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Monster: What made you want to be a Business Analyst?
Vicky: I started as a graduate recruit at CMG (now LogicaCMG) because it had a good starting salary and looked interesting. I took the standard route offered along with another 30 graduates to become a Java developer. While I quite enjoyed the development work, I hated the bug fixing. As my skills in design and analysis improved, I found that it was possible to move to a more analysis/design type of role which suited me much better.
My next job at Rubus (now Detica) allowed me to concentrate solely on the analysis and not have to do any coding. I got to use my brain and work on exciting projects and I'd escaped the frustration of hard core coding. Once I had 5 or so years experience, I went into contracting and love it.
What skills and education are essential to your job?
Initially, you need an analytical mind - the ability to see systems and patterns and organise ideas. As these skills and your knowledge of the language of business analysis becomes second-nature, you need to be good at managing your own time and managing relationships and expectations from all corners - the business, your project manager and the developers.
I see my role as a translator and coordinator between the business (who I help to clarify what they want from often quite unstructured ideas) and the developers and testers (who want everything to have a definitive answer because they can't work with 'maybes'). You need to be comfortable organising and leading workshops and meetings involving people from all levels in a company and always be ready to ask the 'why' question in a helpful and non-confrontational way.
What advice can you offer someone wanting to become a Business Analyst?
The graduate route in a good quality big company is a great way to go. If you can get into a consultancy, you'll be able to work on lots of different projects and in many different client environments. You can get fast-tracked if you put in the time and have the aptitude. Big 'end-user' companies are also good places to learn the skills you'll need.
People transfer into business analysis from development, testing and project management. Slightly rarer is a transfer directly from the business itself; this works best when you learn and implement the 'hard skills' such as UML (Unified Modelling Language) while maintaining a good understanding of what the business wants because you were there once.
What are the best and worst things about your role?
The best thing is being involved in projects early on where you can have an influence on the overall outcome and direction of the project. It's very satisfying to run a good workshop where you get a lot of information and requirements out of the business and they leave feeling energised and listened-to. It's great to get a good quality document signed off and handed over to development.
The worst thing is when, as only the first part of the overall project process, your work isn't taken up and taken forward, rendering your document (and work) essentially useless.
Are there any perks to the job?
Contracting as a business analyst can be very profitable and there's plenty of work out there if you're good.
What is the end goal in your career?
Either working at a very high level determining the strategic direction of big companies in terms of where they want their businesses to be going, or managing and mentoring the team of business analysts in a big company. I expect to see the term 'Business Architect' becoming common in the coming years matching the existing title of 'Technical Architect' that sits on the development side. Business analysts sometimes move into project and then programme management but for me, project management seems a more sideways step into a different job rather than a step up.
Finish this sentence. "This week I have been mostly..."
“…organising and running a workshop with interested parties from all levels in my client's business, and creating a Business Requirements Document' out of the minutes from it.”
Fancy following in Vicky's footsteps? Check out our latest Business Analyst jobs |
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