Hi,

for what its worth my advice is

1. thoroughly internalise what being a BA is all about and it looks to me as if you have made a superb start on that - anyone who can read the BABOK and BPMN manuals and remain interested is worthy of respect! :-). Training courses would also help (however, be aware that as a training provider I would say that wouldn't I???). I do have a reading list of more accessible books than the BABOK if you would find that useful - but there are loads of good ones out there...

2. get a role (contract or perm) on a change project in any capacity at all (almost - you just need access to project progress meetings)

3. without telling anyone, promote yourself in to the role of BA by volunteering to assist in BA activities, especially ones in difficulty - and now the hard part where you make or break it as a BA (in that organisation anayway): add value by clarifying the analytical issues and then solving them with appropriate user and other stakeholder engagement

4. if you are successful in step 3 you will natrually migrate to the role because people will seek you out as your reputation for solving BA problems grows. Pick your moment to try and formalise your job title as BA and/or apply for other BA jobs having written your cv to emphasise your experience is performing the BA role if not actually being called one

I'm pretty sure this method works as quite a few people I know have done it - including me!

My first reaction was how stupid of me to jump in having not read the whole thread but on reflection...

As I understand it you have an objective to become a Business Analyst and you have identified that you need to build up your resume. You are constrained in your current role in that it is not very often new projects come along (for a variety of reasons) and as a result your role is Operations Manager maintaining current processes.

If you wish to achieve becoming a Business Analyst (and learn from the experience and other analysts) then you are going to have seek out change projects and if they aren't coming to you then you must go to them.

So, if you are going to seek new positions then my original advice still stands.

Does that make sense - and more to the poin, does it help?

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head describing my current situation, however, I simply don't see how I can achieve the goals in your recommendation in my current employment.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread the place where I am currently working is a small family owned tool distributorship.  It consists basically of my Father (owner and CEO), Mother (office manager) and myself (operations manager) with a staff of roughly 12-15 employees who carry out the processes we design.  Most of our processes have been in place for years and my envolvement only goes as far as tweeking them slightly to improve the flow and making sure they are carried out correctly on a daily basis by our staff.  I was the project lead on our new back end software and VOIP integrations.  Other than that new projects of any real scale come along rarely.  Because of this I am not sure how to advance myself any further in so that I may move into a BA roll with a larger company within the next few years.  Any advice on what my next step should be there?  Should I take BA classes?  Should I try and improve my IT background (of which I have only working knowledge, no formal education) etc? 

Chris, I would love to start another exercise.  We do have one process that we have been working on finding a way to improve.  That is finding a better way to have vendors acknowledge our purchase orders which would in turn decrease the number of pricing and quantity errors that are coming over when the material is shipped and invoiced from the vendor.  If you would like to start a new thread in whatever would be the appropriate spot on the forum I will gladly do my best to describe and diagram the process.  Thanks!