Today’s article on Business Analysis is not explaining you anything technical, but to give you an overall understanding about the Business Analysis career path.  Recently I came across an interesting post in a blog dedicated to business analysis, under the heading of ‘Business Analysis Career Path 2.0’ I had lot of confusions at the beginning of my career as a Business Analyst, due to the lack of understanding on where will this career take me at the end. The similar doubts were there among my colleagues too and at some points, we felt that the decision taken to be a Business Analyst is a careless mistake. I am sure that many of you would have the same concerns as I had at the early days in my career. Thus I thought it would be useful if we analyse – this is our job – and understand the career opportunities available in this career as Business Analysts.

The diagram below shows how Geetesh Jain explains the business analyst career path in the blog post I mentioned earlier.

To start a career in BA, you need to have either business background in the specific industry domain – industry and domain experts and fresh MBA’s- or a broad IT knowledge-the software engineers and quality assurance engineers. You can then begin to play the role of BA with the job responsibilities of gathering, analyzing, communicating and documenting the requirements, validation, and user training etc. When you practice in the industry for several years, you gather enough experience to play the role of a BA lead. As Yasas, an experienced BA from Sri Lanka sees this level a highly skilled and autonomous level.

    Then after sometime there will be a turning point in your career – either you can move to sales and business development or begin consulting and Business Process Reengineering or further improve your knowledge on a selected domain to become a Subject Matter Expert (SME).  Whatever the path you choose, it is proven that they are highly rewarding.

As Geetesh explains, the next step in senior level is either to move to vendor management or product management. By this time, you may get solid domain knowledge having experience on different products of a solution segment for example it could be banking and finance, telecommunication, ecommerce, education etc. As product managers you will have to use your expertise to build a vision for your product and improve the brand image. On the other hand, as a vendor manager, you can work for a non-IT company to select the best software for the organizational requirement, selection of vendors based on the quality of their solutions etc.

When you reach the mature level in your career, you can either be promoted as a CIO or work as consultants. As a consultant you can begin your own business providing consultation for organizational needs. In the words of Geetesh, when you are a consultant, ‘You are in more demanding position as you have solid industry experience and can do contractual work and making lot of money.’ Or if you follow the next path, with your leadership skills and expertise, you can become a CTO for a business organization defining the road maps for the future IT needs.

Personally, I feel that it is also possible to move in to the general management track, at the senior level, since you have enough and more experience in the business. Meanwhile would like to highlight that the soft skills that you develop while being a Business Analyst such as listening, speaking, negotiating and communicating, is invaluable to be successful in your management career.

I hope this article provides you an insight to business analysis career. Further to broaden your knowledge I suggest you to read through the following posts, freely available

1.   http://businessanalystworld.blogspot.com/2009/04/business-analyst-career-path-20_1
2.  http://yasasva.blogspot.com/2007/05/business-analysis-career-path.htm
3.   http://businessanalystworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/career-track-for-business-analyst.h
4.  http://www.writingusecases.com/wordpress/index.php/archive/tips-for-business-analysts-career-paths-for-business-analysts/

[As a beginner, if you need any guidance on this career, you can contact me via my personal email: anupamais@gmail.com]