Do you pull from your strengths as in communicating and analyzing or from your knowledge of a system, tool, or industry? If the former, good for you! If the latter, consider refocusing on your business analyst competencies to broaden your perspective and take your business analyst career to the next level.
Let me share a story with you.
I started my first BA job by transitioning from a QA engineer role into a BA role. I had acquired deep system knowledge. I knew how the system was put together and how the developers designed solutions. I didn’t know a lick about business analysis. But I learned quickly and became OK at getting the business perspective and documenting functional requirements. I loved to work through technical challenges and facilitate problem-solving sessions, and was mostly successful because I had an understanding of the conversations, the possibilities, and most of the trade-offs. I could facilitate because I knew the problem space just about as well as anyone else in the room.
Lesson#1: Strengths in system knowledge or industry expertise can help you navigate into your first business analyst position. (Read more about finding your first BA position.)
So then I moved all the way across the company and started doing BA work for a new product to integrate with a legacy system. I still believe this was the most complex, gnarliest system I’ve ever dealt with. No longer did my system knowledge serve me. I had none. I had to step back and think about why the heck I was a BA and what I brought to the table. It turned out that this was the best career move of my life. If I had stayed in my old company, I might never have learned to learn new systems, to be a BA with no system or industry knowledge, or to rest on my core competencies in elicitation, analysis, questioning, and communication skills.
And did I ever learn. I learned to facilitate discussions when I was the least knowledgeable person in the room. I learned to evaluate business requirements before functional ones. I learned to build systems from scratch. I learned to dissect complex legacy systems. I learned that so many technical concepts are very general (databases, scripts, processing, rendering, rule-based logic, etc.) and that it matters less what the code is written in and more on what it does and how it works. Of course, along the way I had my share of missteps, oversights, and mistakes. But I was learning each and every day.
Lesson#2: Be aware of what grounds your strengths. Put yourself in situations to help you grow your strengths into portable competencies.
I’ve never looked back from my decision to rest more on my competencies than my know how. Sure there are still positions that want a specific skill or a certain technical ability. I have no problem learning these things. But I know that none of this makes me a better business analyst generally, only helps me address specific problems in specific situations.
So, if you are currently a business analyst or in any technical role for that matter, ask yourself, where do you find your strengths? Do you rely on your system or industry knowledge to make you a great business analyst in your company or your space? Could you be equally effective outside your comfort zone? Are you testing yourself and developing your competencies?
I challenge you to find a way to press yourself outside your comfort zone. You don’t have to give up your day job, you can volunteer (I hear the IIBA needs some product managers) or take on a project in your current company outside your “expertise”. Doing so will not only make you a stronger professional, it will make you a better business analyst. And it will make your skillset more marketable and be the foundation on which you can build a business analyst career.
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By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is an independent business analyst consultant. She is passionate about the BA profession and is committed to contributing by supporting this blog as a forum for business analysts to build on each other's experiences. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg |
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s funny you write this today, as I was just thinking about this. I periodically go through what I call “a severe case of the stupids” and it is a direct result of putting myself into the middle of something that I know nothing about. “Stupids” is that feeling everyone has during their first week or two on a new job when information is running through both ears, the brain is mush, the eyes are glazed over and the pulse is quickened. It wears off as one learns. When idiots like me intentionally volunteer for projects or tasks and place themselves in this situations, it is known as “severe stupids”.
All kidding aside, it is these scenarios that my skills as an analyst are really put to the test and where I have to rely on many more competencies/techniques that normally is the case. I hate how I feel during these times, as I struggle to comprehend what is going on and how everything fits together. This is where I am most humble and where I capitalize on that to allow myself to ask questions that everyone else is too ashamed to do so. THEY ARE FOOLS! Those are the BEST questions and have the most robust answers. I ask those questions until I get a satisfactory answer…or until the person answering turns blue in the face from frustration with me.
I’m a firm believer that the more painful the lesson, the better the learning experience. This has proven to be the case and there is no better feeling than overcoming a severe case of the stupids….and becoming someone that actually has a grasp on what is going on.
So when I feel dumb because I have not attained knowledge on every granular aspect of a problem, I remind myself that perhaps I’m just not stupid enough today…and I start asking questions.
Doug, Your comments never fail to brighten my day! I love it …. the case of the “severe stupids”!
Sometimes, by not being the strongest knowledge expert in the room, we’re forced to rely on or discover our facilitation skills. If we can recognize that inevitably we’ll be placed in a situation where we’re not the expert, we can then acknowledge that our roles may sometimes be team builders, rather than subject matter experts. That only serves to expand our skillsets and gradually enable us to provide more value to the process.
A team gets so excited when the “guru” can admit that he/she could use some help. We open the door for greater participation and team involvement and become more human in the process. We’re then not only resolving specific issues, but providing a greater value to the ongoing improvement by moving to a different level. The teacher we all remember isn’t the one with the greatest amount of knowledge, but rather the one who somehow managed to engage us in the educational process.
Hi everybody. I am a BA at a startup which deals in railway signalling and train control systems. I am going through what is being termed as “Domain Knowledge” without which it is said by management that I cannot function effectively. This training is going to last for another 6 months and is based solely on the technicalities of railway signalling systems. As of now I have nothing of value since last 30 days, except to sit down and read loads of manuals and a presentation which was like a sales pitch. Am I in a wrong job here ?
Doug, thanks for that. I felt like I was the only person who did not understand what was going on in the organization in the first and the following week. I am from Unix Admin background and the company I work for does railway signalling automation. I felt like I did not belong here !! However, that began to wore off once I realised that I have my own set of skills that I can utilize here and contribute in other ways.
Abhishek,
Congratulations on your new position. The organization is obviously showing a lot of faith in you by investing in so much training. I can’t tell you whether or not it is the right fit. If you are uncertain about how training fits into your role, you might want to chat with your manager about expectations. Discovering what they expect from you in these first 6 months of training might help you see your training in a broader context. You definitely want to be sure you are doing everything you can to become a valuable employee for this organization.
And yes, everyone brings their own skills. If you have never worked in an industry or with a system before, you can’t possibly expect yourself to be an expert. Focusing on what unique qualifications you bring to the table and what you’ll be in a position to do once you have assimilated all these new business knowledge, should help you differentiate yourself.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!