Business analysts, while mostly enthusiastic about learning new skills, often draw the line at anything that looks like programming. Learning SQL (structured query language) for someone not familiar with programming would often fall in with other “coding stuff that isn’t for me”.
Business analysts who consider SQL too hard to learn or not needed for business analysis do themselves a disservice.
Many business analysis tasks can capitalize on data analysis:
Discovering business scenarios
Finding gaps and exceptions
Understanding the ranges of values of important attributes
Validating business rules
Creating test datasets
Pulling statistics and metrics for benefit/cost analysis
And, frankly, for many more purposes.
As “analysis” in general and “business analysis” in particular can have quite flexible boundaries and interpretation from one company to another, this article and the arguments I will outline apply to many jobs with “analyst” in the title. Data analysts, BI analysts…
Democratizer of business analysis & architecture. Diagram lover. Solopreneur on a journey. Write to help; consult to get things done. why-change.com 🇨🇦 🇺🇦
