Thanks, Laura! I appreciate all the helpful advice. 🙂

Felicia,
I think it’s wonderful that you held onto that comment and chewed on it. Sometimes it takes awhile for new ideas to sink in. I’m proud of you. Expertise definitely has it’s place and can definitely be valuable in certain contexts. But any BA will do well to broaden their skill set and gain confidence in working in situations where they are not the expert as well.

If I were to draw a pyramid to represent my skils, I would put my soft skills at the bottom as the supporting base. But, what a challenge to draw yourself away from domain knowledge if that is what is required. What I gather from this article is it’s good for the job, but may not apply completely to the career.

This is definitely something I will think about when I look for ways to improve my analysis skills. Thank you for another great article!

Every system that you gain “expert” status means the millstone gets bigger and bigger. Users come to you directly because you’re the person who can get things done. IT staff come to you directly because, despite your best efforts, the knowledge transfer didn’t take.

And with every project that stone around your neck drags you farther and farther down.

As Laura writes, it’s very easy – and it’s also very self-actualizing – to become the expert when working with users on a project. Digging yourself out of expert status is very hard, particularly if you don’t have management support. Often the only solution is the most final: time for a new job, in a new organization.

I’m currently project manager for a new 3rd party barcoding solution, and I’m avoid “expert” status by not even knowing how to log into the systems I’m working with. We’ll see how long this lasts.