Tag: Career

Best of BATimes: 4 Common Mistakes Made When Looking For Your First Business Analyst Job

Written by Paul Benn on September 22, 2022. Posted in Articles.

Published on: May 12, 2021

Often when I coach Business Analysts to land their first Business Analysis Job, I find that either they have no strategy and just throw darts and hope one of them hits the bullseye, or that they make some serious errors in how they approach it.

Darts does sometimes work, but not always (read my e-book on 13 strategies for your first Business Analysis Job) and if you do the following errors then it takes just as much wasted effort.

Let’s look at some of the common errors I see:

1. Don’t Have A Plan Or Strategy

Many prospective candidates who want to break into Business Analysis don’t have a strategy or plan. They send their CVs out to every job ad that mentions Business Analysis.

The first thing I look for when I get CVs for job ads is if the person takes the time to match his/her skills and CV to the position they are applying for.

A successful business strategy comes down to the following. First, what are your goals? Getting a job as a Business Analyst isn’t a SMART goal.

If we think of SMART then it comes to the A – achievable ask yourself is this achievable i.e. are you accountable for it.

I think it is important to have a goal you are accountable to achieve, no one else. Getting a job isn’t entirely in your control, is it? Someone else has to agree to it, and you don’t have that authority.

An appropriate goal would be something like:

“I will engage at least x recruiters per week with my CV”, or

“I will spend at least x hours a week looking for Business Analysis jobs that match my skill set”.

So let’s test those two through SMART:

S (Specific) – Yes, I am specific about what I wish to achieve.

M (Measurable) – Yes, I can measure how many

A (Achievable) – Yes, because I am responsible for them.

R(Realistic) – Yes, I can do either one.

T (Timeous) – They follow a schedule.

2. Your Resume Or CV Makes You Sound Like You Know You Know What A Business Does – Not That You Can Do The Job

When receiving a CV, I also look at it to determine if it seems like the person has a good understanding of what a Business Analyst does and if their experiences on the CV reflect that.

You don’t have to actually work as a Business Analyst to have real Business Analysis experience. You can have it regardless of what you do.

So I am looking at the title. Even the BABOK 3.0 says it is not about the title but the tasks when defining what a Business Analyst is.

It is the skills, the experiences, and the tasks and related activities that a candidate performed in that role that speak to their understanding of a Business Analyst, and that even the candidate can recognize the tasks they have performed that are applicable to a Business Analyst.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an employer and they told me about how many CVs they are rejecting just because the CV does not position a candidate with relevant Business Analysis task experience.

3. Your CV Must Speak The Language Of The Job You’re Applying For

You putting job before experience and not experience before job

A few days ago I was coaching a client who wanted to become a Business Analyst. They are in a non-Business Analyst role. I was trying to find out how much experience they have in tasks related to Business Analysis.

I asked what I could do to fill the gaps of experience. He said there are none and I will wait until I have a Business Analysis job to acquire the experience.

Here is the problem. Employers value experience. It is no different in any job application. Even doctors have to go through a community service program before they are allowed as practicing doctors.

You must embrace it, so think about how you can gain relevant experience at your current location.

I love the saying “We grow into opportunity”. Apply the skills now and learn, gain experience, and reflect that on your CV. Then the opportunity will come.

4. Focus On Certification

As a member of the IIBA, and CBAP certified individual, you are probably raising your eyebrows. Let me explain.

Certifying yourself is one good way to learn about Business Analysis, gain accreditation with peers, and boost your confidence. Yes, it does play a role in getting a job.

However, for an entrant in Business Analysis you must understand that employers want experience foremost. A certification doesn’t give you that. Just like a degree doesn’t give experience, it gives knowledge.

Do the certification to gain knowledge that you can apply to gain experience. Back to having the right goals again.

You need to put in the time and have SMART goals that you can achieve. Then, your strategy flows from there. It’s not an overnight thing either. Work at it, and adjust your strategy as you go.

When you have worked hard for your first opportunity, it will come.

For more strategies download my free e-book “13 strategies to getting your first Business Analysis job” – https://www.altitudejourney.com/ba-career-starter

Best of BATimes: Deal Breaking Soft Skills – The Essential BA List

Written by Usman Haq on July 7, 2022. Posted in Articles.

If you don’t have the right soft skills, you will struggle as a BA. Business domain knowledge and hard skills can be taught.

But finding a BA with the right set of soft skills can be a deal breaker for employers. And no, it’s not just the ability to read, write and converse. So which soft skills do you need?

