other systems professionals.
Systems analysts may act as liaisons between vendors and the organization they represent. They may be responsible for developing cost analyses, design considerations, and implementation time-lines. They may also be responsible for feasibility studies of a computer system before making recommendations to senior management.
Basically a systems analyst performs the following tasks:
Interact with the customers to know their requirements
Interact with designers to convey the possible interface of the software
Interact/guide the coders/developers to keep track of system development
Perform system testing with sample/live data with the help of testers
Implement the new system