Anyone here a Business Analyst?

NoodleKing said:
I have just recently" discovered" the business analyst profession and have been trying to get my foot the door. I'm looking at the "IT" sort of BA, but it seems so difficult to get into as most places want experienced people.

Would becoming a data analyst first help me into getting into the BA route?
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I would say a data analyst is more of a route into business intelligence than a traditional BA role, but obviously it depends on the specifics of the organisation/roles involved (for what it's worth I'm a BI Consultant but I do have formal qualifications in Business Analysis & Requirements Engineering and have worked closely with BAs in various organisations).

In my experience there are three main routes into BA (there will likely be others as well), in no particular order:

1) Users with a good understanding of business processes (often fairly specific to the organisation) who move into a junior BA role with the same company and then progress from there. For example, operational team leaders who understand the challenges faced by the end users and can give insight into ways in which technology could be better harnessed to meet their needs. For organisations that both develop and deploy their own software in house this can appeal because BAs created from within are typically much cheaper than market rates (conversely the individuals get to move 'off the shop floor', get more money, and gain experience as a BA which they can then use as a platform to progress to another company). UAT is often a good way to start guaging how effective end users might perform in such a role.

2) Migrating from other disciplines in IT such as Testing, Application Development or Project Management. BA work appeals to testers because it often pays better, and the best testers will likely have been operating as a pseudo-BA for some time anyway especially in agile environments (suggesting enhancements, championing usability, having input into design etc). On the developer front, some developers may have fallen into the role (common route after uni) but perhaps aren't actually that interested in coding and want to focus more on a customer-facing/requirements type role. Finally some PMs have very specialist knowledge of a particular sector/platform and therefore can operate in a BA role also.

3) People who land themselves a job as a graduate BA straight out of uni - sadly I didn't even know this was an option back in the day :)

Finally the boundaries between different job roles can be quite blurred especially depending on what methodologies are used internally by an organisation so not every job entitled "Business Analyst" will necessarily be suitable for every individual even if others are. Some organisations will expect BAs to have a high degree of technical competence whereas others will just be wanting documentation and testing, others still wanting someone to crunch numbers in Excel etc.

edit: anyway as you will have learned from this thread being a BA is fantastic:
-You can be an idiot
-You don't need to know anything technical, it is just an underclass of people too stupid to be developers
-You get paid loads to sit around drinking coffee all day
 
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I was a business analyst during my university placement year for a pharma company and also during my final year of University for a digital media company. I was an IT BA rather than financial, and I found the role really interesting.

It is a lot of talking with people which is one of the best parts of the job and what drew me to it rather than a coder who doesn't get to socialise often.
 
Random Guy said:
While I cannot totally disagree with your statement, I think you are overstating the situation. The main cause of inefficiency in the BA Role stems from a complete lack of managerial understanding as to what the BA Team is expected to deliver, and when/where/how the Team can and should be applied in order to minimise Project wreckage. This in itself is a monumental task, but if you have never been in an organisation where the BA is seen as a value-adder, your cynicism is understandable.

With regard to Agile and TDD, once again, maybe for BI there is a special subset of rules, but for us working at the Functional Level, BAs are even more crucial to hold things together in Agile/BDD than I have ever experienced in standard waterfall models.

The BA Role is misunderstood frequently, and gets a bad rep for faults that are not entirely its own - the worst part of being a BA at the moment is that one of the blokes on The Apprentice is one, and we may be confused for being similar to him :D
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You are probably right, I think it's more down to poor BA's. The BA's I've worked with actually sit with and report into the BI management, rather than being a part of the main BA team/department and getting parachuted in.

I feel bad that I've tarnished all BA's with a bad brush based on my experience with a select few.

Furthermore the OP has an opportunity and we should be looking to be supportive and positive.

A BA can be a very valuable role, otherwise it wouldn't have existed for so long. The problem is there is an influx of poor BA's, especially in the IT world IMO. A BA role is a very good role to get experience and insight into the range of other roles that exist in business. You will have opportunities to speak with people from all levels within a company and be able to build a solid professional foundation for a successful career.
 
Some fantastic advice here, really appreciate it, especially Elmarko, DODasprilla, hangtime etc.

