If you take a look at today's job market in the IT field, you will see that the demand for Business Analyst is astronomical!!! And as Katherine Walsh commented in her article: "Hot Jobs: Business Analyst", business analysis has finaly being recognized as a separate role in the organization and most IT folks, are being more and more interested in it. But how do you get in the field? How do you know if you are right for this role?
Business Analysis is defined as the role that liaise between the business, IT and almost always with the customers. Though requirements gathering is what most people think is the role of the BA, it is not limited to that area only. The International Institute of Business Analysis has identified 6 Knowledge Areas that can be and should be performed by the Business Analyst. These Knowledge Areas (KA) are:
1. Enterprise Analysis
2. Requirements Planning & Management
3. Requirements Elicitation
4. Requirements Analysis & Documentation
5. Requirements Communication
6. Solution Assessment & Validation
Now, to become a business analyst doesn't mean you have to absolutely have experience in all these KAs. But it wouldn't hurt to acquire the knowledge and help an organization by providing recommendations to certain business problems. For example, if an organization has a problem of buying new software and shelving them after a period of time, then you may recommend that they do certain parts of an Enterprise Analysis to become more aware of the enterprise activities (business processes) then go through requirement elicitation to understand the requirements of the business and only then purchase or implement a system that will support their business need.
A Business Analyst who is not familiar with the 6 KAs may jump on the bandwagon of I call the "backward analysis" where the system requirements are identified before the business requirements and sometimes without even looking at them.
In order to get into this field, you may have to ask yourself some serious questions and be very honest at answering them. The reason being that though you can learn the hard skills (UML, Use Cases, ERD.. etc), the soft skills are what will give you leverage in getting in this field. Anyone can learn but not everyone is good at applying what they learned. I don't want to discourage anyone out there but it's is good to understand where you are so that you develop the skills that are missing.
Here are somethings to think about:
Are you the kind of person who understand business and IT without mixing the two or be biased on one side?
Do you know how to make people come to a consensus?
Do you have patience to listen to someone explain what they do?
Do you like or feel comfortable with asking more questions to get more details? even if the questions seem "unintelligent"?
Do you like to make people feel comfortable around you and do you know how? see why this is important in my comment
Do you like to speak in front of people?
Do you like to research and keep up with technology and business issues?
These are some questions to ask yourself to know if you can be good for this field. Once you have the basic soft skills, learn the hard skills by taking courses.
If you are currently working at a company that doesn't have BA positions, this is a great opportunity for you to create this position by educating your boss and showing him/her how your skills can improve the effeciency of the organization.
If your organization already has these positions, I suggest that you ask one of the BA to mentor you and help you land a job as a BA or join an IIBA local chapter to get mentorship and network to find how you can get into a BA position.
