How Global Job Trends are Shaping the Business Analysis Profession. Part 1
In this article, I will provide the first part of the research results. The main idea was to estimate the potential impact of future job trends on the current typical skills and functions of the business analysts.
During the next 5 years, we likely will observe a shift of importance among the business analysts’ skills and functions that is being caused by the global job demand trends. The following areas will increase professional importance for the business analysts: AI and big data, leadership and influencing, visual thinking and UX, industry knowledge, environmental stewardship, marketing and media. Otherwise, the skills that are likely to lose some of today’s importance are: adaptability, learning, personal accountability and motivation, listening, system thinking, and multi-lingualism.
In the light of the abovementioned shift, two main traditional BA skills — analytical thinking and critical thinking — will keep their leading role for BAs and, moreover, become the most desirable skills for many other jobs.
Methodology
Data Source
For the research, I used a Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge v3 (BABOK) [1] as a source of theoretical skills for business analysts. The World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2023 (Report) [2] was used as a great source of statistical data, surveys, and forecast about professional landscape assessment and its transformation estimation for the upcoming 4–5 years (2023–2027).
Approach
BABOK has a list and discriptions for the underlying BA competencies. Unfortunately, there are no ratings or portions of the skills in the required professional skill set. So, as a baseline, I decided to treat the skills equal in terms of their professional importance.
Then, I calculated the effect of the data of The Future of Jobs Report 2023 on every skill of the BABOK’s BA competencies in two steps.
The first one is to apply the surveyed importance of general job skills on every BA competency. The aim of this step is to estimate a difference in importance levels among the BABOK’s BA skill as of 2023. That was done for matching skills, and some new skills were added to a summary list of skills taking into account their extreme importance to the global professional landscape transformation.
The second step was to apply surveyed forecast reskilling data on the values obtained on the previous step. That would give a final forecast of BA skills that will likely be the most important during 2023–2027.
For new-to-BA skills, an approximation was applied considering their positions in the WEF data by calculating average importance rating.
The last phase consisnt of an analysis of the skill shifts and understanding a portrait of the “business analyst of the future”. This was a creative phase because it has a chance to describe a future profession. Here, I used ChatGPT-4 to get professions with similar skill sets to the job portrait obtained.
Assumptions and Limitations
Global professional skills demand and landscape transformation affect a profession of BA as equal as the rest profession in average.
The importance of BA competencies due to the Guide to the BABOK treated as equal among the set.
The frontier between a skill and a function was decided to be blurred. We may have some functions that are close to the skills and vice versa.
Research Stages
1. Business Analyst Skills List Analysis
According to the Internatinal Institute of Business Analysis (their main document — BABOK), business analysts’ competency consists of 29 skills that are grouped into six categories:
Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving
- Creative Thinking,
- Decision Making,
- Learning,
- Problem Solving,
- Systems Thinking,
- Conceptual Thinking,
- Visual Thinking.
Behavioural Characteristics
- Ethics,
- Personal Accountability,
- Trustworthiness,
- Organization and Time Management,
- Adaptability.
Business Knowledge
- Business Acumen,
- Industry Knowledge,
- Organization Knowledge,
- Solution Knowledge,
- Methodology Knowledge.
Communication Skills
- Verbal Communication,
- Non-Verbal Communication,
- Written Communication,
- Listening
Interaction Skills
- Facilitation,
- Leadership and Influencing,
- Teamwork,
- Negotiation and Conflict Resolution,
- Teaching
Tools and Technology
- Office Productivity Tools and Technology,
- Business Analysis Tools and Technology,
- Communication Tools and Technology.
This list became a fundamental for the research. Taking into account that BABOK does not compare importance between the skills, I assumed to treat them equal.
2. Global Job Trends Analysis
Then, I analyzed the Report for current job landscape, trends, and forecasts.
The Report’s data set contains 803 unique responses by global companies, collectively representing more than 11.3 million employees (about twice the population of Arizona) worldwide.
The data from the figure below was used to estimate a difference in importance between the BA skills as of today (2022–2023).
After that, the data of reskilling and upskilling was applied over the results of the previous step to obtain a forecast of a skill focus shift.
3. Estimation and Forecast
The summarizing list shows the results of data application and overlapping. I highlighted with a bold font style the matching skills from both lists (BABOK and the Report) with their levels of importance and its changes if it is.
Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving, TOP-1
- Creative Thinking, TOP-2
- Decision Making,
- Learning, Curiosity and lifelong learning, TOP-6, -1
- Problem Solving,
- Systems Thinking, TOP-19, -8
- Conceptual Thinking,
- Visual Thinking. Design and UX, TOP-8, +9
Behavioural Characteristics
- Ethics,
- Personal Accountability, Motivation and self-awareness, TOP-9, -5
- Trustworthiness,
- Organization and Time Management,
- Adaptability. (Resilience, flexibility, and agility) TOP-5, -2
Business Knowledge
- Business Acumen,
- Industry Knowledge, (Environmental stewardship), TOP-13, +10
- Organization Knowledge,
- Solution Knowledge,
- Methodology Knowledge.
- NEW, Marketing and media, TOP-15, +6
Communication Skills
- Verbal Communication, multilingualism, TOP-22, -4
- Non-Verbal Communication,
- Written Communication,
- Listening (Empathy and active listening), TOP-10, -2
Interaction Skills
- Facilitation,
- Leadership and Influencing, TOP-4, +5
- Teamwork,
- Negotiation and Conflict Resolution,
- Teaching, TOP-21, -2
Tools and Technology
- Office Productivity Tools and Technology,
- Business Analysis Tools and Technology,
- Communication Tools and Technology.
- NEW: AI and big data, TOP-3, +12
- NEW: Technological literacy TOP-7, -1
Conclusions of the Part 1:
Global trends and professional landscape transformation may affect Business Analysis too because the skills of business analysts can be found in many other trending professions.
Analytical Thinking skill remains the most desirable skill not only for Business Analysts, but for many jobs as well.
To be continued…
The Part 2 of the article can be found here.
