With this much attention on the topic of transferable skills let’s take a deeper dive into those skills and see what skills this includes.  The debate of hard skills vs. soft skills, which are best, has been around almost since the inception of business analysis as a discipline.  You obtain skills by practice and the best way to practice is during the duties of your job.  An old baseball coach of mine would say:

“Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent”.

His point is how you practice a process is how you will learn to accomplish that process.  If you practice a process {whether swinging a baseball bat or eliciting requirements} wrong, you will always do it wrong.  If you practice it right, you will always do it right.  So as you practice your skills day in and day out during the duties of your job, learn from your mistakes and strive to do better next time.

Now that the pep talk is over, what skills can help you transition into a business analysis skills?  It is difficult to practice those hard skills prior to getting that first business analysis job, but as many those writers mentioned above have noted, and those of us who have transitioned into business analysis careers know, you often perform business analysis tasks prior to getting that Business Analyst job title.  Even then, it is the soft skills underlying and supporting those hard skills that are most transferable from career arena to career arena.  These soft skills are also transferable from industry to industry, or line of business to line of business that assist a Business Analyst to move to a new area with ease.  For those reasons I will concentrate on the transferable soft skills.

Soft Skill #1 – Interpersonal Savvy

Many people would start off by talking about communication (oral and written) and active listening.  I combine these communication skills with Be Approachable, Influencing, Negotiation, Trustworthiness and Ethics. Interpersonal Savvy is about how you communicate and interact with other people.

• How comfortable are you in interacting with other people, especially when you have to influence them or negotiate with them.
• How comfortable are you in working with project teams, business and technical team members.

I include trustworthiness and ethics in these skills because the Business Analyst must build trust among those project team members and other stakeholders and serve as a base for influencing and negotiating power; and of course, acting with the utmost ethics is how you build trust, especially in handling proprietary or confidential information of a particular stakeholder or group of stakeholders.

Soft Skill #2 – Learning

Nobody knows everything, and if you think you do then it is probably time to move on to something else.  Many stay in their comfort zone and stop growing and learning.  Many Business Analysts move from project team to project team, line of business to line of business, or industry to industry; as you move into a new arena learning new processes, people and intricacies.  Often very quickly you have to learn how they do things and terminology.  If part of your job duties is identifying process improvement, you have to learn the current process before you can recommend improvement.

Soft Skill #3 – Teamwork

The Business Analyst does not operate in a vacuum; they often work within a project team.  Even Enterprise Business Analysts work with teams, or at least other people, to develop business cases.   In today’s business environment the team may be geographically dispersed but working within that team remains a necessity to getting work done.  Personal organization is an important skill when working within a team.  You must be ready to work on a task when the team is ready.  If you are always fumbling through, or trying to find, notes to find important information then you hinder the progress of the work. So Time Management and Collaboration become important underlying skills when working with a team.

Soft Skill #4 – Building Relationships

As noted above, the Business Analyst does not work in a vacuum. Building relationships with both business and technical team members is an important skill to develop to be effective.   All the skills mention above assist in being able to build relationships.  Being able to communicate and comfortable working with others, learning from others and working with others all are a part of building relationships. Having an interest in and understanding a person’s viewpoint, interests and agenda are important factors in building the relationship.  This does not say that you have to agree with the individual, but if you determine that building a relationship with this individual is important to your effectiveness as a business analyst, then understanding that individual will make you effective at building that relationship.

Soft Skill #5 – Facilitation

You can’t talk about the soft skills of a business analyst without mentioning Facilitation. Not all business analysts have to facilitate large group discussions among a large group of stakeholders, but facilitation of discussions and relationships is an important skill for a business analyst.  Knowing what the goal of the discussion helps guide the discussion along the path toward that goal and reduces tangent discussions.  When in that large group facilitation, having a scribe for those discussions always proves worthwhile as it is very difficult to guide that discussion while trying to take minutes at the same time.  If needed, volunteer to scribe for another business analyst if they will scribe for your group discussions.

So there is the list of soft skills you should strive to develop when considering a career in business analysis. So as Laura says in her 5 Steps to Becoming a BA: confirm your career choice, and then identify these soft skills you already possess and leverage those to assist you in transitioning into the career that you have chosen.  Along with identifying those skills you have, identify those that you need to improve in; and be ready to always be learning.

