How product management aids your business analyst career

If you are a business analyst, you have probably wondered at some point how to convince people at your organization about the value you provide.

I’ve been there, and have found that the best way to do that is to show, not tell.

Don’t spend your time and energy proclaiming the value of business analysis; take actions that help your organization solve it’s customers’ problems.

I’ve found many ideas that people apply to building products for sale can be applied to software used internal to an organization. That’s the reason I use the term internal product throughout Inside Product Management.

That also means that business analysts are product people too. It just so happens that the products they work on tend to be used for use inside the organization, or are used by the organization’s customers, but not necessarily sold to them. (Think of your organization’s website or mobile app.)

It can be helpful to look to product management for ways to supplement your business analysis skills with ways to be customer and user focused even when you’re working on an internal product.

To understand why that’s the case, let’s look at the different perspectives and the different activities that product people (including business analysts) do.