Business Analysis – Job Search Story, Learnings, Target Approach of Multiple roles within Business Analysis

Story : Mentorship’s way to my first offer as a Senior Business Analyst

I decided to switch for a better position as a Business Analyst. I didn’t know what to do and how to do.I started to google on how to draft a BA resume, got a sample and tried replicating it and uploaded it in different job sites, resulting in no calls.I did try making few changes in resume,ending up in the same situation.

I hadn’t tried my hands at LinkedIn account which was created ages ago.I created a template message and attached a resume with it,connected with different people who worked as BA and HR by directly messaging each one of them to consider the profile for openings in their organisation and most of them hardly responded(realized it later this was a wrong method to network).

One day , a person responded with his number and said he is ready to talk on the following weekend to help me out.I was happy for the fact of getting a response for the number of messages sent. I called him at his convenient time on the weekend and greeted him and he was very warm with his response and started enquiring about my background and expectations. After listening out , fully he started suggesting ways to prepare for interview and changes to the profile which was reviewed earlier and shared his profile as a template.

I modified the CV as per his suggestions,which positively translated in getting recruiter calls with a few interviews successfully lined up.I attended them which resulted in rejections in the first few rounds ,i noted down the questions and was clueless on introspection.

I reached out to the him to understand where I went wrong and to my surprise, he invited me to his house to discuss.I went to his house the following weekend in the morning and we started discussing about my interview rounds and he listened to me completely,corrected me where i went wrong and how as a BA should those be handled.The discussion lasted too long that the time was past noon and his mom invited us for lunch i was initially hesitant but he comforted me saying it’s okay you can “feel at home”, which eased me and we had lunch with his family which was a very good time.After sometime ,when i was about to leave he gifted me something and i was inquistive on what could it be ?

I asked if i can unwrap it, to which he gladly agreed and i couldn’t believe my eyes it was the book which i had been exploring quite sometime back and that came as a gift to me and the book name is “How to Start a Business Analyst Career” written by Laura Brandenburg .He asked me to finish it in a week or two ,to understand the different aspects of role and grasping the concepts of the book will help clearing the interviews and i obliged.

I have to thank my good-luck, calls kept coming later on and i started improving my performance in the interviews. But there were a few glitches in the last rounds with some companies due to my notice period and i had to let them go.To improve my handson skills,i took a small break in giving interviews. During this time i was in touch with him and discussed many topics/use-cases and how to approach them as a BA .

Finally one day lady luck smiled. I was preparing for this D-Day all these days and had a great interview comprising of four rounds(including the director round) which went positively. The offer was released in the next two days and for this mail to be in my inbox it took one full year.

I decided to tell him in person t hat evening which happened to be his wedding reception.This day is definitely an unexpected co-incidence and once i got onto the stage I greeted him and opened my offer news to him.He was more than happy for me and we started a great life thereafte

Learnings : Inferred as a Business Analyst while pursuing the role

1) Always question everything for which is being directly communicated to you,don’t accept/assume anything as face value and delve deeper until it makes sense.

2) Have an open mind and don’t think only your way is the only way and there are N ways for a solution to the problem so think,brainstorm and come to a final conclusion.

3) Always the end-result will be used by the customer so please put the end-customer in your mind when you progress through your analysis for a requirement.

4) As a BA we need to have the breath and depth of knowledge and experience and no of years is never an indicator of a Senior Business Analyst.

5) A Senior Business Analyst should have the ability to forsee the problems which comes through experience having dealt with multiple projects/issues revolving them and it helps project manager to manage the requirement risk in the project.

6) Senior Business Analyst should have ability to plan out the analysis portion of the project which will be divided among the junior analysts to work upon.

7) Business Analyst should demonstrate the below habits

• Being an Effective Communicator –
• Excellent Facilitator
• Constructive Criticism Giver
• Be Analytical
• Requirement Detailer
• Rapport Builder
• Influencer Business Analyst
• Problem Solving
• Summariser
• Dynamic and Fast Paced
• Critical Thinker
• Assertive Business Analyst
• Strategic Business Analyst
• Creative Business Analyst
• Forward Thinking Business Analyst
• Persistent Business Analyst
• Consistent Business Analyst
• Continuous Learning Business Analyst
• Mentoring Business Analyst
• Marketing Business Analyst

Types of Projects

IT Projects

Projects in this category might be dealing with improving the IT system so a Senior Business Analyst will have to learn the technology,Business challenge faced by the customer and should come out with the ideal solution

Operation Projects

Projects in this category will be dealing with the improvement of process flow and Business Analysts will be prepare the AS-IS flow and prepare the TO-BE flow by reviewing the options and drive the project until implementation.