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I have been working in the medical and spa industry for over 10 years. It seems every position I have involves some BA type duties from rewriting policy and procedure manuals to doing efficiency studies. I need to find a mentor to assist me in turning all this random experience into a BA career. I feel like I have the skills and the desire, even a natural aptitude; I just need some direction. I hope that you can help me with this. I feel like I’m wasting my potential.

Aaron’s reply:

Don’t mistake your “random” experience as just jobs because each of those experiences is a stepping stone to your Business Analysis career.  It is up to you to take charge of your career and drive it in the direction that you wish. I have done so and have been driving my personal career into the business analysis arena for the past several years.

There is no single way or roadmap to develop a business analysis career; each of us got here from different starting points and on different paths.  Some have come from the business side of the organization and others have come from the technology side.  The fact that the reader is requesting a mentor to assist them in developing their career shows that they are ready to take charge of their career and drive it in their desired direction, and not that of whichever job or task may come their way at any point of time.

Some ways to find a valuable mentor:

Look for a Business Analyst Mentor Inside Your Organization

The best mentors may be ones that you can meet with on a face-to-face basis and that you have access to on a daily or weekly basis.  Look for someone in your organization that exhibits the characteristics you would like to develop.  Look for someone that the rest of the organization considers the “go-to guy” when it comes to solving business problems.  This is not to say that a “virtual” mentor would not add value; and it really depends on the type of help for which you are looking.  A mentor that “sees” your work habits and interactions with stakeholders will be in a better position to give you work experience advice.

Look  for a Business Analyst Mentor in the Community

Another great place to find a mentor for career advice is in the business community.  They are still local and know that community in which you wish to develop your career.  One of the best places to find a mentor in your business community is in your local IIBA® chapter.  Connect with your local chapter and get to know other BAs within your local community.

Look for a BA that is active within the chapter and others go to for answers and advice.

Look for a Business Analyst Mentor Online

There are BAs that write many of the articles and blogs dedicated to helping professionals get started in a business analysis career or continue developing their career.  Stay abreast of the information these mentors create here on Bridging the Gap, or on BATimes.com, TheBAMentor.com, BusinessAnalysisMentor.com, ModernAnalyst.com, PracticalAnalyst.com and more.  

There are also individuals that will mentor new BAs virtually, such as our own Doug Goldberg, who gives advice over the internet to those individuals who seek him out.  They can give you the advantage of their years of BA experience.

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Reader 1: As rules are mostly hardcoded and code walkthrough is too time consuming in mainframe systems, what is the best way to extract business rules from legacy systems without using the tools?

Reader 2: In most modern systems, business and processing logic/rules are defined in a separate Business Rule engine; but in Legacy systems it’s the other way as their logic and rules are hard coded or defined in the code itself. So how does a BA who is suppose to work on a legacy modernization project gather the requirements for these rules and logic as he can’t go and see the code and then understand?

Aaron’s reply:

These questions come quite timely as I have just completed a legacy modernization project for one client and have begun another one for a new client.  The one thing I believe is that there is no substitute for the code walkthrough.  The first reader doesn’t want to take the time to do a code walkthrough, but if you want absolute correct requirements, and business rules you must go through the code walkthrough.  Now, I am not saying it has to be a formal code walkthrough nor have several people involved.  The more people you have involved, the more correct your requirements and business rules are apt to be.  The fewer people you have involved to faster the process is likely to go.  I am not sure what tools Reader 1 is referring to, but I am not aware of any tool that can read legacy code and extract business rules; that will take a trained human being.

I actually suggest a two prong approach to legacy modernization projects; technical and functional.  The technical is the code review/walkthrough.  Have a Developer/Analyst, or a team, walkthrough the code and extract the business rules from the code.  The second prong, functional, is having a Business Analyst (BA) interview the business people who interact with system under investigation and extract the functional rules from them.  The business people who use the system every day know how the system acts.  They know the “quirky” things that the system does.  The BA should observe the business people interacting with the system, which could lead to more questions about the system.

The BA and Developer/Analyst can confirm with each other what they learn about the system.  As a Developer who has transitioned into a BA role, I performed both the functional and technical reviews of a legacy ERP system for a client, to draw out the business rules and functional requirements of the system, as the company was preparing to replace their ERP package.

