Coding As a Business Analyst, Breaking the barrier!

It is not as controversial as it may sound :)

If you’ve ever written an excel macro OR have simply summed up a row data in a cell using the built-in excel function, Congrats! you’ve already written some code.

With the rise of digital transformation, the role of Business Analysts has become even more important as they are responsible for identifying and analysing business problems and developing solutions that can help organisations achieve their goals. One of the skills that can help Business Analysts become more effective in their role is to code.

Below are some of the ways in which coding can benefit Business Analysts:

1. Improved communication with development teams: As a Business Analyst, your primary responsibility is to translate business requirements into technical solutions. Having knowledge of coding can help you communicate with the development team more effectively. You will be able to understand the technical jargon used by developers and communicate your requirements in a way that is clear and concise.
2. Ability to prototype solutions: Coding skills can help Business Analysts to prototype solutions. Prototyping involves creating a basic version of the solution to demonstrate how it works. With coding skills, you can create a basic version of the solution yourself, which can help you to demonstrate how it works and get feedback from stakeholders(refer case III below).
3. Increased job opportunities: Having coding skills can increase your job opportunities as a Business Analyst. Imagine you want to pursue Data Analyst role in an organisation, you need to master R/Python/SQL for you to take a stab at the same.

It’s not about adding value to your organisation or increasing your job opportunities, It’s about being able to communicate with each member in the team or being available whenever the team needs you in any area of work.

Putting below few cases where understanding a code helped me as a Business Analyst.

Case I

At the beginning of my career as a Business Analyst, I was asked to take care of a QC(Quality Control)stream of work.

Since, I was transitioning from a Quality Analyst to a Business Analyst role, the stream of work was well suited for me as I was best positioned to be the judge of those defects and their potential root cause.

This was one of my make or break moment.

We had a long list of Bug cards raised in JIRA and we had to deliver them as early as possible. And, were asked to provide a release plan too.

Now, estimating an agile user story is simple as it has ample information about what needs to be done. A Bug, on the other hand, is an open book.

If someone asks you to estimate a bug, your analysis leads towards a root cause, which indirectly means you already have a fix. So, the effort goes into the analysis rather than the fix.

Nobody in their right/happy/whatever state of mind wants to work on fixing bugs while the team works on fancy features.

I had a small team, me(functioning as QA/BA) and a couple of developers.

As I mentioned, fixing bugs is not something anyone would be willing to do but we still executed the stream flawlessly and without letting the morale down.

Where did I contribute?

I’d sit with a developer and keep asking questions, what does this piece of code do? What happens if X data is not received?.

How did it help?

Now, those questions may have made no sense back then but it definitely improved my bonding with the development team.

Sit with a Dev, it will be uncomfortable at the beginning, but hey, it’s the same feeling for a dev when they attend client calls with you.

Case II

When I officially took a project as a Business Analyst, we were trying to solve a problem by generating two apps from a single codebase with specific app variants for e.g. The look and feel, separate copy, added functionality etc…

How did I contribute?

I used to update the app copy(headers/labels) and would push those changes in production(we followed CI/CD practices, so it would go through a good amount of tests before anything gets deployed in production).

How did it help?

I pulled away some work from the developer’s shoulder, providing them more time to focus on fixing critical vulnerabilities.

Case III

I still remember us working on one of the requirement from the clients to add additional functionality to an existing feature.

While we were in a call with them, I took the liberty(pausing my screen share) to quickly update the existing UI of my web application by cloning a button element(HTML code, in the browser developer tool) and updating it’s text.

When I resumed, the clients were astounded, visually seeing the changes we were discussing during the call, which, gave them the confidence on how it may look.

How did I contribute?

Leveraging the time I had, I was able to present my words in action(visually).

How did it help?

We were able to quickly wrap up the call with a consensus from all the relevant parties.

Putting below some FAQs related to this topic:

How much coding should you know as a Business Analyst?

The less the good start, the more the better. Start small, ask questions, understand the flow.

I did not start my career with a CS/IT background, what should I do?

First of all, even the ones with a CS/IT background lack programming knowledge(as per my personal experience). They are only aware about the jargons which revolve around in the tech space.

If you arrive from a non-tech background, start with understanding your product/project first as it should give you a good high level information about how it functions.

Where do I start?

Start from the project/product you are working upon. That’s your best bet as you are already familiar with the domain, the functional flows, it all drills down to understand the code.

Whom should I reach out to?

You can start by expressing your interest with any developer in your team. If they deny, experiment on your own.

Coding is not a skill which is limited to just a developer. Anybody can code, as long as you are willing to put your efforts.

Happy coding 😇