Data-warehouse projects

Projects in this category are useful for trend analysis,forecasting and competitive analysis where a BA to bring a solution from different sources and bring it in a format which will help making them complex decisions.

Infrastructure Projects

Projects in this category are internal upgrades to the hardware,platforms or tools to improve the technology that supports the Business.

Web-Development Projects

Projects in this category are the users who expects feature plenty websites and applications accessible with any browser and any places.

Different BA Roles Definition and Target Role Approach Suggestions

Business Analyst Role – Business Focused

• Understanding the needs of multiple stake holders
• Facilitating the negotiation of requirements amongst multiple stake holders
• Identifying the AS-IS and TO-BE state of Process in Business
• Helping the Business Stake Holders envision the future and how will their work will need to change the support .

System Analyst Role

• Creating, Analysing and validating detailed functional specifications
• Facilitating design sessions with implementation team to define the solutions
• Delivering elements of System Design including Rules for Data Migration, Business Rules, Prototypes or other related deliverables.

Business System Analyst

• Involves more in Technical/System Design and Coding with the BA skills
• Types of info systems, for eg: transaction processing systems, decision support systems, knowledge management systems, learning management systems, database management systems, and office information systems.

Industry Focused Business Analyst Roles

Example of BA for a Industry based Focused Role

A person A comes in as a Business Analyst role in the industry with a technical background and after developing solid work relationship with her stakeholders they advised to advance her career to acquire domain knowledge in insurance industry and she decided to do pursue an academic degree in insurance which she needed to know her customers perspective.

Below are some of the Questions to consider before pursuing this role

1) Passion for your current industry ?

2) Would you like to have exp across multiple industries or build a professional expertise within a specific industry?

3) Are you willing to invest time and money necessary to build the expertise ?

4) State of Industry in Five, Ten or Twenty Years ?

5) If your chosen industry declines and the job market no longer provides the right type of employment what are the parallel industries your knowledge and expertise are valued ?

Common Industries are Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, Logistics, Oil and Gas, Real Estate,Tele-Communication and Travel(Open ended please add to the list)

Tools Specific Business Analyst Roles

Few BA jobs requires expertise in some tools like ERP,CRM and accounting systems which is a part of Stakeholder workflow. Organizations deploy the tool initially and focus on leveraging the tool to meet organizational needs which involves importing data and supporting administrative activities

Below are some tools that a BA maybe expert in

• Great Plains
• Infusion Soft
• Microsoft Sharepoint
• QuickBooks
• Salesforce
• SAP

Background exp as User, SME or implementer of an application qualifies you as a BA for specific tool or process.

Designations can be BA/PM/Implementation Engineer

Below are some of the questions to consider before pursuing this role

1) Would expertise in a specific application or tool elevate your position in your organization ?

2) Would expertise in a specific application or tool make you more marketable for a broad range of jobs in which you are interested ?

3) Do you want to see tangible outcomes from your efforts such as improvements to a business process or customization of a tool to meet a specific user’s needs ?

Product Business Analyst

BA in this space creates customer facing software products like web-based applications and downloadable software applications and the primary stakeholders are product and marketing groups

They are also responsible for bridging the gap between product/marketing group and the internal processes needed to support the product in customer service and accounting.

They are frequently involved as observers and the amount of interaction is restricted to internal stakeholders and there are occasions presenting them with direct end-user feedback, beta tests, usability tests and demos.

Below are some questions to consider this role specialization

1) Are you willing to take the hypothetical journey with your product and marketing team concerning what the customer wants ?

2) Are you willing to re-work your product concepts and requirements based on customer feedback?

3) Does the idea of building something new that fills a need for users might not even fully understand yet excite you ?

4) Do you like working with innovative people who are focused on achieving big visions ?