Heads up

In this post I will be going over the soft skills which are essential for a BA.

Communication

Being a good listener, showing that you are patient and empathetic. Actually listening to the DEV team when they say a feature can’t be achieved. And being transparent with the business when explaining the same.
The ability to explain difficult (and sometimes simple) concepts/ideas/justifications (anything really) at all levels.

For example, walking through a business process with your DEV team. Clarifying business terms and ideas which they not be familiar with. Translating that into how the system works and explaining the value provided to the business.

Being able to articulate answers to questions clearly and clarify points on the spot. For example, not confusing the business with technical terms. Explaining concepts in a way that they will understand. Even if you don’t know the answer (rather than making something up) say that you will find out and get back to them later (and actually do that).

(Difficult) Stakeholder Management

Managing your emotions. Not all stakeholders play nice. You will always (always!) have one or more difficult stakeholders. You need to understand their motivations and why they are being difficult. The key is to maintain your professionalism and not let your emotions get the better of you.
Influencing. This also includes influencing without formal authority, persuasion and negotiating. Your reputation helps significantly here. If you are known to get things done and do what’s best for the company/client, your stakeholders will be more inclined to see things your way.

Managing Expectations

Showing you are in control. The business/stakeholders/your boss needs to know you have a handle on things. The worst thing you can do is pretend that everything is ok but in reality, it’s all falling apart. You must be clear about your workload and ability to deliver on time. If things are slipping, make sure you have evidence why. For example, maybe the business is not cooperating during requirement’s session. Possibly the vendor has screwed up somewhere. Maybe you have too much on your plate and you need to offload some work.

Diplomacy

The ability to understand office politics. For example, knowing who can get things done for and who always plays hardball.
Conflict resolution. Ideally conflict mitigation. Knowing when a situation can get out of hand and how to resolve it quickly.
Knowing what to say and to who. You will probably know certain people in your organization who you will want to avoid unless you really (really!) need to speak to them.
Having the ability to speak the truth and gain trust but also not “putting your foot in it”.
Learning how to tell people in power that they are wrong without them feeling like they are!
Not oversharing information to the wrong people and opening cans of worms which can impact you later.

Analytical Thinking

Being naturally good at working out problems. Being able to dig deep to find out the the root cause of an issue. (link to root cause)
Reading people/understanding people. The ability to sense when stakeholders are reserved and giving them the power to speak up and be heard.
When a stakeholder asks for something, being able to understand what they really want but are struggling to convey. Working out when people are masking the truth or too scared to speak up.

Adaptability

Handling pressure and stress. For example, working towards deadlines which might change at the last minute. And having to drop things and work on something else more urgent.
Dealing with WTF situations. For example, being dropped into a major production issue which is affecting the company’s revenue and the stakeholders are looking to you to get them out of it.

Relationship Building

More than just chit chat. You need to build effective working relationships by being known for:
- Getting things done
- Doing what you say you will do
- Going the extra mile when needed
Being able to call in favors based on trust
Knowing who to ask when you need answers to difficult questions
Know who to ask (if they don’t know) to find out who else might have the answer to your questions

Leadership On Demand

Leading a group of BAs (e.g. in your managers absence), leading workshops and coaching junior staff

In this post I went over the soft skills which are essential for a BA. Effective soft skills are often taken for granted. I was guilty of this myself early in my career. Over time I have worked hard to develop my soft skills (and still continue to do so). Are there any surprises in my list? Anything you would like to add?

Best of BATimes: How To Level Up Your Business Analyst Career

Written by Shanif Dhanani on July 6, 2022. Posted in Articles.

As a forward-thinking Business Analyst, this question is probably crossing your mind frequently.

You’ve established yourself in your career, but you may feel stagnant, eager for a change of scenery or simply ready to learn something new. In a competitive job market, Business Analysts need career know-how to navigate their next steps to keep their work fulfilling. Read on for simple steps you can take to take your Business Analyst career to the next level.

Understand Which Career Path You Want

To get an edge on advancing your career, you need to know where you want to end up. Business Analysts can take their careers in any one of a variety of directions. It all depends on your interests, strengths and opportunities.

As you move through your career, you’ll see that job titles and descriptions become more specialized and specific based on industry and skills. If you’re interested in the tech industry and you’re good at bridging technical work with communicating specialized ideas, a role as an IT Business Analyst could be a great fit. If you’d prefer to work in a variety of industries doing C-level consulting, you may consider a path into a Management Analyst position.

