The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology (AI) has provided business analysts with access to a whole new set of powerful tools that they can use to enhance their capabilities and open up new possibilities for improved efficiency and better decision-making.
This is especially true for Large Language Model (LLM) AI tools
, particularly ChatGPT, a tool that has already proven to be more than capable of providing numerous benefits for professionals in this field. ChatGPT can assist business analysts in various stages of their work, including gathering, refining, and analysing requirements, data exploration and analysis, process modelling, documentation and report writing, stakeholder communication and management, and many more. The possibilities are almost endless.
However, to get the most out of ChatGPT, business analysts should learn how to properly engineer their prompts, so they can get the most valuable responses, suitable for the needs and goals of their current project. Below, we will explore how to best use ChatGPT prompts for business analysis to get the desired results and provide an extensive set of examples for various tests a BA may encounter on a certain project.
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Best Practices for Creating ChatGPT Prompts for Business Analysis
Before moving on to specific examples, we’ll explain some of the strategies and best principles on how to create good ChatGPT prompts for business analysis. Failing to properly engineer a proper ChatGPT prompt may result in inaccurate, too broad, or even completely useless answers by the AI. On the other hand, setting up the right prompt can help you gain valuable insights and save a lot of time.
- Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve with certain prompts. This will help you set the right prompts. If you don’t ask a clear question and fail to provide proper background and context, ChatGPT may create context on its own, leading to misleading answers.
- Carefully design your prompt, taking care that you use the right words and provide AI with the right context for your ask. In some cases, this may mean that you’ll have to ask ChatGPT some introductory questions before delivering the desired prompt. Keep your prompts as specific and focused as possible, avoiding vague and broad questions.
- When setting up the prompt, look to do it in a natural language. Avoid using jargon that is too technical or complex.
- Once you’ve submitted the prompt and received the answer, carefully evaluate the response provided by the AI. ChatGPT is still far from perfect and may make mistakes and provide responses based on faulty reasoning. Make sure to use your critical thinking and identify any shortcomings in ChatGPT’s output.
- If you’re not happy with the response, reiterate and refine your original prompt to get the output you want. This may take several iterations, so you should try to be more specific and provide additional context each time you set a new prompt. It’s best to think of your interaction with ChatGPT as an ongoing conversation, where each response may get you a bit closer to the perfect output.
- Feel free to experiment, refining your prompts and trying new ones over time as you use ChatGPT. Based on the quality of the responses you get, you’ll be able to fine-tune your questions and get better information from the AI.
ChatGPT Prompts for Business Analysis
ChatGPT can help business analysts in almost all stages of their work, although it will handle some tasks with more success than others.
Below are some useful ideas for ChatGPT prompts business analysts can use, sorted by the groups of tasks. Of course, some prompts will require some adjustments based on the domain and specifics of a certain project.
Gathering and Refining Requirements
Business analysts are likely to find ChatGPT very useful when it comes to gathering and refining business requirements for a certain project. For starters, it can create a perfectly suitable requirements template, which, if nothing else, will save you some time and allow you to focus on more meaningful work.
Once you have a requirements template, you can go a bit deeper, asking ChatGPT for requirements in certain categories, such as functional and non-functional requirements, and providing examples for each group of requirements.
You can also ask GPT to provide examples of requirements that address certain events. In addition, with the right prompts, ChatGPT can be used to create other sorts of requirements documentation, such as use cases or functional specifications or business rules, as well as help you prepare for stakeholder interviews and requirements elicitation.
Still, there are certain limits to how deep ChatGPT can go in these tasks, but, nevertheless, the responses you get should be a great starting point for the process of requirements gathering and analysis.
Here are a few useful ChatGPT prompts that you can use for this stage of your workflow as a business analyst. Remember that it’s always a good idea to provide ChatGPT with some context and information on the specific project and the domain in question.
- “Can you provide a business requirements template
?” - “Can you provide some examples of functional requirements for this project?”
- “What are the main pain points or challenges that the stakeholders are currently facing?”
- “What are the primary objectives that the stakeholders want to achieve with this project?”
- “Create a functional specification based on ?”
- “What are the essential features and functionalities that the end-users expect from the new system?”
- “Provide more details about the target audience for the new software.”
- “What are the specific business rules and logic that need to be implemented in the system?”
- “What are the specific performance requirements or benchmarks that the system needs to meet?”
Obviously, the exact prompts will depend on a specific project and what exactly you’re trying to achieve through your interaction with ChatGPT.
Writing Use Cases and User Stories
ChatGPT can also be very helpful when it comes to formulating use cases and user stories to capture certain requirements from a user’s perspective.
Business analysts can leverage ChatGPT prompts to gain a better understanding of user needs and create more accurate and well-defined requirements.
Another thing ChatGPT can assist with is creating verification criteria and validating and refining use cases and user stories so they’re clear, unambiguous, and well-aligned with the desired outcome.
- “Create a user case for the login feature.”
- “Could you describe a login feature in the form of a use case?”
- “Create a use case that outlines how a customer can update their personal information in the online profile.”
- “Please provide an example use case for a hotel reservation system that covers both the booking and cancellations.”
