{"id":756,"date":"2024-09-18T09:53:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T08:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/?p=756"},"modified":"2024-09-18T11:37:14","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T10:37:14","slug":"why-i-left-the-business-analyst-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/2024\/09\/18\/why-i-left-the-business-analyst-profession\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I left the Business Analyst profession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Tim Mossholder<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve hung up my Business Analyst hat today<\/strong>, having carefully and ethically removed the title from LinkedIn and updated several recent roles to highlight the many highly technical aspects I performed in them. I\u2019ve worked with so many excellent BAs over the years and aspired to be like them, but I no longer feel that way and I can\u2019t help being a little sad about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a software engineer by background, and probably still one at heart. Ten years on from working as a full-time developer, I still love C# and regular open-source contributions have kept me very technical. A long-standing member of the spectre.console <\/a>team has me triaging issues, reproducing bugs, writing documentation, submitting code and mentoring other contributors. I feel at home doing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love the sharp intersection between the what and the how. Professionally, the most fulfilling engagements have been converting woolly business speak into high-level solutions and then drafting fairly well-defined user stories\/software requirements. I enjoy getting down in the weeds, thinking about architecture, components, non-functionals, deployment practices etc, but never coding and never restricting the developers\u2019 creativity with overly prescriptive specs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The less enjoyable engagements have been spending 80% of my time \u2018treading water\u2019 with a client that fundamentally doesn\u2019t know what their business needs\/wants, who doesn\u2019t want to do a proper discovery but somehow expects the technical team to figure it out. Even less enjoyable are those clients who profess \u2018agile working\u2019 but expect \u2018fully signed-off, implementation-ready requirements\u2019 ahead of hiring any developers and testers. Don\u2019t laugh, they are out there, and they suck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some business analysts are genuinely good in these situations, patiently helping the business understand where their next capital investment should be. They really thrive doing the market\/proposition\/product analysis that\u2019s required, and I really do applaud them. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t thrive in that situation, and I never have. I get bored and then frustrated, finding myself continually championing a set of high-level business requirements without ever building anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m now a Systems Analyst<\/strong>, an apt title for a software developer who doesn\u2019t code professionally. I can easily justify the change in job title if asked, and I will still apply for IT & Technical Business Analyst roles that involve a high degree of technical expertise and software requirements. It is novel to think, however, that some clients may now need to hire a Business Analyst before my work begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash I’ve hung up my Business Analyst hat today, having carefully and ethically removed the title from LinkedIn and updated several recent roles to highlight the many highly technical aspects I performed in them. I\u2019ve worked with so many excellent BAs over the years and aspired to be like them, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-analysis","category-systems-analysis","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost:8082\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}