You are Correct Craig,

It adds folds into the complexity we are dealing with.

When you can meet client for F-2-F you can in generally notice lot many other things like body language , gestures , confidence.....many things like that.

You can also get to know the nature of client or his approachability. In telephonic(Its not even video conferencing which are reffering to!) it gets tough sometimes.

You have to believe in your judgement and approach them. And we can anytime go wrong in judging people !......so it is a challenge for sure.

Storytime !!! :-)

Just want to share one experience in my short stint as a BA , Once we got a long list of requirements from one client. At first glance , we could see that they are creative/innovative for sure, but there was no relevant data to pull out those results. Moreover the input files provided were having no relation with the output they desired. I had to pick up each requirement and had to prove that this is doable/not doable along with clarifications. When the Analysis was presented to client , they were like ....these are great concepts, let's go ahead (without checking that most of them are not doable !!)....it made things more scary......then we had to  MAP everything from input to their requirements to prove that we can't do it.  And  then they were asking us -  then how come you came up with these concepts! ...we were shocked to know that they think these are our thoughts on how the output will look like....then we pulled mails again which half of the client team was not aware of. It was cc'd to a limited mob. And all those "SHOT AT MOON" ideas were brainchild of one junior person over there, as he was not sure he did not copy it to everybody...we wasted around 2 weeks in to & fro . It was telephonic conversations , which blocked us to get things clarified at the first point . I am sure although we cud have wasted a bit.....we couldn't have wasted whole 2 weeks had it been direct channel. ......need less to say we had to made up for those days later by sacrificing great festival days over here( Diwali !) ....

Hi Craig,

Yes I agree to it....that it wud have caused snowball effect if the requirements would have gone into implementations.........if such thing happens, many a timesproject enter into denger zone........I also agree to it......It was not sheer wastage of time( Actually  we were hundreds of miles away from our project plan !! ...2 weeks work took 4 weeks.....) ...as it tought us very valueable lessons........The lessons learnt session was having many points dealing with this sceene....

Morals I learnt out of this

1. First try to map your objectives/end output  of the system with your actual input data provided(although its raw data it should give a base to go for further stages)

   Always try to MAP whether you have things in store fwhich your customer would like to buy....Non Realistic CAN DO attitude doesn't help !

2. Always check whether the communication has any leak......here it was limited mob......if yes try to get things clarified first....who all are involved..why  other ppl  

    are not involved.

3. We should have stakeholder matrix .....having all the stake holders involved.....their stakes in sucesss/failure of project....their power to

    approve/deny/authenticate decision. Surely Idea should be coming from everybody....they are appreciated, but the decision should be coming from authority.

4. Try to get clarifications for whatever you think is in gray area.....the more you keep them in gray area....the more they produce other If's and but's scenario.

     I am sure there would be many more lessons with this, primarily I can see these for sure.

thanks,

Priyanka

Hi Zach,

Once a BA always a BA... ;-)  What I mean by that is that the fundamental competencies for a business analyst such as: communication, problem solving, analytical thinking, etc. are not easily lost.  So if you were a competent BA 4 years ago then you should have no problem getting your career back in gear.

Here are some suggestions of some of the things you can do:

• create yourself a functional resume which showcases your experience more than the actual job chronology (you should Google "functional resume" for examples),
• consider spending some money and taking a course in business analysis to refresh your knowledge,
• take a job which would put you back on the map as a business analyst, that is don't wait for the "perfect" one in the health care industry; once you get a couple more years of recent BA experience it will be much easier to move to the vertical domain you desire.

- Adrian