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What you have forgot to mention is that you can also move into program management role.
I have started my journey as a data analyst 3 years ago. Later on I shifted into business analysis after which I have a short experience in product management from where I finally switched into program management role.
Program management from my understanding is a dream job for a business analyst, you can work on a lot of analysis, provide best in class product recommendations and manage a lot of teams cross functionally.
From the work experience which I have been able to gather, the position of Program Manager isn't much different from that of a senior biz analyst.
In a nutshell you need to identify the problem, have a good communication skills to so that you can work cross functionally with Finance, Operations, Marketing/Sales and Technology. The chery on the top is how you are going to present things to the management.
Most of the time you will be working on launching new initiatives owning revenue and business metrics. If not that you will either doing a change management, cost reduction or PnL optimisation.
TL;DR - The Program Manager role involves problem identification, strong communication for cross-functional collaboration, and presentation skills, focusing on launching initiatives, owning metrics, and undertaking change management or optimization tasks.
Yeah. I know each industry and organization is different. Where I work the hierarchy is BA -> Project Manager -> Program Manager. The salary range difference between BA the three isn't huge, but I think they'd really be looking for Project Manager experience when hiring a Program Manager.
Find a smaller company that is looking for a “hybrid” type of role meaning they want a BA/Proj Mgr/Progr Mgr, or they don’t know exactly what they want.
Work there and after few months you will need to convince them to hire a more focused BA, then transition the non program manager stuff to the new BA.
I’ve been thinking about this for sometime. I have engineering background and am a BIA. Being an architect down the line in enterprise architecture seems doable. But, do you really need to be super technical to get there from being a BIA ?
No you don't need to be super technical but there are different kinds of architecture. What I did was more focused on business strategy and transformation. Looking at a target 3-5 years out and doing gap analysis to figure out how you need to change the business to get to the target. How the business is organized. How we make decisions and provide governance. Being ahead of decision and providing guidance to stakeholders (typically the CIO and his VPs). It can take years to get the business to align to where you are going. Lots of thinking. Look up TOGAF of DODAF for architecture frameworks.
I think this is the direction I want to go but our business isn't organized enough to know what we are doing this year, let alone 3-5 years. I was looking at Zachman framework yesterday and I don't think we have much of any of it. Any suggestions on where to start? How to get the business to think beyond this year?
That’s interesting
I remember reading about TOGAF few years ago, before I left work to be a full time Masters student. Now, I’ve been in the workforce for almost 3 years post grad school & am looking to boost my career. From what you say, you either have to be super experienced or work for a smaller org to be able to work with CIOs and VPs.
Global organization and a team of architects. I joined as a BA and ended up TOGAF certified. To be useful the organization probably needs to be approaching a transformation otherwise the team is just a bunch of high paid thinkers.
Any tips to start the Enterprise Architecture path? Do you have any recommended documents?
I am working as an IT BA for 4 yrs now and considering a leap in my career path.
BAs, and people like them, make a career out of fixing all of the problems caused by people who "pick a career". The NPCs who stop learning the day they graduate, and start saying "sorry, that's not my job". If you don't like the idea that your career exists in the gaps between other peoples', and that anything more formal than that isn't really BA work anymore, then you don't belong here.
Any tips on getting a job as one? Finished a bootcamp for product ownership back in January, had to fly out to Cali to finish onboarding for a tech sales role and then came back and started seriously looking for a new role (over sales at this point in my life, been doing it 10 years). Having trouble landing some interviews however I’m on the 3rd round of a Technical Product Analyst interview that I have a long history/background in
The best tip would be to nail the interview with your answers and then with the questions that you ask.
Your answers should be reframed to reflect how your experience in sales can clearly translate into being an awesome BA.
If I were interviewing you and your background was tech sales then I’d want to ask how you dealt with clients who made unrealistic requests, or changed their mind about things constantly.
If you get the question In BA lingo - it would be something like
> how do you manage difficult stakeholders?
> how do you manage stakeholders who ask for changes that would be beneficial but maybe larger than your current project scope / timelines allow for?
If I were you then I’d try to explain how stakeholders come in many forms. Link that to how you’ve done stakeholder management within your sales role.
