The Business Analyst Career Ladder
There are only two types of business analysts, those who identify as BAs, and those who don’t.
If decisions are being made, then business analysis is being done. If you are consistently making winning instinct lead decisions then your ability to conduct business analysis is subconscious; I’m envious, without trying you’re a better BA than I’ll ever be.
I covered here why there may come a time for your organisation to introduce a BA discipline. The TLDR answer is business analysis is a specialism from which organisations profit once they begin to benefit from experts.
At every junction of my career, a recruiter has told me that to move up I need to diversify; get a scrum master certification or interview well enough that someone considers my transferable skills for a product or delivery role.
With my career, I have proven those recruiters unimaginative.
If business analysis is intrinsic to decision making and decision making fundamental to scaling, how can there be any confusion around the progression of the BA role? I’ve got a rough idea.
Before I go on to describe how I define and promote the BA career ladder it’s important to note that although there are rungs, no one should feel obliged to climb. I know too many people made unhappy by chasing or accepting a promotion which moved them out of a job they loved.
Super trawler business consultancies annually onboard hundreds of career entrants and call them BAs. From their first day, the race is on for these ambitious young people to find their preferred path out of business analysis. In some industries, the role title BA has become synonymous with entry-level positions and at odds with the idea of specialism. Some businesses, rather than reappropriating the discipline name, make matters worse by attempting to find an alternative designation for their business analysts; I’m looking at you technical POs and functional analysts.
I can’t argue with the logic of starting people as BAs; the core skills and activities of business analysis are a solid foundation on which to build a career. I would, however, like to see these recruiters do more (something) to recognise business analysis as a unique and colourful career path.
It is because of this ambiguity around what it means to be a business analyst that I interview so many people. I don’t believe CVs provide an appropriate measure (as a gallus young woman I too was the owner of a creatively worded CV), and because I need adaptable, enthusiastic and smart people more than I need experienced people.
In your first stage interview with me, I’ll ask you is what tech blogs do you read and what you can’t do with your current employer that hope to be able to do with mine.
If you’re reading this in preparation for an interview with me when I ask you if you read blogs and you say yes please prepare for a follow-up question about which ones. I can’t tell you how often that second question has caught people out.
The most common reason given for moving company is career progression. Like the blog question, there is a follow-up where I try to understand what progression means to you; not why you think you deserve it (frustratingly frequently people cite time served as justification for promotion) but what you understand as the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.
It’s a deceptively difficult question to answer as it relies on your understanding of the core value of business analysis.
For those in any doubt;
The value of Business Analysis is through the facilitation of informed decision making.
Your ability to inform increasingly complex decisions will sign post your advancement as a Business Analyst.
Associate Business Analysts: Entry Level
When a decision maker recognises that they need to better understand something before making a decision they may ask an Associate BA to analyse it and playback a simplified view.
Remember, decisions enabled, not activities completed, identifies the role of Business Analysis, but examples are irreplaceably annotative.
Associate BA activities may include conducting the interviews and ethnographic analysis required to document an existing process in a format which highlights its failings or working with heads of business to understand their reporting position and summarising them in an executive narrative.
As an Associate BA
- The questions are not provided; the BA must determine the appropriate question(s) to ask to uncover the answer(s)
- The answer format is provided
- The analysis scope is provided
Mid Level Business Analyst
The role of a mid-level BA is to promote understanding between the decision making members of an already defined team. The BA will be called upon to facilitate the team’s decision making by eliciting, translating and communicating information.
Mid-level BA activities may include working with UI&D to understand and document a design’s desired behaviour in each error scenario and documenting the output in a format which informs software engineers so that they may score the relative complexity of each possible solution.
Your ability to manage complexity determines whether you are operating at an Associate or Mid-level. As a Mid-level BA, you are required to switch between communication styles and to recognise when it is appropriate to do so independently.
With time served you may have collected more tools in your toolbox, but the path to promotion is not paved with certification. A mechanism is not useful if you don’t have the nouse to know when and how to apply it.
Also, Google is a thing, don’t put too much stock in qualifications; your ability to find something a bit like something you need and adapt it to fit is far more relevant. Business analysis is about promoting understanding; if the person you are attempting to update also has experience with BPMN II they will effortlessly use the content of your exam quality diagram to inform their decision. If they don’t, and the first thing you need to do is teach them how to read your layout, consider whether you’d have been better to sketch something on a whiteboard.
As a Mid-Level BA
- The questions are not provided
- The answer format is not provided; the BA must determine the appropriate format(s) to convey an understanding of the answer(s)
- The analysis scope is provided
Senior Business Analyst
Predictably, the movement from Mid to Senior is the same as from Associate to Mid, a step change in complexity; and so to keep it interesting I’ll call out what I believe is irrelevant to the distinction.
Knowledge sharing is endemic in business analysis. I am disappointed that candidates who cite their experience of coaching less mature members of their BA community as justification for promotion don’t recognise this.
The role of a Senior BA is to identify relevant information sources, elicit, recognise and simplify the salient aspects of those information sources and communicate them in such a way as to facilitate informed decision making.
Senior BA activities may include synthesising and representing the concerns of multiple members of a team during a change process, summarising the critical aspects of an incoming piece of legislation or identifying the stakeholders relevant to a proposed system update.
As a Senior BA
- The questions are not provided
- The answer format is not provided
- The analysis scope is not provided; the BA must determine which people/systems/documentation may possess relevant information
Lead and Principal Business Analysts
A Lead BA and Principal BA are of a similar level professionally. Any large organisation can benefit from multiple Leads and multiple Principals.
A Principal BA is an individual contributor. They/we do the BIG analysis.
The complexities we seek to simplify and facilitate understanding of are departments, organisations, and industries.
A Lead BA is a line leader; choosing to leverage their experience and analysis skills in support of other BAs.
Seniors may have line leadership responsibility but often as a necessity of spans and layers rather than declared preference. I believe that it is only following a Senior role that the career path takes account of an inclination towards (or away from) line leadership.
A Lead BA will analyse breadth rather than depth; they maintain a light touch understanding of all the business areas and key stakeholders with which members of their team may interact.
BAs at all levels need to read the room to get the best out of those with which they are working. Lead BAs take this to the next level by forming long term and in-depth understanding of the challenges and opportunities of individual BAs, the support they need and how to develop them. To ensure they can offer their BAs appropriate advancement opportunities, a Lead BA may have the authority to allocate BA resource.
Head of Business Analysis
The Head of Business Analysis brings it all together; a strategic leader and individual contributor.
They promote the organisation’s understanding of the value of business analysis so that the senior leadership team can decide how best to leverage it. They appreciate that how and when Business Analysts are engaged in core business activities has a direct impact on each BA’s day to day experience of appreciation and worth. The HoBA strategically develops the BA resource pool and motivates team members to deliver beyond expectations.
They facilitate the organisation’s understanding of the challenges it will face, informing the decisions made on the future of the business.
I hope you have found this blog helpful and inspiring.
In the spirit of Business Analysis let me summarise;
- Don’t let recruiters tell you there’s no BA career ladder
- Don’t underestimate the skills acquisition required to climb the BA career ladder
- If it is what you want, don’t let anything stop you climbing the BA career ladder
- If you are interviewing for a role, check to see if the interviewer has written a blog containing all the interview answers they want to hear