These are just a couple of examples of advanced and in-demand career paths for Business Analysts. Collabera and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers have detailed descriptions of directions that Business Analysts may take as they move throughout their careers.

Find A Mentor

A mentor is a great industry-specific resource for everything from day-to-day questions to giving insight into career decisions. Mentor-mentee relationships can begin organically, like with a trusted superior at work, or you can seek one out with a networking program. The International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) hosts local chapters where you can meet other analysts at different points in their careers, and they are forming a mentorship program for members.

A mentor should be someone you can see regularly, perhaps daily or weekly, and who can get to know you and your work habits well. Ideally your mentor is someone at your company, but a former colleague or even a professor can make a great mentor too. With a mentor, you’ll form an ongoing bond that will evolve as your career goals change.

Get A Career Coach

While mentors are typically fellow Business Analysts, career coaches are professionals who operate from a higher level as they help you seek out new opportunities. They may not be Business Analysts themselves, like a mentor would be, but they have plentiful resources for networking, optimizing your soft skills, and helping with resumes and cover letters.

Career coaches often focus on a local region where they have expertise on the job market. They meet with their clients for sessions lasting up to a couple of hours for a flat fee. Virtual and nationwide services are also available through organizations like TheMuse. If you plan on meeting with a career coach, make sure you have an idea of what you want to accomplish during your session and have documents like your resume and work history handy.

Take Classes

Your experience as a Business Analyst doesn’t have to come solely from formal education or on-the-job projects. Taking classes allows you to improve existing skills or add new skills to your resume through cheap and accessible means.

Business Analyst networking groups, like the IIBA, hold specialized workshops to help you hone your skills and learn from other Business Analysts. If you prefer self-directed learning, there are free online resources with high-quality trainings for Business Analysts, like LinkedIn Learning, where you can earn certificates to display on your profile. Coursera also has a free curriculum that specializes in business analytics with courses designed by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. These courses are great if you have a specialty field in mind where you may be lacking competencies.

Volunteer For Challenging Projects

If you feel stagnated in your current role, be on the lookout for opportunities to challenge yourself. Offer your input in projects that may be out of your usual comfort zone so that you can learn with skilled colleagues or step forward to tackle an issue you found in day-to-day processes. No matter the project, be sure to ask for help when you need it—that’s one of the best ways to grasp new concepts and skills. By taking on challenging projects, you’ll not only gain experience, but you’ll also establish yourself as someone who takes initiative.

Invest In Soft Skills

While it makes sense to devote your time to expanding your technical skills, don’t let soft skills fall by the wayside. Soft skills are qualities and interpersonal skills that are less “trainable” than hard skills, but translate to every role in every industry. Soft skills include conflict resolution, negotiation, communication skills and more. Usman Haq details important soft skills for Business Analysts in his article in BATimes. These skills are acquired and practiced daily, so be mindful of opportunities to hone them. LinkedIn Learning also has courses on soft skills so you can study at your leisure.

Are You Ready To Take Your Career To The Next Level?

Being a business analyst entails wearing a lot of hats. Conquer your career path by understanding your long term career goals, find a mentor and a career coach to help you reach those goals, take classes for both hard and soft skills and don’t be afraid to raise your hand for big projects. As you take these small steps, your future in Business Analytics will unfold.

Establish Your BA Practice from Scratch

Written by Lawrence Dong on June 15, 2022. Posted in Articles.

I have had the opportunity to establish BA practice within an organization a few times. After first time doing BA practice establishment, I have summarized a toolkit for myself, which in turn helped me setting up BA practice more consistently and effectively. If you are looking to set up your own BA practice, regardless of the organization that you work at, I believe you can benefit from this industry-agnostic BA Practice framework.

Element 1: Streamlined Onboarding

Well began is half done. Onboarding starts when offer is accepted. Trigger IT equipment and system access provision process as early as practical. Consider including any additional productivity equipment, such an as additional monitor, in the IT equipment provision.

The week before new joiner commencement, give them a call to understand their need, questions or concerns regarding onboarding. A phone call, although old-school, will give the new employee a good human-to-human style start. On or prior to day 1, send out all business unit wide email to announce the new starter.

Schedule one-on-one “causal catch up” at the start time on day 1, and project introduction meetings right after, to make new starter feel welcome and cared into new environment.

Make sure you do everything above in a remote-friendly way. Remote working is here to stay.

Element 2: 90-Days Action Plan

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Planning is always the best quality assurance. Set up a 90-day plan with the employee and you both stick to it. Focus on both performance and professional development. Regularly review progress with your new starter.