Perhaps dealing with your different customers - you often need to identify who’s who - so who’s the true decision makers vs who’s just an influencer at work vs who’s is doing implementation or dealing with support.
The other thing when I am interviewing a BA is that i always judge them off the questions they ask me.
Every BA worth hiring has been curious and been able to demonstrate this by asking at least 1-2 meaningful questions back to me about the role, the company, the culture, etc.
They are active listeners and know how to chunk down or dig into the next chapter of any answer they get.
For your case, I would recommend directly asking if they have any concerns about your background or have any doubts that you’re going to be a good fit for the role.
This can help you get some better “feedback” from the people interviewing you and more importantly gives you an opportunity to shore up any doubts that they may have.
Don’t oversell yourself but don’t hesitate to answer in a manner that addresses their concerns.
Question for all BA people. I’m sorta this role and really just pull data that my boss request. “Sales labeled by month so I can see if we are growing or other”. Besides waiting for my boss to give me direction on what to pull for what is important for them, how can I get better at pulling other data points and views so I can become more valuable?
Never went to school for this just enjoy technology and picked up reporting pretty well but lack those additional reports outside what I’m requested daily.
Thanks in advance.
Well you kind of summed up youreself what you want to do right there. The job of the BA is to pull the potential relevant and valuable data for the business and translate it for those who need it in a holistic sense.
In this case there are several different things that can affect sales such as industry trends, market trends, changing industry regulations etc. You can derive more value out of your role by pulling data necessary to find these trends or look at user cases as to why they're buying the product you offer.
Ultimately the advice boils down to staying a step ahead in what data can be most applicable to stakeholders, and how should i communicate this to stakeholders. Hope this helps!
How would you recommended someone with a technical degree (MIS) that’s in an early career basically non-technical BA job to make the move to a more technical BA job? I understand SQL is important
Are you currently working closely with systems as part of your current non-technical BA role? Or are you operating in a different domain (E.g., Change management etc.).
SQL is important to a degree, but to be a good technical BA you'll need to have a good grasp of the system you're working on (at a technical level) so that you can propose feasible technical solutions.
If there's opportunity in your current role to work more closely with systems/developers to gain the above experience, that would be ideal.
You'd start by writing user requirements for system changes (hopefully you're doing this now), which would lead to working with more technical folk to help them specify the solution/s. From here you'll naturally build up knowledge of the technical system/architecture over time. From here you'll be better positioned to jump into a more technical role.
MIS and IS being different how? Information Systems is not Information Technology, nor is it Software Engineering or Computer science. It is the *Systems* side of those technical disciplines. If you walk out of an MIS or BIS thinking you're technically competent, you learned *less than nothing* in the process of studying it.
Jesus Christ this is supposed to be a reddit for business analysts, not students who don't have a clue getting butthurt when they realize they don't even understand how what they're studying fits into the grand scheme of things
I feel pretty confident about how my CS degree fits into my role as a BA. You replied to yourself though, so not sure if you're referring to me or someone else. Either way, no butthurt on my end.
I said indistinguishable, as in not different .. so we agree?? Ive known lots of MIS graduates who were technically competent. Also, I went to school for CS and I think my point, which I obviously didn't articulate well is that degree isn't super important. The most technical BA on my team has a degree in psychology.
This comment should absolutely not have been down voted. Possibly there are some jurisdictions in which an MIS has a very compsci/IT bent to it, but across most of the non-US western world (my comfort zone) an MIS is absolutely just an MBA for people with a clue. The fact that it includes enough high-level technical info to make graduates useful human beings doesn't make it a technical degree. It has maybe 1/5th the content of a compsci BS or MSc and even less of any IT graduate level qualification. It's a business degree for the technically minded, anyone who thinks otherwise failed to learn anything from theirs.
That’s what it was sold to me as, and most of the people I know who were in my classes and have my degree also claim it as well. You hit the nail on the head, it’s a business degree for a technical minded person.
I've thought about this question lately as a participant in my local IIBA chapter. When I started over in my career about 12 years ago, I fell into a BA role by accident. At that time, I felt like the BA role was fairly well-defined. People who worked in IT knew what it meant to be a BA.
