HOW YOUR CAREER BACKGROUND CAN HELP YOU BECOME A BUSINESS ANALYST

By Laura Brandenburg Lesson Objective: After completing this lesson, you ll be able to identify strengths from your career background that will directly support your transition into business analysis. HOW YOUR CAREER BACKGROUND CAN HELP YOU BECOME A BUSINESS ANALYST There are many misconceptions about what it takes to become a business analyst. Many assume that you must have an IT background or have specific domain experience. They start moving to get started as a business analyst and then they get stuck because these misconceptions arise through their job search. While any one of these misconceptions might be true for a specific BA job, they are not true of the career as a whole. While a specific job might be out of your reach as a potential BA, the career itself is not. In this topic, we re really going to go through some of the most common career backgrounds and a few of the more uncommon ones as well, and help you see how the qualifications and competencies you have developed in those roles will help you become a BA. As you listen to each role, listen for the transferable skills, and take note of what aspects each of these backgrounds have that might apply to you. Just because you don t have that specific career background in your history doesn t mean that it might not reveal some transferable skills that you didn t even know you had. Technical Writer Quality Assurance Professional Sales Professional Subject Matter Expert Manager Developer Business Analyst Insert Your Background Here... http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 1 of 8

DEVELOPERS CAN HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS First, let s talk about developers because a lot of people think developers have the most seamless path into business analysis. In essence, a developer is a professional who implements a software solution. They build the technology. They might also design the technology. They might do a bit of the testing of the technology, but they definitely build the technology. Strengths Developers Bring They have a strong technical aptitude. They are going to understand technical solutions. They have strengths in analyzing problems and figuring out how to fix things and know that analysis might be a bit different from what a BA does. Typically, a developer will have exposure to IT projects and often have worked in an environment that had the full software development lifecycle. They ve been exposed to all pieces of that project lifecycle, and that is a key strength that they bring to the table. They may have experience working with requirements documentation from BAs or sometimes even working directly with the business stakeholders to understand their requirements. So in organizations that don t have BAs or have a weak BA team, sometimes the developer steps in and fills some of that role. Challenges Developers Face The main challenge I see for a developer is that they need to learn instead of being IT, they need to learn to represent IT, and they need to learn to talk in business terms. So often a developer will bring IT terms to the table and this confuses and frustrates business users. They need to take a step across that bridge to the business and really learn to talk in their terms and talk their language. Developers have a strong exposure to IT solutions, to the project lifecycle, to how software gets built, and if they can learn to step into the business side, they have a lot of strengths that will help them be very strong business analysts. SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS ARE OFTEN ALMOST BAS Now, almost on the opposite side from the developer is the subject matter expert. Oftentimes, these people are almost BAs. A Subject Matter Expert is a professional who represents their department on projects. Strengths Subject Matter Experts Bring Over time, the Subject Matter Expert has become an expert user in a system or an expert in a process; often both. They often have the natural ability to understand how systems and processes work. They move from doing the day to day work within a department to being the person who is the go-to person http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 2 of 8

when issues come up or changes get made because they see the big picture within the context of their department. Often, they ll gain alignment within their department about a new set of changes. So if the software is going to change or if the process needs to be updated, they might be leading that project, or at least participating in that project in some way. They often come back and do some training. There might be other participants in their department who need to be educated about how a change is going to impact them. They might build process documentation and train the business. They help the business realize that change. Challenges Subject Matter Experts Face The challenges I see with a subject matter expert is that they need to learn to step back from their role in the day-to-day of the business and represent the business. So instead of being in the business, a business analyst represents the business. This means you take a bit of a longer-term or big picture view, and are in a position to negotiate between multiple business units or between business and IT and not just solely represent your business unit as the primary user. The other challenge is sometimes a lack of experience with the more formal analysis models. Where a business analyst might write up a use case or do a process flow, often the subject matter expert represents their knowledge of their department in a much less formal way. Starting to do formal requirements documentation and process modeling is at first a challenge, but something that your mindset will naturally help you learn as you see what those tools are. You are probably doing some of the techniques intuitively today, and just learning a bit of the formal structure can help you put a little bit more formal thought behind it. TECHNICAL WRITERS DO SOME BUSINESS ANALYSIS Technical writers create technical manuals and how-to documentation for software systems. Strengths Technical Writers Bring As a technical writer, you probably have clear written communication skills and you re able to understand how the systems work and can communicate this to a user. You might sit down with a system that you ve never used before, figure out how it works, what the work flow is, and then document that for the user. This takes a bit of analysis. So you probably are doing something very similar to what a business analyst would do to understand the as-is. You might also interview or probe to identify requirements for help documentation. As a technical writer, consider who your stakeholder is for your help documentation. How do you know what good help documentation looks like for that person? How did you elicit that understanding and identify what those requirements would be? That might be a good place for you to look for a few BA experiences as well. http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 3 of 8