Element 3: Scheduled Communications

“A manager in need is a manager indeed.” (by Lawrence Dong). To avoid the situation that you are too busy to attend to your employees’ needs, schedule communications in advance so that you will have time for this important matter. Apart from the performance review conversations, the most obvious communications opportunities include:

Manager/Employee 1:1
Regular team meetings

Set them up in an appropriate and recurring way.

Element 4: BA Skill Matrix and Career Levelling

Business Analyst, like most other jobs, can and should be measured at work. For all the right reasons, it is critical to provide a fair and equal path to everyone. In order to give a chance to everyone’s career progression, it is fundamental for the manager to acknowledge the existence of different career levels and skill levels among their employees.

An example of career levelling could be:

Junior BA
Intermediate BA
Senior BA
Lead BA
Etc.

And an example of skill matrix could be:

Requirements gathering (1 out of 3)
Process mapping (2 out of 3)
Stakeholder management (3 out of 3)
Etc.

It is worthwhile to mention that the entry criteria of a particular career level may consist of more than skills and deliverables. Behaviors and collaboration are equally important, if not more.

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Element 5: Templates and Processes

Consistency is key to high quality customer experience. With BA templates and processes put in place, effectively there is less room for confusion in “what should be delivered and how”. Just make them easily accessible to the team.

Element 6: BA Services Catalogue

Business analysis work is sometimes dynamic and self-evolving. From a SDLC perspective, BA’s may benefit more than other from a well-defined BA Services Catalogue, whenever there are questions about the boundary of their roles and responsibilities.

Element 7: Knowledge Sharing

Sharing is caring. A regular knowledge sharing forum is a great addition to the regular team meetings, where team members can have the podium and be empowered. When a team member feels empowered, they will be more creative, and everyone involved will feel the positive chemistry.

Element 8: Coaching and Mentoring

“Coaching” and “mentoring” look similar, but a lot of people understand the obvious difference. Coaching is quite performance driven and short-term based, while mentoring is more development driven and long-term aimed. What’s subtle is that mentoring requires a none conflict of interest communication, which means people managers are least appropriate mentors to their direct reports. However, a great support people managers can to is to encourage and even help their employees find a good mentor.

Element 9: Training and Education

It is somehow a “moral contract” between permanent employees (and the likes) and the employer that training and education will be made available when and if required.

Therefore, it is the manager’s role to identify the required training and education opportunities that will strengthen the skills of individual employees.

I hope you have got some inspirations now to use the industry-agnostic BA Practice framework to guide your future team and capability management. If you demonstrate commitment to your employees by building a mutually beneficial BA Practice, consistency will be created, and employee engagement will be elevated. Win-win.

10 Soft Skills You’ll Need To Be A Successful Business Analyst

Written by Lee Templeton on June 1, 2022. Posted in Articles.

You might already know the technical skills you’ll need to be a great Business Analyst (BA) but do you know the essential soft skills? The role of a BA is deeply rooted in working with people. You’ll often be coordinating with stakeholders, running workshops, or presenting documentation to teams. To be a successful BA you’ll need the following soft skills to compliment the technical ones.

Rapport Building

You’ll need to build rapport with your stakeholders early in a project which you can do in many ways. While you’re waiting for a meeting to start ask your stakeholders questions like, “how is your day going?”, “what are you doing in the weekend?”. I’ve been in meetings where everyone is silent until the workshop begins. Take advantage of this time to build rapport by finding common interests, showing empathy or complimenting them on something such as a tie, a picture in the background of the Zoom or their promptness. This may seem trivial, but it will set you up to succeed as the project rolls out. Your stakeholders will be more likely to attend meetings/workshops, feel more comfortable contributing and start to champion the project and the changes you’re making within the organization.

Empathy

The Oxford Dictionary defines Empathy as ‘The ability to understand and share the feelings of another’. This is an important soft skill for a BA because we need to put ourselves in our stakeholders’ shoes to understand the problems we are trying to solve. To have empathy means to understand the pain points within the organizations Current State which is essential when we’re trying to fix them. Try to imagine how frustrating it must feel to have outdated, manual process at work when the technology we use at home is so advanced these days. Use empathy to speak to these pain points and get stakeholder buy in and drive user adoption.

