A project manager is responsible for overseeing the project from concept through to delivery. In reality, there is a lot of overlap between business analysis and project management roles, and many project managers are doing a lot of business analysis, especially if there is no formal business analyst assigned to the project team.
(By the way, this article is one piece of a multi-part series titled, “How to Leverage Your Career Experience to Get Started in Business Analysis” where we explore the specific transferable skills professionals in various career backgrounds bring to business analysis and what opportunities they have to grow their business analysis experience.)
Project managers tend to be strong communicators and have a lot of experience building stakeholder relationships with everyone from senior-level project sponsors to direct end users. Project managers also often have experience scoping projects and doing some analysis.
To grow into a business analyst role, project managers need to explore the following types of opportunities:
- Invest more time on the business problem to be solved and business value to be realized by the project, instead of moving swiftly into planning, budgeting, and implementation.
- Helping stakeholders discover, analyze, and prioritize new requirements by getting into more of the details of what the business process and software solution requirements will be.
- Practice creating detailed requirements documentation, which you might currently be delegating to the subject matter experts or technical leads on your project team.
In general, as a project management professional you need to learn to focus more energy on the problem and solution, and less energy on planning out how the solution will be created and delivered.
To further explore how the transition from project management to business analysis works, check out these career transition success stories:
- Finding Your Business Analyst Roots in a Project Management Role – Laura shares her story of coming back to business analysis after pursuing project management opportunities.
- From Technical Implementation Manager to Senior Business Analyst – Matt transitioned right into a Senior Business Analyst role after discovering there was a profession of whiteboard-lovers like him.
- An IT Consultant Awakens to a Career in Business Analysis – Aaron shares discovering business analysis after a long career in a hybrid PM/BA role, and choosing to pursue a more focused BA career path.
If you are interested in learning more, click here to receive our free step-by-step career planning course and map out your transition into business analysis.
