[Become a BA #6] 3 Simple Ways to Build BA Experiences
If you did the homework in Lesson 1, you will have found a few business analyst job descriptions. Did any of them say “entry-level” in the title? On average, how many years of experience are required?
The #1 problem I hear from potential business analysts is that every job they consider requires experience. They feel like they have the aptitude to become a BA, they just need someone to give them a chance. However, each and every BA job requires experience and they are not qualified. Does this sound true to you?
Today’s lesson is about how to build BA experiences and increase your chances to qualify for BA jobs.
The Common Thread Behind the 95 Transitions
One pattern that may have emerged from the interviews and forum posts I pointed out to you was that each person sort of slid into business analysis. They didn’t go from 0 to 60 in 5.9 seconds. They went from 0 to 5 to 10 to 20…stopped for lunch at a local diner…got started again….they gradually built momentum behind their BA career, one step at a time.
They demonstrated their capacity to be a BA and BA opportunities started to gravitate to them.
Start building your BA experiences.
And they did this because the role of business analysis played to their natural strengths, much like you may have discovered when you considered your soft skills.
With a bit of focus, you can do this too because there really is nothing standing between you and becoming a BA.
By building BA experiences, you can either:
- Convince your organization that they should put you into a business analyst role.
- Create enough relevant career experiences that you can qualify for a business analyst role in a new organization.
You can build these BA experiences one step at a time. There are opportunities in your current work, through volunteering, and in your personal life.
3 Achievable BA Experiences
While there are many possible experiences open to potential BAs, I’ve found that 3 experiences tend to sum up the majority of opportunities out there. One of these three experiences is likely to fit where you are along your transition and the career situation you find yourself in.
The three options we’ll explore in this lesson are:
- Take notes in a meeting;
- Scope a project;
- Document a process.
Take notes in a meeting
This might seem trite to you. How can something as simple as taking notes in a meeting help you become a business analyst? Consider carefully how active you are in the meetings you attend today. Are you leading the meetings or sitting on the sidelines?
If you are leading the meeting, you might be much further along the path to BA than you think. And we’ll get to that in a later lesson. If you are on the sidelines, offering to be the note-taker is an excellent way to demonstrate your capabilities, contribute to the team, and open up new opportunities.
Being a note-taker helps you build upon two critical business analysis elicitation skills – listening and asking questions. It also provides an opportunity for you to experiment with validation. The trick is not just to take notes, but to leverage this as a career opportunity.
As note-taker you will be listening more carefully than anyone else to what everyone is saying. You’ll be seeking to understand, looking for patterns, and writing notes. When something doesn’t make sense to you, because you are taking notes, you can and should ask clarifying questions. As soon as you ask a question, your perceived value as a contributor in the meeting goes up.
After the meeting, circulate your notes and ask for feedback. Use feedback to improve your understanding of what was discussed and build rapport with individual team members.
Now, note-taking is not the end-all-be-all of BA. And there are many cases when being perceived as the note-taker limits your role. But if you are not given much opportunity to participate at all today, it’s a step up.
Scope a project
When we think about scoping projects, we often think about significant projects with multiple stakeholders. And, if we limit our understanding of “BA opportunities” to these types of projects, we will overlook many of the easier opportunities where we might start our slide into business analysis.
A project is a “temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end.”[1]
Let’s say it’s Thursday afternoon and your manager swings by your desk and asks you to look into a problem with the application your department uses. You might think this task is small, even insignificant, but it’s an opportunity to practice your scoping skills. Can you identify the business need, clearly state the problem, and list possible solutions? Maybe this statement of scope becomes an email to your manager or maybe it’s a document that sits on your desktop as a reminder. Either way, you’ve scoped a project.
Other opportunities might include:
- Home improvements;
- Process improvements;
- New technology selections;
- Your next vacation.
Any activity that is a temporary endeavor, meaning you don’t repeat the same sequence of steps every day, is a project and could benefit from a selection of requirements techniques.
Document a process
Let’s say your work is the same, day in and day out. You can still find an opportunity to practice business analysis. You can document the processes you do each and every day.
To document a process, open up any word processing software and start a list. Identify the activities you do, the sequence you do them in, and the rules you apply as you move through each step. Then do a bit of research on process flows or use cases and turn this list into a more formal. You just documented a process.
You can do this at home as well – just think about the complex processes of getting the family out the door in the morning or cooking a meal.
Leverage Your Experiences for your Career Transition
As you build experiences, you’ll open up more opportunities for yourself. The first experience you build might not be worth adding to your resume, but keep building one experience on top of the other and pretty soon an opportunity will land in your lap that does belong on your resume.
This is the real value of “volunteering” for experience. If you can put a project experience on your resume and speak to it in an interview situation, it’s worth doing. The volunteer time pays for itself in terms of increased future opportunities. Consultants do this all the time; they just call it “pro bono” work. Pro bono work can lead to lucrative contracts or, minimally, a fresh experience to talk about and through which to try new techniques or explore a new domain.
Your next step
Today your homework is to find one opportunity to build a business analyst experience. It can be at home or at work. It can be volunteer or paid. Find the opportunity and then create a one-page plan of what it will take to accomplish it. Then hop over to our LinkedIn group on Starting a Business Analyst Career and share your experiences.
If you are still feeling stuck, you might want to check out this video blog post on building experiences.
As always, wishing you the best in business analysis.
Best,
Laura Brandenburg
- Your Host, Bridging the Gap
- Your Instructor, My Business Analysis Career
**Interested in learning more? Check out My Business Analysis Career Choice, a virtual, instructor-led course designed to help you map out your business analysis career change.
***Get here from a link from a friend, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter? This lesson is part 6 of an 8-part free email course on becoming a business analyst. Learn more about it and sign up here.
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