While interviewing and observing the Order Entry business people of the company, I learned that during order entry they would type the word “USUAL” in the ship via on the order.  The system would see that, go to the Preferred Carrier table for that customer and retrieve the name of their preferred carrier and replace “USUAL” on the order with that carrier’s name.  The Order, Invoice, Bill of Lading and other documents would print with the actual carrier’s name.  Being the technical person on the project, I was able to confirm this during the code review, and see exactly how the system went about accomplishing that task.  If I were not the technical person on the project, I would compare business rules with the Developer/Analyst and see if he/she found the “ship via replacement” rule of the Order Entry system.  If it was not listed in their rules, I would ask them to confirm the rule as I received it from the Order Entry business people.

So you have two take-aways from this:

1) Like it or not, there is no substitute for a code walkthrough/review to help ensure you get the business rules correct.

2) Take a two prong approach to legacy modernization projects; technical and functional.

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“How do people go about collecting report requirements from clients and trying their best to reduce overheads whilst still fulfilling the data needs? I know there has been a big drive recently for Green IT and how companies can reduce their carbon footprint, is this a tactic that should be used?

In addition, how are the report lists maintained and captured – do people have a report book template they can provide. I suppose the best way forward is to persuade clients to consolidate and condense their reports, which will reduce complexity.”

Aaron’s reply:

Remember that the Business Analyst (BA) gathers and documents requirements then makes recommendations.  The Stakeholder, or client, is the decision maker.  So “Green IT…is this a tactic that should be used?” That is for the client to decide, based on their business needs.

You ask a multitude of questions within your question, you asked about reduce overhead cost, fulfilling data needs, Green IT, carbon footprint and report lists. You are asking the right questions and considering more than just report contents.  Every good BA will consider all the necessary components and gather requirements from the stakeholders about all the components, not just the contents of the report.

Report Contents

The data fields contained in the report and how it is formatted is where the stakeholders will want to spend their time.  They usually have a good idea of how they want the report to look.  However, stakeholders may not be aware of technology capabilities that can highlight certain data on the report by changing color, bold, or changing the font or size of the text.  The BA should be aware of these capabilities and elicit the requirements around highlighting certain data on the report.

Report Format

Along with content of the information contained in the report, in what format should it be delivered?  Paper reports are no longer the only option.  Some recipients may wish to reformat or resort the data once the report is delivered; Excel spreadsheet makes a good format for these recipients.  When this is not necessary, yet you wish to go Green, PDF format may be a good option.

Underlying Infrastructure

Consider the infrastructure in place when making recommendations on changing the reporting system of the organization.  Making a recommendation that completely changes the infrastructure, or that the current infrastructure can not support usually will meet with great opposition.  Is the client running a Windows or Linux network, IBM midrange or mainframe system?

Report Delivery System

The days of the large data center with 10 printers that look like washing machines that print reports all day and then someone walks throughout the office delivering paper reports are coming to an end.  You may be able to find this still today in very large organizations, but just like the floppy disc, this too will some day be a thing of the past.

Organizations that wish to reduce their paper usage can consider having reports delivered to shared folders on the company’s network or through the company’s email system.  Both PDF and Excel reports can be delivered either way.

You can further reduce costs by having the application that creates the report deliver it to its final destination in the format desired.  Most systems have tools built within them that assist in accomplishing this task.  There is usually third-party software available that can do this when the system lacks the tools itself to get the job done.

Security

Some reports may have sensitive or proprietary information, such as financial or executive reports, that you will want to limit the access to these reports.  Reports delivered via the company’s email system are delivered to individuals or distribution lists; so you control who gets these reports.  The downside of this method is that if the report was delivered to 10 recipients you now have 10 copies of a sensitive report out there.

Windows network folders can have limited access rights assigned to them.  So setting up folders and assigning limited access rights to them then having reports delivered directly to those folders solves many issues related to delivering reports for the organization.

Report List

Organizations have spent a lot of money trying to maintain report lists.  Keeping it current with additions, removals and delivery instruction changes can be a daunting task.  Sometimes when an application is used to deliver reports, necessary information can be extracted from the setup to create a report list.  If the reports are delivered to Windows network folders, open the folder…there is your list.  Reducing the resources necessary to maintain the report list is another way to save your client money.  So capture it from an application setup or from the network folders to automatically create the list.  Also, if a list is not required, don’t spend the resources to maintain one.

So when working on an enterprise reporting system, remember there is more to consider than how the report looks.

>> Learn What Questions to Ask When Creating a New Report

“Create Report” is one of the 18 requirements checklists in the  Requirements Discovery Checklist Pack, which includes over 700 questions, categorized and cross-referenced so you can prepare for your next elicitation session with a sense of ease and confidence. I

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