As a technical writer, you typically have a very strong user mindset. You think about technology from the perspective of the people who will be using it. That is a very critical BA skill because it helps you get into the mind of your stakeholders, of your sponsor, of people who use technology. That s something you can build on as a business analyst. Challenges Technical Writers Face You need to make that switch from a post-project wrap up role to more of a pre-project analysis role. As a technical writer, you re probably involved at the end of the project, while as a business analyst you are going to be involved before the project. You need to think about how to take those analysis and communication skills and apply them up front. This also means that you need to be a bit more proactive, maybe, in scheduling your work. You might have a deadline three or four weeks down the road and you need to make sure you re building a plan to accomplish a certain set of deliverables by that timeframe. As a technical writer, you re probably used to being a little bit more reactive in responding to what is built, and being available to adjust things on the fly. Typically, a BA will be a little bit more proactive, and that s something we re going to talk about a lot in Module 4. TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN: QA AND BA The next path is my personal favorite because it s how I became a BA. It s from quality assurance (QA) into business analysis. Really, QA and BA professionals are two sides of the same coin. A QA professional typically is responsible for verifying the system works as expected, that it meets its requirements. Strengths QA Professionals Bring You ll have exposure to requirements documentation. You will be testing from those requirements. You ll know what makes up a good requirements document from the QA perspective. And you will probably be exposed to at least part, if not all, of the project lifecycle. Just like a developer, that s a very valuable set of experiences to have. You understand quality. You look at quality from multiple perspectives. You understand the user perspective, the larger business perspective. You negotiate those perspectives in terms of creating your test plans and choosing what scenarios you re going to test and what tests you re going to execute. Often QAs will find themselves in a bit of a liaison role when it comes to the issues that they find. As you discover defects or bugs in the system, you might facilitate the business prioritization of those issues and manage some of those changes that happen during the implementation lifecycle. http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 4 of 8

Sometimes defects can be a bit of a gray area. One person s bug is another person s new requirement, and you might find yourself dealing with some of those smaller requirements issues because the BA has moved on to another project or is unavailable or just doesn t have the time to deal with it. A lot of times, a QA does some requirements management when changes come up after implementation. Look at those pieces of your background and consider how much analysis you did to resolve each issue. How much analysis did you do to find the cause of that issue? Because that s a very strong competency as a BA. How much communication did you do to really facilitate prioritization and a common understanding of bugs and issues for that product? Challenges QA Professionals Face The key challenge for a QA is, like the technical writer, because you re involved mostly at the end of the project, you need to switch from reactive to proactive. So instead of reacting to what s there, you need to be proactive about what is going to be there. Part of that is making the switch from What s built? to What can be built? How can we solve this problem? We have a green field. What are we going to do as opposed to, Well, we have this system, how can we make it work? Another big challenge, at least for me as a QA professional, was to let go of the perfectionism. QA professionals tend to want to fix every bug and solve every problem, especially when you make the switch into the BA role. You might, at first, see this as the opportunity to fix all the bugs that you thought nobody else was ever paying attention to. You ll realize that BAs have trouble getting rid of that perfectionism as well. It can become a bit of an Achilles heel for a BA. I would say that the four we ve talked about so far QA, development, technical writing, and subject matter expert are by far the most common career paths into business analysis. But that doesn t mean that they re the only paths. YES, EVEN SALES PROFESSIONALS HAVE TRANSFERABLE SKILLS Next I want to talk about something that might be a bit unexpected, and that s a sales professional. Yes, even sales professionals have some transferable skills. I would define a sales professional as someone responsible for identifying potential customers, bringing in new business, and maintaining existing business. Strengths Sales Professionals Bring You develop an expertise at asking good questions and understanding what customers really want. This is a core business analyst skill: finding What does this business person really want? Not What are they telling me they want? but What do they really want? The salesperson will hone that technique because what they really want is also What will they buy? So you re going to have that common experience to leverage. http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 5 of 8