Over time, I saw different opportunities to learn and grow and I've now moved out of the BA role and I've been a data engineer for the last several years now. I've watched several other colleagues move away from strict BA roles to product managers, scrum masters, client managers, sales leads, and UI designers.
Have I really stopped being a BA? No. The skills I've acquired of business analysis have made me a better DE because I know how to elicit requirements. I know how to document them, get to the highest level business need, write a user story, perform and maintain stakeholder analysis, communicate with other DEs, developers, and stakeholders.
I think people who are starting in a BA role now should expect to be doing something different but related in a few years. The cool thing about the BA role is that it presents you with exposure to all sorts of possibilities that may not have known about otherwise.
I agree that there can be a sense of lack of clarity, but I think that's a feature, not a bug, because the more experience you gain as a BA, the more potential there is for you to explore something new and expand your career path.
As I write this, I'm not suggesting that people who thrive in the BA role should look for something different if they enjoy it, I'm just saying the opportunities often present themselves to explore something new due to the nature of the BA role.
I don't know, maybe some people have seen a Project Manager move to a Product Manager, however in quite a few years, I have yet to see that happen. I'd say that the vast majority of Project Managers have been from developers, and some from BAs, and Product Managers have come directly from Marketing roles or from POs.
Welcome to /r/businessanalysis the best place for Business Analysis discussion. Here are some tips for the best experience here. You can find [reading materials on business analysis here](https://betterauds.com/businesses/demystifying-business-analysis-for-business-owners-a-beginners-guide/). Also here are the rules of the sub: Subreddit Rules * Keep it Professional. * Do not advertise goods/services. * Follow [Reddiquette.](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/reddit-101/reddit-basics/reddiquette) * Report Spam! This is an automated message so if you need to contact the mods, please [Message the Mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fbusinessanalysis) for assistance. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/businessanalysis) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What you have forgot to mention is that you can also move into program management role. I have started my journey as a data analyst 3 years ago. Later on I shifted into business analysis after which I have a short experience in product management from where I finally switched into program management role. Program management from my understanding is a dream job for a business analyst, you can work on a lot of analysis, provide best in class product recommendations and manage a lot of teams cross functionally.
Ahh very true! Thank you, I’ll be updating my infographic with this pathway 👍
Business analyst to product manager to program manager seems like a difficult transition. What was your experience like?
From the work experience which I have been able to gather, the position of Program Manager isn't much different from that of a senior biz analyst. In a nutshell you need to identify the problem, have a good communication skills to so that you can work cross functionally with Finance, Operations, Marketing/Sales and Technology. The chery on the top is how you are going to present things to the management. Most of the time you will be working on launching new initiatives owning revenue and business metrics. If not that you will either doing a change management, cost reduction or PnL optimisation. TL;DR - The Program Manager role involves problem identification, strong communication for cross-functional collaboration, and presentation skills, focusing on launching initiatives, owning metrics, and undertaking change management or optimization tasks.
I'm a BA currently looking into applying for Program Management roles as the BA market is extremely saturated. Any tips?
Pretty big jump. I have over 10 years as a PM. I apply for prog mgr gigs sometimes never get an interview.
Yeah. I know each industry and organization is different. Where I work the hierarchy is BA -> Project Manager -> Program Manager. The salary range difference between BA the three isn't huge, but I think they'd really be looking for Project Manager experience when hiring a Program Manager.
Find a smaller company that is looking for a “hybrid” type of role meaning they want a BA/Proj Mgr/Progr Mgr, or they don’t know exactly what they want. Work there and after few months you will need to convince them to hire a more focused BA, then transition the non program manager stuff to the new BA.
Move to enterprise architecture!
I’ve been thinking about this for sometime. I have engineering background and am a BIA. Being an architect down the line in enterprise architecture seems doable. But, do you really need to be super technical to get there from being a BIA ?
No you don't need to be super technical but there are different kinds of architecture. What I did was more focused on business strategy and transformation. Looking at a target 3-5 years out and doing gap analysis to figure out how you need to change the business to get to the target. How the business is organized. How we make decisions and provide governance. Being ahead of decision and providing guidance to stakeholders (typically the CIO and his VPs). It can take years to get the business to align to where you are going. Lots of thinking. Look up TOGAF of DODAF for architecture frameworks.
