Earlier this week, we ran a survey for Bridging the Gap newsletter subscribers, asking them for feedback on the new, weekly format with a BA Career Stepping Stone. Thank you to everyone who participated…your input will help us shape the direction of Bridging the Gap in 2011.
I’ll be sharing the results with our regular contributors and asking for their input as well — the beauty of collaboration is that each person sees something different with the same data and together we can all be smarter. In the meantime, I wanted to share the insights I’ve gleaned and our go-forward plan for February.
Your Results
There were four action steps in January and here’s the order you ranked them in:
- Prepare for your performance review.
- Take one step for one career goal.
- Give a stakeholder positive feedback.
- Review a document you created a year or two ago.
And, you didn’t just take the steps, you achieved some great results. Here are a few of the results readers achieved from the BA Career Stepping Stones:
My appraisal marks was graded 86/100!!! My boss really love the way I approach the stakeholders. I was a very good team player, very analytical, and a problem solver who provides solutions and not only highlighting the problem.
Stakeholder moved my requests to the top of her “to do” pile and signed of my requests straight away. I would normally have to wait up to a week for her to get to it.
Reviewing one of my first requirements documents in comparison to the documents I’m creating today I can see great improvements and mistakes I made early on in my BA career.
To be honest, this is something I have done all along. I find it extremely beneficial in building up that trust. Seeing it in print from an “expert” gave me the confidence that I am doing the right thing.
Feel I’m prepared to go into my performance review with an open mind, and knowing I did great during the year of meeting goals.
Although I had had a performance review in the fall, following your steps and reflecting on my performance review were a positive experiences and I’ve made myself mental notes to be even better prepared for this year.
Great work everyone!!
A Few Bits of Positive Feedback (thanks guys!)
I was impressed that the first blog comment I made received a reply from your experts. Very impressive!
It’s very difficult carving out ‘career’ time, even though your BTG newsletter reminds me on a regular basis how important it is.
The newsletter helps me feel connected to the BA community at large and keeps me feeling motivated and inspired, and provides great tips I can immediately apply to my BA role!
A business analyst on an Agile project by Tony Heap was by far the best article I’ve come across in this blog.. I’ve read some articles on Agile but none have been so refined as the one I read yesterday on Agile. Tony has basically summarized his project in a simple, lucid manner and was able to convey what Agile is all about by getting to the crux of it…He ran us through a real world project and provided us with documents which can be used as job aids. I would have probably had to read a book to get the essence of Agile but Tony conveyed the intricacies almost effortlessly. Moreover, your views on business analysis and the way you entered into this profession was an eye opener.. You make us feel at ease in the corporate world by bringing your experiences on the table…
I read every response. THANK YOU!! And overall what I would say I gathered from the responses was that you find here and in the newsletter a connection to the business analysis community. Bridging the Gap is a way to stay in touch with what other business analysts are doing and how they are improving their work. That’s what we (me and all the expert contributors) strive for here…and we will continue to do so.
The Plan for February
63.1% of you would like to us to continue with the weekly newsletter, and we will! The newsletter will continue to be delivered weekly with concrete BA Career Stepping Stones that you can take each week to improve your career, stakeholder relationships, and business analysis capabilities.
By far, communication was listed as the most critical topic to address, followed by analysis, career development and elicitation. This lets me know that we’re mostly on the right track as these topics form the largest body of content here at Bridging the Gap.
I’ll be sharing your specific topic requests with the regular authors here so that can use these topics as launch points for future posts. If you have a case study, sample deliverable, or career experience to share, please get in touch with me about becoming an author.
You were full of great ideas! Here are some ideas I’d like to flesh out as we move through 2011.
- Each week build on a monthly theme so that the action steps tie together.
- Adding short summaries for the latest posts in the newsletter.
- Provide more detail for the real BA stories: case studies, sample documents, meeting structures, stakeholder challenges, etc.
- 18.5% of you want to receive the newsletter every-other-week and 10.8% of you want to receive it monthly. I’ll be considering a customized delivery cycle.
Have more ideas? Feel free to leave them below! Not yet signed up for the newsletter, head on over to the eNewsletter sign-up page and download two free primers: 3 Career Habits of Successful Business Analysts and 5 Common Business Analyst Job Search mistakes.
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By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is passionate about business analysis. She's found her niche helping aspiring business analysts find transferable skills and position themselves in the BA job market. To stay up-to-date on the latest from Bridging the Gap be sure to sign-up for our free email course and weekly eNewsletter. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg |
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Thanks for sharing this feedback on the survey, great to know what my peers are finding useful about the Bridging the Gap newsletter – and hats off to all those that contribute their time and efforts to ensure the continued success of Bridging the Gap!