In writing my covering letter and CV for this position, what, according to your expert opinion on the job description, should I particularly focus on, and what should I immediately begin learning/getting to grips with in particular?

This job seems like it's a challenging role for someone straight out of university, but I'm up for a challenge and it would really be a big jump up for me. Therefore I want to give it the best stab that I can! :)
 
HangTime said:
Excellent Information
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Thanks a lot for that info Hangtime, I think of those 3 avenues you described I may be more suited to option 1 and it has been suggested by my manager to get more experience around other parts of the company so I can be a subject matter expert and learn more about our in-house software, products and processes.

I just feel like I'm stagnating in my present role hence why I'm looking for any position that will push me a bit more. Like many others here though I enjoy communicating with others hence why a BA role seems more appealing than a more "programmy" job.

The Data Analyst role I have applied for does involve capturing business requirements as well as a more hands on approach to implementing the solutions, so hopefully it will provide a good platform for me. My interview is next week so fingers and toes crossed!
 
NoodleKing, if you don't mind my asking what is your current role?
Assuming it is something fairly 'low end' then I would actively pursue it especially if you hve the support of your manager. Often people find themselves stuck in a 'stagnant' role as you put it; I was there myself at one point. I had a rubbish job for 4 years after graduating which was fairly proprietary so very little in the way of transferrable skills to help me get into another company. Finally an opportunity came up to move into a software testing (amongst other things) role and that basically then became the start of my 'career' in IT. In other words I would jump at these type of opportunities because other companies may dismiss you out of hand based on lack of experience irrespective of what your aptitude for the job actually is, whereas at least your own employer will know that you are intelligent, a hardworker, capable of more than the limits of your current responsibilities etc.

The key thing about getting experience as a data analyst / BA / whatever is it is something that will open a lot of doors to you in the future even if you don't achieve all your ambitions with your current employer.

Ahead of the interview some things I would gen up on a bit:
-Data quality - the bane of many in this line of work. Be prepared to talk about how you would approach measuring the quality of data sources you may need to report on, and how that could influence future implementations (a simple example you could throw out there would be e.g. if there is data being captured of critical importance for reporting then the implications that would have for system design i.e. do certain fields need to be mandatory, what validation needs to be applied etc). Ask a call centre person how they want to record certain information and they may simply say "a text box". For general notes, comments etc, that may be fine. But (advanced big data shenanigans aside) if you want to draw meaningful analytical insight from that information, you may want to categorise it by say limiting it to dropdown combobox selection or similar.
-Ask about what reporting/analysis is currently done and against what sources - show you understand the challenges arising from information silos - Account Manager Bill hacks around in excel, then wonders why his numbers aren't stacking up with Sally's accounting output from Sage etc.
-Depending on the nature of your organisation at least have a high level view on any regulatory or compliance issues that may apply when handling data
 
elmarko said:
But it does highlight how meaningless the term BA really is, very much pendent on the field you work within what kind of skills you will need.
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Not in that sense - though it is a very broad term encompassing rather a lot of roles - what you're essentially highlighting is that they need relevant domain knowledge for the area the work in.
 
That role is not really a Business Analyst role at all. They could have as easily called it an Account Manager role, which seems more suited to it.
 
To add to the above.

If you have free access to data currently, it may be an opportunity to attempt to take some initiative (pending on how up-to speed your company is) - it may be that nobody has done any basic data quality checks.

Look for missing data, anomalies (such as really high values which are impossible to be correct, but easy to spot) - postcodes which are wrong (this you can find out with little technical knowledge by using a few if functions (to bring out the post_code sector) then compare it against a list you can find online.

In one of my previous jobs while doing this kind of data exploration I unrecovered an error in our consumption calculations which has been on-going for 8 years - this related to an domestic over-purchase of energy costing hundreds of thousands of pound annually.

In another role I did some basic distribution analysis on our customer value, this enabled me to identify a pot of a few thousand customers who yielded an estimated £10 mill + profit who at that point in time received no additional treatment (basically, £2% of our annual profit margin) - but only 0.1% of our customer base, so an easy win.

This kind of insight will set you apart from the other employees & from personal experience end up in people offering you jobs in other departments for pay rises (instead of applying for them).

Along with teaching yourself useful technical skill-sets (SQL, VBA, SASS, SPSS, Advanced Excel & if possible one reporting system such as Cognos or Business Objects).