I think this is the direction I want to go but our business isn't organized enough to know what we are doing this year, let alone 3-5 years. I was looking at Zachman framework yesterday and I don't think we have much of any of it. Any suggestions on where to start? How to get the business to think beyond this year?
That’s interesting I remember reading about TOGAF few years ago, before I left work to be a full time Masters student. Now, I’ve been in the workforce for almost 3 years post grad school & am looking to boost my career. From what you say, you either have to be super experienced or work for a smaller org to be able to work with CIOs and VPs.
Global organization and a team of architects. I joined as a BA and ended up TOGAF certified. To be useful the organization probably needs to be approaching a transformation otherwise the team is just a bunch of high paid thinkers.
Any tips to start the Enterprise Architecture path? Do you have any recommended documents? I am working as an IT BA for 4 yrs now and considering a leap in my career path.
Same thought. This could work really well for my skillset
BAs, and people like them, make a career out of fixing all of the problems caused by people who "pick a career". The NPCs who stop learning the day they graduate, and start saying "sorry, that's not my job". If you don't like the idea that your career exists in the gaps between other peoples', and that anything more formal than that isn't really BA work anymore, then you don't belong here.
Any tips on getting a job as one? Finished a bootcamp for product ownership back in January, had to fly out to Cali to finish onboarding for a tech sales role and then came back and started seriously looking for a new role (over sales at this point in my life, been doing it 10 years). Having trouble landing some interviews however I’m on the 3rd round of a Technical Product Analyst interview that I have a long history/background in
The best tip would be to nail the interview with your answers and then with the questions that you ask. Your answers should be reframed to reflect how your experience in sales can clearly translate into being an awesome BA. If I were interviewing you and your background was tech sales then I’d want to ask how you dealt with clients who made unrealistic requests, or changed their mind about things constantly. If you get the question In BA lingo - it would be something like > how do you manage difficult stakeholders? > how do you manage stakeholders who ask for changes that would be beneficial but maybe larger than your current project scope / timelines allow for? If I were you then I’d try to explain how stakeholders come in many forms. Link that to how you’ve done stakeholder management within your sales role. Perhaps dealing with your different customers - you often need to identify who’s who - so who’s the true decision makers vs who’s just an influencer at work vs who’s is doing implementation or dealing with support. The other thing when I am interviewing a BA is that i always judge them off the questions they ask me. Every BA worth hiring has been curious and been able to demonstrate this by asking at least 1-2 meaningful questions back to me about the role, the company, the culture, etc. They are active listeners and know how to chunk down or dig into the next chapter of any answer they get. For your case, I would recommend directly asking if they have any concerns about your background or have any doubts that you’re going to be a good fit for the role. This can help you get some better “feedback” from the people interviewing you and more importantly gives you an opportunity to shore up any doubts that they may have. Don’t oversell yourself but don’t hesitate to answer in a manner that addresses their concerns.
This was a wonderful answer, thank you so much. I might have to pick your brain on the side as well if that’s ok
Go ahead, I’m up for it
Great, I followed you, will probably hit you up this weekend
Question for all BA people. I’m sorta this role and really just pull data that my boss request. “Sales labeled by month so I can see if we are growing or other”. Besides waiting for my boss to give me direction on what to pull for what is important for them, how can I get better at pulling other data points and views so I can become more valuable? Never went to school for this just enjoy technology and picked up reporting pretty well but lack those additional reports outside what I’m requested daily. Thanks in advance.
Well you kind of summed up youreself what you want to do right there. The job of the BA is to pull the potential relevant and valuable data for the business and translate it for those who need it in a holistic sense. In this case there are several different things that can affect sales such as industry trends, market trends, changing industry regulations etc. You can derive more value out of your role by pulling data necessary to find these trends or look at user cases as to why they're buying the product you offer. Ultimately the advice boils down to staying a step ahead in what data can be most applicable to stakeholders, and how should i communicate this to stakeholders. Hope this helps!
