Advance Your Business Analysis Career
From the category archives:
Once upon a time, when the world was young and co-workers shared the same four walls, we celebrated special occasions and important milestones together with games, food, and laughter. However, for decades now we’ve enjoyed the geographical freedom brought on by digital communication, working anywhere in the world, courtesy of a simple data line or mobile hot spot, and with [...]
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I was sitting with my wife the other day, enjoying a bright summer’s afternoon and having a bit of a chat. We were discussing our experiences during interviews, and chuckling about certain questions that inevitably get bandied around during the process (yes, we are nerds!). One question that always pops up is about teamwork: are [...]
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I haven’t typically been a big fan of measurement programs As a reviewer of early drafts of Adriana Beal’s eBook, Measuring the Performance of Business Analysts (2010), I approached the topic with a bit of trepidation. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences and can relate to the “measurement wariness” that concerns many [...]
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As business analysts it can seem difficult to go “up”. Many organizations do not have a senior business analyst career path and have limited lead or manager roles to grow into. Why lateral moves help your career Another way to move up is to move over. These are called lateral career moves. Now you could [...]
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The business analyst profession seems to attract A-type personalities: driven to succeed; high energy; very creative; perfectionist. This type of person contributes to the success of many projects. What happens when you bring a number of these high performing people together to work on a larger project? How do we work together without clashing personalities? [...]
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Job descriptions are a key element of our organizational lives. More often than not, our job descriptions don’t accurately reflect what we do. As managers of business analysts, it’s important to continuously re-evaluate our roles, ensure the responsibilities of each role are contributing to the organization, and look for opportunities to leverage our employees’ skill [...]
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I always looked forward to performance review time. Early in my career, I went into the meeting with high hopes of complete clarity into my strengths and weaknesses, how to improve for the next year and a host of exciting project assignments. I get super excited about starting fresh, planning for the coming year, and [...]
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Reader question: A co-worker (BA) and I (another BA) have been asked by our CIO to provide a ‘best practice’ or recommended ratio of Business Analysts to Project Managers. We currently have 7 BAs and 17 PMs which seems skewed, but none of us know what a better ratio should be. Have you done any [...]
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It is well and good to opine or theorize about a subject, as humankind is wont to do, but when moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight. –Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in Freakonomics Many people like to stay away from [...]
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The latest question coming in deals with an often mentioned BA Black Hole of Knowledge. Let’s see if we as a community can tackle it. Reader Question: Hi, My manager asked me to define KPI for the business analyst job. I’ve tried do to some research but everybody seems to have a bit of a [...]
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3 posts
Recently posted: How to Start a Business Analyst Career eBook – now available on Kindle and Nook!
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