I've only been working for 6 years (lots of time at college) & have gone from £10k to £40k+ PA with no qualifications (well, aside from Music & Art) using this method & aim to be on £50k+ by the time I'm 30.
 
@OP that advertised role sounds more like an operations analyst or client service role (with perhaps some IT project work on the side) - it is likely pushing the (rather broad) definition of Business Analyst a bit as the only business analysis related part of that advert seems to be the last bullet point under 'key skills'
 
elmarko said:
If you have free access to data currently, it may be an opportunity to attempt to take some initiative (pending on how up-to speed your company is) - it may be that nobody has done any basic data quality checks.

Look for missing data, anomalies (such as really high values which are impossible to be correct, but easy to spot) - postcodes which are wrong (this you can find out with little technical knowledge by using a few if functions (to bring out the post_code sector) then compare it against a list you can find online.
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Good idea - to me this would show initiative from the candidate. Another easy one to find if validation is poor is dates that don't make sense (e.g. future dates in fields that should only be populated with historical dates - I recently found quite a few miskeyed as year 2021 instead of 2012 which was making an average duration calculation used in a KPI worse than it should be, but not immediately noticeable due to the aggregation).

I've heard it suggested that some hiring managers don't like being shown up i.e. some young know-it-all rocks up and goes "here's some issues with the system you are responsible for" which may be very trivial in the grand scheme of everything they have on their plate, but personally I would commend them for it.
 
BAs are the guys that get stuff chucked at them that no-one else knows how to do; process stuff mainly. In my organisation, I'd say they're held in fairly high regard relative to some of the views above :p. The ones that have graduated to project manager are always on the phone to us accountants though :p.
 
Hi Hangtime,

My current role is Data Management Support, so I do possess some experience in managing data quality, query investigation, input into system design, using Excel, Access and SQL.
However my time is split more in customer support rather than the data analysis side of things ~ 65%/35% and whilst I enjoy that part, the queries are repetitive as we support a large client base.

Your points about things to brush up on are very relevant, so thank you for them. The interview will be competency based so I'll have hopefully a few data analysis based scenarios prepared.


Yours and elmarko's experiences are very encouraging for me and I do hope that I can knuckle down and land a suitable job for my further development.

Anyway I think I'm waffling on about myself too much; so sorry for the thread hijack sports_brah. Best of luck with your application for the job mate :)
I personally think the BA role will be rewarding through gaining job satisfaction and obviously financially.
 
Job satisfaction never strikes me as the primary reason to become a BA. Money and prospects maybe...though I suppose it depends on what you find satisfying. Satisfying to me would be sitting by my private pool overlooking the Indian Ocean while lots of BAs employed by me make me lots of money. Unfortunately that's fairly unlikely :(.
 
Lol Participant, maybe it's because I've deluded myself and painted a picture in my mind that being a BA would be quite interesting and fun.
The reality of it would perhaps prove to be far from that, but I won't know till I try!
 
Participant said:
The ones that have graduated to project manager are always on the phone to us accountants though :p.
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Graduate to PM? Completely different disciplines with completely different skill sets. I know a lot of people who think that's a career route and they are probably the ones who give BAs a bad rep.

Participant said:
Job satisfaction never strikes me as the primary reason to become a BA. Money and prospects maybe...though I suppose it depends on what you find satisfying. Satisfying to me would be sitting by my private pool overlooking the Indian Ocean while lots of BAs employed by me make me lots of money. Unfortunately that's fairly unlikely :(.
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I take a lot of satisfaction from it. My role is to challenge everything on the project and ensure that the product that is delivered meets its objectives as defined in the business case. When that happens its a good thing.
 
[DOD]Asprilla;24551213 said:
Graduate to PM? Completely different disciplines with completely different skill sets. I know a lot of people who think that's a career route and they are probably the ones who give BAs a bad rep.



I take a lot of satisfaction from it. My role is to challenge everything on the project and ensure that the product that is delivered meets its objectives as defined in the business case. When that happens its a good thing.
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Yep, from a Prince2 view, BAs often fulfill the Business Assurance role.
 

This sums up what most business analysts do. I've worked with a few really good ones, but they are the exception.
 
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