- “Generate a use case that describes how a manager can review and approve leave requests from their employees.”
- “Write a user story for a mobile banking app where a customer can check their account balance and make payments.”
- “A sales representative wants to be able to track the status of my leads so that they can prioritise follow-ups. Create a user story for this requirement.”
- “Please provide an example user story for an e-commerce website where a user can add multiple items to their cart and proceed to checkout.”
- “Please review the use case I’ve written for the log-in process and suggest any improvements or missing steps.”
- “Review the user story I’ve created for the inventory management system and suggest how I can adjust it to make it more concise and focused on value to the user.”
- “What are the acceptance criteria for the notification feature?”
- “Can you list the different user roles and explain how they interact with the system?”
Data Exploration and Analysis
One of the fundamental aspects of a business analyst’s role is data analysis. BAs typically work with massive amounts of data and ChatGPT can help them explore and gain a better understanding of these complex data sets.
Through prompts, business analysts can ask ChatGPT to help them pick the right analysis technique, extract meaningful insights from data, or identify certain patterns or anomalies.
- “Identify the key trends or patterns from the collection of sales data for the first two quarters of the year?”
- “Could you identify any anomalies in the customer behaviour dataset?”
- “Which variables have the strongest correlation with customer satisfaction?”
- “What are the top ten products that contribute the most to the company’s yearly revenue?”
- “Can you suggest statistical models or techniques that would be suitable for predicting sales forecasting?”
- “Can you suggest suitable visualisation techniques to analyse the customer sentiment in the customer feedback dataset?”
- “Please help me interpret the anomalies in the dataset and their potential impact on the analysis.”
- “What statistical test should I use to determine if there is a significant difference in sales between two different demographic groups of customers?”
- “What strategies can I use to identify and address data inconsistencies in the customer feedback dataset?”
Documentation and Report Writing
Another area where ChatGPT, with the right prompts, can help business analysts is maintaining documentation and report writing.
Concise and clear documentation, as well as well-structured and accurate reports, are the key to effective communication within the organisation.
ChatGPT can assist analysts by providing guidance on document structure, proofreading, or editing and refining text to make it more readable.
- “How can I structure the findings section of the report to effectively communicate the key insights?”
- “Can you give me a few examples of effective data visualisation techniques for presenting customer sentiment analysis?”
- “Could you review the report I provided and suggest any improvements and corrections in terms of grammar and readability?”
- “Can you suggest the best way to structure the executive summary of the report to effectively summarise the key recommendations?”
- “Can you help me structure the findings section so the analysis is presented logically and coherently?”
- “Please suggest an outline for the introduction section of the report to provide context and background information.”
- “Can you help me paraphrase a technical part of the document to make it more accessible to non-technical readers?”
- “Can you suggest alternative ways to present the sales performance data to highlight the key trends effectively?”
- “What structure would you suggest for a weekly project monitoring report intended for stakeholders?”
Stakeholder Communication and Presentations
Communication with stakeholders and presentation of findings and insights are among the key responsibilities of a business analyst.
Business analysts can leverage ChatGPT prompts to refine their communication skills and prepare for presentations and interviews. They can seek advice from GPT on how to best structure their presentation or even simulate an entire interview with a particular stakeholder.
With some previous context, you can put the ChatGPT in the role of either the business analyst or a certain stakeholder.
- “Can you suggest some effective ways to engage stakeholders during a project kickoff session?”
- “How can I present complex data analysis in a manner that is simplified and more understandable to non-technical audiences?”
- “Please suggest an outline for the presentation introduction to capture the stakeholders’ attention and set the context.”
- “Can you suggest alternative ways to present the sales performance data to highlight the crucial insights effectively?”
- “Please simulate a stakeholder asking difficult questions during the presentation, and provide some suggestions on how to respond effectively.”
- “Please generate potential questions stakeholders may ask regarding the financial forecast, and provide some guidance on responses.”
- “Generate potential discussion points to elicit stakeholder feedback and gather their insights on the proposed strategy.”
Continuous Learning and Professional Development
As the business analyst field is constantly evolving, analysts need to stay on top of current industry trends and up to date with the latest developments in the field.
Many analysts have found ChatGPT to be a very valuable resource they can use to further their professional development and enhance their knowledge and capabilities.
Using the right prompts, BAs can ask ChatGPT for recommendations and reviews of relevant articles, books, or online courses. They can also engage in a conversation with the model and discuss various techniques or new technologies in business analysis.
Additionally, as they’re often in a position to take on projects in industries they’re not particularly familiar with, business analysts can use ChatGPT to gain some basic knowledge of that new domain.
- “Can you recommend some books or articles to enhance my skills in scenario and process modelling?”
- “What are some of the recommended online courses or webinars on agile methodologies for business analysts?”
- “Can you recommend resources that provide insights into the latest industry trends in data visualisation?”
- “Let’s discuss the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating AI techniques into business analysis processes.”
- “How Does the Six Thinking Hats Technique Work?”
- “Please provide an overview of the key principles and concepts in supply chain management.”
- “What are the fundamental processes involved in the healthcare industry?”
- “What are the emerging trends and innovations in the insurance industry?”