Tips for getting on the career path as a Business Analyst

1. Decide whether being a business analyst would suit you. The type of qualities required are:

• Communication skills
  • E.g. You need to be able to contact people that you haven’t met before and at different levels of authority and have meetings with them or run workshops.
• Likeability
  • E.g. You need to be able to get people to want to help you as you will need them to do things for you but have no management authority.
• Tenacity
  • E.g. Typical challenges are working out where to start, getting stakeholders time, keeping everyones attention and focus in workshops, persuading stakeholders to part with information they may not want to give or see the point of, overcoming ambiguity, chasing sign offs of documentation etc.
• Adaptability
  • E.g. Different stakeholders will have different behaviours and beliefs. There will be a need to change your approach when dealing with high level or more detailed people etc.
• Ability to apply techniques and write things down
  • E.g. You may not have the business knowledge yourself so there are techniques to ensure you ask the right questions and techniques for drawing diagrams to obtain information. It is also just as important to not only be able to elicit requirements but also to document them appropriately.

2. Find out as much as you can about what a Business Analyst does by reading articles and books on the subject to understand more about the roles and techniques.

Previous articles on this site that provide an overview are:

The value of business analysis to firms

 Business analysis involvement through the project lifecycle

A guide to self evaluation of Business Analysis skills

3. Try to get experience with working on projects to get an insight. This is especially useful if you are used to BAU (Business as usual) work to see whether project work is an area that would interest you as it doesn’t suit everyone.  Working in the project arena often means continual learning and new environments.

4. Ask for permission and volunteer to help someone who is already a business analyst and ask them to be your mentor. Find out whether you can shadow them and whether they will allow you to do some of the tasks with their guidance and supervision.  

5. There are also qualifications available that will provide and evidence capability. There are currently 2 main professional bodies.

• British Computing Society (BCS)
• International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA)

6. There are also educational courses that include business analysis. These can be either full time or part time and may include practical experience in the work place.

7. Speak to your manager about what opportunities there are for moving to a business analyst role and what transferable skills you have.

Thoughts? Questions? Please share in the comments.