Business Process Analyst

Business changes welcomes business process changes ,please find the example below

Organizations decides to invest in how it does business in order to optimize organizational efficiencies or deliver increased customer satisfaction

Above scenario involves changes that has scope, requirements which may involve supporting application changes too which is not centered around the development of a new application.

BA in this space leads the efforts to identify, finds ways to improve the Business Process Changes or involving new processes from the scratch and the key monitoring factors would be Success of the change, ROI for the Business Operating System.

BPM is one way that is used by BA to come to an understanding the problem is solved

Below are some of the questions to consider for this role

1) Is your passion tied to see new systems up and running ? Will you enjoy identifying solutions that has no tech component ?

2) Are you prepared to fully change ppl to make necessary changes to implement new improvements ?

3) Are you ready to apply your analysis and crititical thinking skills to a collection of people,process and systems ?

Business Analyst/Quality Assurance Engineer

Another common blend is of BA and QA can be seen on the premise that who defined the requirements are in the best position to test it and this assumption is valid for smaller organizations and both functions a common value : A high-quality software.

QA involve the following responsibilities

1) Test Planning

2) Manual Software Testing

3) Automation Testing

4) Performance Testing

5) UAT

6) Process Audits

The hybrid role is very useful for shorter projects with few technology staff.

Below are the questions to consider before pursing a hybrid BA/QA role

1) Do you have a passion to see your project through to completion ?

2) Do you have the details orientation required to fully test all system functionality and confirm the overall quality of the system ?

3) Do you like the idea of working on a smaller team and wearing multiple hats ?

4) Could you forsee yourself transitioning from a combined BA/QA contributor to BA/QA lead or manager ? Experience in both professions could prepare to lead a team of BA and QA professionals

Project Manager/Business Analyst

Combining the two roles into one person means in addition BA will be accountable for scope ,schedule, cost and managing the implementation until deployment.

PM roles may involve the following responsibilities too

Project Planning/scheduling

Estimation

Status Reporting

Project Communication

Portfolio Management

This is a fulfilling role for PM or BA who are hoping to transition from one career to other.

Below are some questions to consider if you are in the role

1. What do you like about the role ?
2. Do you lean more towards BA or PM ?
3. Competencies of BA profession that you rely on most ?
4. Weak spots from the perspective of each profession ?
5. Questions to consider before pursuing this role
6. Do you see either BA or PM as the more senior role ?
7. How will taking on hybrid role will further your career ?
8. Do you have the diligence that it takes to swap the hats so that you can manage both the aspects of the trade ?
9. What PM skills do you need to build to be successful ?
10. What BA skills do you need to be successful ?

Business Intelligence Analysts

BI projects supports the strategic direction of an organization by enabling it to pro actively mine information to make better decisions. It is an increasingly viable career path for the BA with a strong background in data-intensive work who can analyze processes and communicate with business stakeholders

Below are some of the questions to consider before pursuing a specialty as a business intelligence analyst

1) Do you enjoy working with Data ?

2) Are you familiar with tools for Managing Data ? Can you use SQL commands to manipulate and report on Data ? Are you an expert in MS- Excel ?

3) Do you have experience working with any specific data warehousing or Business intelligence tools as an end-user or developer ?

4) Do you enjoy posing difficult questions and finsing creative ways that data can help your organization answer those questions ?

5) Are you interested in developing and maintaining technical expertise ?

Product Owner (Progressive Role for a businessanalyst )

PO is a role in agile software development who is the main #SPOC to the Business and Technical team for the priorities and scope of business requests and also responsible for accepting work from the team that gets completed in course of Sprints.

productowner may or may not be a productmanager but the scope of PO responsibilities might be for a customer facing #product or an internal business application or a combination of two and to fulfil it he must collaborate with the #stakeholders,understand the direction of the organization and how that impacts their product or system and understand the current capabilities and how the system supports the #business and organizations with integrated systems PO is supported by #scrum team with BA,UI,Dev,Testers

Questions to consider to pursue PO role

1) Are you comfortable being a SPOC for Business and technical team ?

2) Are you prepared to test and provide ongoing feedback within the sdlc ?

3) Do you have a keen sense of #prioritization on the lines of how to prioritize requests ?

4) Are you willing to consider project dependencies alongside business needs to develop a usefully ranked product backlog