Dear craigwbrown,
Really !!! BSA I think is a must??? my question is how did communicate with programmers ?
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For the most part Mr Prince I simply spoke to them. It works wonders & I recommend it to all MA readers.
Yes, diagrams helped, as did asking questions. But a perfect UML digram of the wrong business requirement doesn't help. An unstructured whiteboard session with key stakeholders and developers in the room at the sme time works a treat every time.
Something that waaaaaay to many people in BA roles do is assume they are an expert in something they are not. I am no expert in pogramming or even database design. My expertise is in understanding how business works and being able to clearly articulate what problem or opportunity I am addressing.
And that dear readers is the skill that is most lacking on projects today.
Dear Irene,
I am still waiting for your answer, and please tell me how did you start and the number of years to get the position of BSA, cuz I am really interested in that position ;-)
Hi prince, sorry for the late reply! I did not see your post until today. I was on vacation last week.
I officially moved to BSA position after working as a programmer for almost 4 years and also got an MBA’s degree (got it while I was working). I can not say for exactly how long you need to work as a programmer. But in general, I think 1 or 2 years’ experience should be good enough to have the fundamental knowledge and working experience to move on. More important thing is after you move you still need to update knowledge all the time in order to keep up with the technical trend.
For business oriented BA, I don’t think you need to have technical background. But for a BSA, I think it would definitely help. As a BSA, except coding that I don’t do anymore, I am involved in a lot of activities, such as functional specs creating/maintaining, high level technical designing, testing, coordinating, etc. The programmer experience helps me in designing a feasible solution, testing, easily interacting with programmers, testers, business people and other stake holders.
Hope this help. Any idea or comments are appreciated. J
Irene
Thanx Irene,
I hope you had a great vacation.
To go in deep, I am a computer engineer and I got a position as a credit analyst !! plz, dont ask me how but the offer was great...within the last 15 months I got a good knowledge of credit in specific and banking in general. Now I am thinking to shift to get a position as BSA as long as I have computer engineering degree and diploma in project managment and I just started the programme (diploma) business finance and managment.
This is my way of shifting to the position of BSA, but after I read your dairy and other posts by you which shows other veiws that I just realized...I started to ask my self .....Am I in the right way?? my techinical skills is there but without any experince...
Irene ....are you there to help me!!!
Thank you, prince!
Well, not everybody has to have the technical experience to be a BSA. It greatly depends on individuals. I personally think it helps just based on my own experience. Anyway, I actually think you have good enough background to move, as long as you are willing to learn whenever you need new knowledge.
I am not that experienced in this area either. I wish I could help more. I see many senior masters in this forum giving great suggestions. We can all get help from them.
Wish you the best!
HI Irene,
I've read your posts and I am in a similar situation as you were at the beginning: currently I'm working as a Java developer and I have an expoerinece of 3,5 years. I want to move to BSA in my future new job, start doing courses and reading some books. Do you have any books which you can recommend me as a starting point for programmmer moving to BSA position ?
Thanks!
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