Salesforce Certified Business Analyst Breakdown and Study Guide

Maybe you’ve just passed your Salesforce Certified Administrator exam, or maybe you want to brush up on your business acumen. Regardless of if you’re a Big Four Consultant or an accidental admin I believe that anyone can benefit from studying for this certificate to get a better understanding of what a Business Analyst does, and how you can integrate that knowledge into your box of Salesforce tools. Other Salesforce certifications may focus more on the ‘how’, but the Business Analyst Certification allows you to learn how to elicit and understand the ‘why.

Per Salesforce “Business Analysts understand business needs, capture requirements, and collaborate with stakeholders to develop Salesforce solutions that drive business improvements.” Further, “Candidates should have knowledge of Salesforce best practices and be proficient in planning discovery activities, mapping business processes, eliciting requirements, and writing user stories.”.

This exams only prerequisite is the completion of the Salesforce Administrator Certification (which for those who haven’t completed that yet I’ve previously posted about some resources I used here. The exam itself is a 65 question multiple choice (select one out of three options) test, with a passing score of 72% (it is worth noting that most other SF Certs have a 65% pass mark). You can see the full exam guide here.

The recommendation and Trailhead assumes that you have the following experience:

• 2 years of Business Analyst experience, including demonstrated success owning and delivering business process improvements

• 2 years of Salesforce Platform experience

Which I don’t (and if you’re reading this you probably don’t either).

For those coming to this certificate with a BA or Consulting background I think the Salesforce provided Trailmix, and Certification Prep will be enough to have you feeling confident about this exam. One potentially unexpected outcome of this certificate is that it mostly ignores Salesforce, and looks at Business Analysis more broadly.

For those without the recommended experience I’d recommend doing some extra learning first before starting the trailhead. I’d recommended familiarising yourself with version control software tools like Git/GitHub and the differences between Waterfall/Scrum/Kanban. Atlassian (creators of Jira, and Trello amongst others) provide great information and comparisons about Scrum, Kanban, and Agile project management more broadly. Previously I’ve learnt about Scrum and Agile methodologies through scrum.org which I’ve written about here so didn’t spend much time on these topics.

Source: Atlassian

Atlassian also has a great primer on Git and version control software that you can read here. The Business Analyst Certificate Trailhead does contain modules on these topics but I find Atlassian goes into more depth and provides some further considerations.

There were multiple questions on User Stories - I found the Trailhead modules fine for getting to know the format. I recommend to practice writing multiple example user stories yourself so you become familiar with the formula and learn to identify common mistakes, and once comfortable include acceptance criteria. I wrote so many practice stories I almost dreamed about it. Business Process Mapping is another big part of the certificate - get familiar with the differences between process mapping, journey mapping and other diagrams. You’ll learn what UPN, SIPOC, and more acronyms stand for! Thankfully all of this is covered well in the Trailmix.

By the time you’ve done you should feel confident in describing and actioning the implementation lifecycle.

Source: Salesforce Ben

I’m a big fan of using the Pomodoro technique for studying, and exam preparation - taking small breaks frequently to keep me on task. I’ve found Focus on Force to be one of the best offerings for Salesforce exam preparation. Their Business Analyst practice tests are no exception to the rule and well worth their cost which you can find here.

Beyond Focus on Force I found this blog post by Dinesh Yadav a great summary/cheat sheet for revision, as was this similar blog post by Santanu Boral which you can find here.

If you are someone who learns better through shadowing and video instead of reading I highly recommend the Clicked Salesforce Learning Experience playlist on YouTube which is a goldmine of content being delivered by subject matter experts (including Vanessa Grant who was part of the creation team for this certificate), and great examples of role playing various interactions with stakeholders. You can find the playlist here with some 67 videos for you to learn from.

For anyone looking to undertake any Salesforce certificate I recommend joining the SFXD community on Discord. Beyond the fantastic tools and resources the community has made and shared, they have a frequently updated bot that tracks discount codes. You can summon the bot by typing ?discounts in the #botchat text channel.

Once you are feeling confident with your progress take the exam - good luck! Embrace failure if it happens and try again next time. Enjoy that reward when you get there. 

Tag me in your LinkedIn post when you get certified and I promise I'll be there to support your win!

Looking forward to seeing your certificate.

See you on the Trail.