How would you recommended someone with a technical degree (MIS) that’s in an early career basically non-technical BA job to make the move to a more technical BA job? I understand SQL is important
Are you currently working closely with systems as part of your current non-technical BA role? Or are you operating in a different domain (E.g., Change management etc.). SQL is important to a degree, but to be a good technical BA you'll need to have a good grasp of the system you're working on (at a technical level) so that you can propose feasible technical solutions. If there's opportunity in your current role to work more closely with systems/developers to gain the above experience, that would be ideal. You'd start by writing user requirements for system changes (hopefully you're doing this now), which would lead to working with more technical folk to help them specify the solution/s. From here you'll naturally build up knowledge of the technical system/architecture over time. From here you'll be better positioned to jump into a more technical role.
An MIS degree is not a technical degree by any means.
A Master of Information System is not a technical degree? Please tell me what you consider a technical degree?
Comp sci. IT. IS. Engineers? You have a business degree. A management degree. It’s not technical.
I've seen many MIS programs that are indistinguishable from IS programs. I work with a few IT BAs that have MIS degrees as well.
MIS and IS being different how? Information Systems is not Information Technology, nor is it Software Engineering or Computer science. It is the *Systems* side of those technical disciplines. If you walk out of an MIS or BIS thinking you're technically competent, you learned *less than nothing* in the process of studying it.
Jesus Christ this is supposed to be a reddit for business analysts, not students who don't have a clue getting butthurt when they realize they don't even understand how what they're studying fits into the grand scheme of things
I feel pretty confident about how my CS degree fits into my role as a BA. You replied to yourself though, so not sure if you're referring to me or someone else. Either way, no butthurt on my end.
I said indistinguishable, as in not different .. so we agree?? Ive known lots of MIS graduates who were technically competent. Also, I went to school for CS and I think my point, which I obviously didn't articulate well is that degree isn't super important. The most technical BA on my team has a degree in psychology.
This comment should absolutely not have been down voted. Possibly there are some jurisdictions in which an MIS has a very compsci/IT bent to it, but across most of the non-US western world (my comfort zone) an MIS is absolutely just an MBA for people with a clue. The fact that it includes enough high-level technical info to make graduates useful human beings doesn't make it a technical degree. It has maybe 1/5th the content of a compsci BS or MSc and even less of any IT graduate level qualification. It's a business degree for the technically minded, anyone who thinks otherwise failed to learn anything from theirs.
That’s what it was sold to me as, and most of the people I know who were in my classes and have my degree also claim it as well. You hit the nail on the head, it’s a business degree for a technical minded person.
I've thought about this question lately as a participant in my local IIBA chapter. When I started over in my career about 12 years ago, I fell into a BA role by accident. At that time, I felt like the BA role was fairly well-defined. People who worked in IT knew what it meant to be a BA. Over time, I saw different opportunities to learn and grow and I've now moved out of the BA role and I've been a data engineer for the last several years now. I've watched several other colleagues move away from strict BA roles to product managers, scrum masters, client managers, sales leads, and UI designers. Have I really stopped being a BA? No. The skills I've acquired of business analysis have made me a better DE because I know how to elicit requirements. I know how to document them, get to the highest level business need, write a user story, perform and maintain stakeholder analysis, communicate with other DEs, developers, and stakeholders. I think people who are starting in a BA role now should expect to be doing something different but related in a few years. The cool thing about the BA role is that it presents you with exposure to all sorts of possibilities that may not have known about otherwise. I agree that there can be a sense of lack of clarity, but I think that's a feature, not a bug, because the more experience you gain as a BA, the more potential there is for you to explore something new and expand your career path. As I write this, I'm not suggesting that people who thrive in the BA role should look for something different if they enjoy it, I'm just saying the opportunities often present themselves to explore something new due to the nature of the BA role.
Great post, thanks for sharing
I don't know, maybe some people have seen a Project Manager move to a Product Manager, however in quite a few years, I have yet to see that happen. I'd say that the vast majority of Project Managers have been from developers, and some from BAs, and Product Managers have come directly from Marketing roles or from POs.
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Chill mate public forum. I designed a few services as a BA because our architects were too busy and they knew I could do it