A software tester is a professional responsible for verifying that the software solution meets the specified requirements. Software testers and business analysts are like two sides of the same coin.
(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.)
Because of their experience reviewing requirements documentation, many software testers know exactly what it takes to make a good specification. In fact, software testers are often the ones to catch ambiguity in the requirements that help a business analyst add even more clarity.
Software testers also have been exposed to projects and have experience writing in a clear way through defect reports. Testing and coming up with a test plan requires clear critical thinking too. And don’t overlook the fact that your test planning process can be an exercise in business process development.
To grow into a business analyst role, software testers need to explore the following types of opportunities:
- Interact more directly with business stakeholders, for example, by sitting in on requirements meetings or facilitating user acceptance testing. Learn how to elicit information and move from ambiguity to clarity.
- Tackle solutions to significant defects, which gives you an opportunity to get ahead of the process and essentially be the business analyst on a project inside a project.
- Go beyond facilitating meetings like test plan reviews and defect triage meetings, to facilitating meetings to solve critical project problems.
In general, as a software testing professional you need to find ways to get involved earlier in the project lifecycle so you are ahead of the business analysis process and doing more of the upfront work to discover problems, facilitate discussions, and define requirements.
To further explore how the transition from software testing to business analysis works, check out these career transition success stories:
- From Quality Assurance to Business Analyst – Learn how Bridging the Gap founder Laura Brandenburg approached her QA role with a BA hat, which serendipitously led to a BA role.
- From Sales Support to Quality Assurance to Business Analysis – Martin shares how pursuing a quality assurance transitional role can help you move into a business analyst career.
- From Quality Assurance to Business Analysis – GR shares her path from QA to BA and also how her first role didn’t turn out like she expected, and how she rebounded from that experience.
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.