Enthusiasm

Depending on the scope of your project Stakeholders may be attending a lot of workshops and meetings so it’s important to be enthusiastic and positive about what you’re doing. Let’s be honest there’s nothing worse than a dull or dry workshop consisting of people talking at you with slides of written content. To get people to come along for the journey we need to engage them and be enthusiastic about what we’re doing. Speak positively about the benefits and outcomes of your project, show visual diagrams and ask questions to get people involved. Having a positive and bright disposition will pick people up when they engage with you, help them focus on the content and be more likely to contribute.

Active listening

When we’re working on current state or establishing things like user journeys, user personas, use cases or processes a key soft skill you’ll need is Active Listening. Active listening is a pattern of listening that means listening to verbal and non-verbal cues without judging or jumping to conclusions. When you’re active listening you’re not thinking about what to say next you are completely focused on the person communicating. Don’t interrupt them or propose solutions at this stage, instead paraphrase and reflect what you’ve heard back to the person. This will ensure you don’t miss anything, don’t misinterpret anything and help you understand the paint points your users are experiencing in more depth.

Creativity

When making changes to the organization such as processes, we need to find solutions that work for everyone. For this we will need to think outside the box because realistically we may not be able to meet everyone’s needs, or some people may just be averse to the changes. To facilitate the transition, we can use creative visualizations to get everyone on board the journey; Miro, Figma and Visio are great tools for creating visual diagrams. You can do role plays during workshops, online or in person to outline the steps of a new process. Be creative and use your imagination to make it fun and engaging for your stakeholders.

Adaptability

As a BA you may find yourself on new projects for new businesses often and every situation will be unique. You will need to assess each business’s unique culture, ways of working and environment. Some businesses may be very formal and highly governed while others may be casual and more agile in their approach. To be successful in all these environments you need to be able to adapt, this means finding the right language, terminology, pace, document structure and hierarchy. Recently I worked on a project for a very successful company that still had a startup mentality. They embraced agile ways of working and feared having their autonomy taken away, because of this the word ‘Governance’ was a trigger for many of the staff. We had to adapt our language to suit the client and instead of ‘Governance’ we used ‘Guidelines’. Be adaptable and understand the culture you are working in, don’t work against it, work with it.

Communication

Clear and concise communication is important to be successful as a BA. When working with people things can get lost in translation, its our jobs as BAs to ensure they don’t get lost! Be willing to speak up and ask for more detail if you don’t understand something or when you notice others aren’t understanding it either. At times you may need to control the pace of a discussion, to speed it up to keep people engaged or to slow it down if it is moving too fast. There are times when you will need to paraphrase what someone has said to communicate it more effectively to the broader audience. You can use terms like “what I’m hearing is…” or “To put that another way might be…”. Utilizing your communication skills will ensure workshops and meetings stay on topic and you get what you need out of them.

Patience

You may find yourself in a situation where you already know the journey ahead for your stakeholders for example a company is implementing an out-of-the-box solution. You’ll need patience to assess their current state to find gaps and bring the stakeholders along for the journey so they can get excited about their new technology and processes, even though you already know the outcome. Another example of using patience is in workshops where different participants repeat information to you, you need to actively listen so they feel heard, but it could get a little boring for you. Lastly, not everyone you encounter is going to be a great communicator, some people talk for too long, some people get off topic, some people are hard to understand, and you need to listen to these stakeholders trying to communicate ineffectively and decipher what they’re saying, this takes patience.

Improvisation

You will find yourself in meetings with technical people, non-technical people and people from all different units of the business. Analogies are a great way to explain complex strategies or technology to people that don’t understand what you’re talking about. If someone doesn’t understand something a great way to describe it to them in terms they can understand may be using analogies. You can improvise and tell them about “One time I went to the supermarket and at the checkout this happened…. Which is like this technology system that does this…”. You will get better at this over time and come to understand what works for stakeholders from different Business Units.

Conflict Resolution

Often our stakeholders may disagree on things like current state or how future state should be. We need to manage both points of view and bring the team to a consensus where possible. Consensus may not be possible in all situations, but we still need to handle the conversations constructively so that everyone agrees upon the next steps. Some pointers for conflict resolutions are

Defuse Anger and facilitate communication
Separate people from problems
Listen first, talk second
Set out the facts
Explore options together

Using these tips, we can find a way to move forward together and keep the project on track.

People Process and Tooling (The PPT framework) is a great way to approach IT changes within an organization. I believe the most important aspect in this framework is people because the technology and processes are no good if the people within the organization don’t use them. You can use these soft skills as a BA’s when engaging people to ensure organizational changes are adopted and in turn, you will be successful too.