Sales professionals are also going to have skills presenting a solution in terms the customer understands. Customers typically come from all different business backgrounds, all different organizations. They have their own terms. They need to understand your solution in terms that they understand. A very effective salesperson is going to help them learn to talk about their solution in those terms and will be able to be that bridge; that common language to frame the solution appropriately. Often, a salesperson identifies all of the stakeholders within that customer organization. Most big products are not bought by one person. A committee or a group of people makes the decision and each has their stake in that sale. The salesperson will learn to balance those stakes and identify those people who have the influence. How is this decision going to be made? This is a really core strength for a business analyst to develop and it s something that we often don t see until people become more senior business analysts. It s something that salespeople probably have right out of the gate. Challenges Sales Professionals Face Some of the challenges a salesperson might face are being able to dig into the details the level of detail that they need to make a sale might not be quite the same as the level of detail needed to build a product. You re going to have to become much more detailed-oriented, typically, as a business analyst. Also, they will need to learn to work independently. The BA role is social to an extent. You are in meetings with stakeholders. You re having a lot of conversations, but there is also a lot of time that you spend doing independent work. So the social aspect of sales, when you compare a business analyst role to a sales role, BA might feel much much less social than a sales role. Then, of course, is focusing on written documentation. Most salespeople I ve worked with found that proposals were the most tedious part of the job. For those sales professionals, maybe, business analysis isn t a good fit. But if you like that written documentation, you like crafting the proposal, business analysis might be a good fit in that perspective. You might have some experience doing relevant written documentation. THERE AND BACK AGAIN FROM MANAGER TO BUSINESS ANALYST One final path -- we re going to talk about the path from a manager to a business analyst. I like to call this the There and Back Again, path. It s another path that I have taken in my own career journey. When I m talking about a manager, you can be a manager in IT, in operations; any area where you had functional responsibility for a department. You had people who reported to you. Strengths Managers Bring As a manager, you learn how to scope solutions, to solve problems. Specifically, how to organize people and processes to solve those problems. The core piece that a manager brings to business analysis is that the manager typically does not solve the problem by jumping in, rolling up their sleeves, and doing the work. The manager helps other people organize and follow a process to solve that http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 6 of 8

problem and to do the work. As a BA, that s a very important skill to have because very typically, you re not doing the work. You re not using the systems that you design. You re not doing the development work. You re kind of this intermediary and there s a bit of a management component to being that intermediary. As a manager, a lot of those skill sets that you use to influence and organize the people that reported to you will be very, very applicable. Often as a manager, you re also the liaison for your department with other departments. If your department needed to coordinate a hand-off point with another department, you may organize that with the other manager. You might define those integration points and that can be a key element of business analysis responsibilities. You probably have experience presenting information to upper management. So how do you make the case to add a new staff person to your department? How do you make the case to buy a new system? All of that business case type work is very relevant as a senior business analyst. Those are opportunities to look for experiences doing analysis and modeling that would be very relevant in your business analysis career. In the special case of an IT manager, I think often IT managers actually have a lot of business analysis responsibilities, especially if you re in an IT group that does not have a BA team. If you are working with the business to understand what they want out of a project and then communicating that to your developers on your team, in a developer management role, you re essentially filling the role of probably the BA along with the project manager. If that s how your IT group worked, you probably have a lot of experience as a BA, and more than you might think, just in terms of how you managed the team. Challenges Managers Face There are some challenges though in being a manager and coming back to business analysis, and I can speak to these from experience as well. One is learning to dig back into the details. Taking on analysis tasks. Implementation support tasks. Often as a manager, you come to rely on this ability to delegate that kind of stuff to somebody else on your team. As a business analyst, you often don t have anyone to delegate to, so you need to learn again to see things through to their conclusion and to do all the work that it takes to be successful on a project. The other big change is learning to influence without authority. Often, as a manger, you can delegate. You can control the process. You can dictate what the process will be. As a business analyst, you don t have that same dictatorial power, so to speak. You re managing up instead of down, and so you need to take the best of what you did as a manager when you were influencing your team or guiding your team instead of directing your team. Take those skills and try to build on them. http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 7 of 8

ANY PATH IS YOUR PATH TO BA So what do you take away from this lesson? The main thing I want you to take away by going through all of these different paths is really that any path can be your path to business analysis. You ll find transferable skills anywhere you look. We talked about six very different careers in this lesson, and you may or may not have had any of these careers in your background. It does not mean you do not have transferable skills. Listen back through. Take a look at the worksheet. Pay attention to the skills that are listed more so than the roles and find what you have in your background that s going to help you on your path to business analysis. WHAT S NEXT? Use the worksheet to identify some of the key aspects of your career background. Remember, even if a specific background does not crop up in your career history, it might trigger some transferable skills. So don t skip over something just because you think, I ve never done that. Every one of these roles might have something to help you. So consider your career background and how it s going to help you transition into business analysis. Go ahead and post your career background in the forums. A lot of you did introductions, but not everybody introduced themselves. Take some time to re-introduce yourself with your career background. This is going to help you start to make connections with people who maybe have common backgrounds to you and also different backgrounds than you. I would like you to start thinking about learning from sharing with each other. Go ahead; post your career background in the forums. Talk about what you found as relevant to business analysis. We ll see you in the next lesson. Copyright 2011 My Business Analysis Career All Rights Reserved. http://www.www.mybusinessanalysiscareer.com Page 8 of 8