Editor’s note: Yesterday Barbara introduced some of the common mistakes hiring managers make when selecting business analysts. Today, she provides an introduction into the business and soft skills hiring managers should consider when recruiting for the business analyst role.
Business Skills
Project Management
Project Management skills can best be described as having the skill and ability to coordinate a project resources to achieve an effective result for the client. What makes up an effective result? Project is completed on time and on budget and meets the target business goals and objectives outlined in the project charter. An optimal result would be a higher quality product delivered under budget in less time. A challenged project is completed over budget and past the time line and does not meet the targeted business goals & objectives. A failed project is cancelled because it is clear it will not meet the expectations and deliver any real result for the money being spent.
A good BA will support the project manager and work with them to coordinate their resources and deliverables to meet key milestones.
Negotiation
A good business analyst has a foundation in any type of negotiation skills. High-end sales are a good example of negotiation. This is needed because the analyst will be required to help a client understand if the requested solution is not the right solution and they need to sell them on a new one and negotiate the right implementation in the environment to satisfy the clients needs.
Domain Knowledge
Domain knowledge is the knowledge and understanding that a person has in the industry vertical of the particular client. What I mean by that is that a person going to work as a BA in a retail chain, might have previous retail experience. This would be vertical industry experience.
To be honest, I rarely put a lot of stock into domain knowledge unless there is really some unique aspect to the industry that you must really know well. This is because a good business analyst will be able to work in the same industry they know well and provide average results on a failed, challenged or even an effective project. However, a great business analyst will be able to walk into any client in any industry and provide effective or optimal projects results. They are able to do this because they have the ability to think on their feet and adapt quickly (roll with the punches). This means they can tackle any project and learn it quickly enough to translate their learning into action as they work.
Soft Skills
People Skills
There’s a lot of smaller piece that make up people skills. Many of these can be found in the communication, collaboration sections, but there are some pieces I will cover here.
There are people who can come in and get the job done. There are those who will come in and get the job done and the client finds work for them after their project is up because they like them. Other clients are just happy the project is done.
Having people skills is about having the ability to work people of all career and skill levels and developing positive relationships. It is necessary for an analyst to spend time with front line staff and developers all the way up to the executive levels. Having good people skills will enable them to do this in a way that makes the rest of their job easier.
Communication
Communication is the ability to send and receive messages to others in ways that are meaningful to the listener. Communication is verbal, written and non-verbal (body language) and all can be used to convey messages to a receiver.
I have saying that says: A part of loving is being loved. This means that you have to allow others to love you in the way they wish to express it as much as you need to receive it in the way that makes you comfortable. The same is true for communication.
People learn in many different ways and since communication is a vehicle for learning about the world around them, it is important to provide the messages in a variety of ways. It will make it easier for your receiver to accept and learn the content of your messages and ultimately they will be able to do a better job.
Collaboration
The ability to work collaboratively is a critical skill of a successful business analyst. They must be able to work with the business, the stakeholders, the developer, testers, project management and sometimes external vendors. In order to do this, they must be able to check their ego at the door, listen communicate verbally and orally, mediate and negotiate at all levels.
Collaboration is as much a learned skill as it is innate. We learn by trial and error and only seem to learn collaboration when we are in tune with those around us. If you were to learn one single thing which would enable you to collaborate better as an analyst, it would be listening. We do not listen when others are speaking. We are usually formulating our response or counter arguments.
Innovation
Innovation is the prize of people with job satisfaction and seniority. But the truth is that anyone can be an innovator at any stage of their career. Being innovative is the critical differentiator between my hiring a “wanna-be” analyst and one that thinks they know it all. I don’t know it all. I know some things and I work to share them with others so they don’t have to struggle as much as I did. Innovation tells me about your motivation and willingness to think-outside-the-box to resolve a problem with the best possible solution without getting hung up on attachments to particular solutions that don’t cut it.
Be prepared to tell me what other contributions you have made to your past clients. These are achievements. I want to hear them. Just be prepared to back up the claim, and be honest about how much of a role you had in it.
I once asked a prospective BA if they could tell me anything new suggestions they had brought to our company. They responded matter-of-factly “No, I just do what I’m told.” Honest, yes. But I did not recommend them for the job!
Continue on to part 3 of How to Choose a Business Analyst about technical skills, career level, and resume evaluations.
|
By Barbara Davis. As a Business Analysis champion, Barbara Davis has pioneered new ground by defining new training programs, methodologies, and authoring numerous articles. As President of E2 Consulting Inc, she is working to unite the BA community by formulating a standardized practice through networking and training initiatives. View more blog posts by Barbara Davis |
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }