What is the holistic vs specialised view of business analysis? Is there a risk of categorising the role out of existence? And, is it ok to market yourself as a ‘BA / something else’? Expert BAs discuss.
In this webinar, a group of people used to asking the right questions (Debra Paul, Adrian Reed and David Beckham) are now tasked to come up with some good answers by host Christina Lovelock.
Watch the webinar to find out the panel’s views on:
- business and systems analysts being considered the same thing;
- hyper-specialised BA job role requirements (you must also be a qualified accountant!);
- how to avoid the trap of being type-cast into a specialism;
- entry level roles and pathways (is the junior BA role needed?);
- the ‘BA-in-name-only’ problem;
- and, what the future of business analysis and the BA role looks like.
Here’s an extract from the webinar:
What’s the difference between business analysis as an activity and business analyst as a role?
Adrian Reed: There are people who have the title ‘Business Analyst’ and there are also people who don’t have the title but who do business analysis. One of the things I find about the wider BA community is that we’re very welcoming of people - whether their role is business analyst, functional analyst - it really doesn’t matter. There are people who discover that they are a BA - whose route into business analysis was just by doing it - who might have had a really different job title at the time.
That’s a significant point, because people often ask, ‘How can I become a BA?’ and the answer is simply: do business analysis, irrespective of what your job title is.
