hi I'm Laura Brandenburg from bridging the gap and we help you start your business analyst career so today I want to talk about one of the most frequently asked questions we receive and that's what skills do I need to actually get started as a business analyst or what skills do I need to be like a proven successful like well-established business analyst who's really like has what they need to be successful in a business analyst role [Music] and it can be really confusing to know where to get started because when you start looking at job postings there's like all kinds of skills that get packed into jobs with the business analyst job title and even business analyst rules that might not even have the business analyst job title so I want to do for you in this video in the accompanying posts where I'm gonna break this down into what are the core skills what are the business analysis skills what are some of the softer skills that you need to really be successful and then what are some of the other skills that we see a lot of times in business analyst jobs but they aren't really core to being a business analyst but often get layered onto business analyst job roles and why that happens ok so let's dive right in here so first let's talk about core skills so just core underlying foundational skills that you could have from any kind of career background or any kind of professional background so first is communication like business analysts are great communicators they are good at all kinds of communication so verbal communication and small meetings large meetings presentations email written communication we do a lot of work with specifications and writing clear requirements and being able to have clear written communication in a variety of modalities is extremely important as is visual communication being able to show things visually we use a lot of different visual models I'm going to talk about that when we get to the business analysis skills but just being able to like draw pictures to represent your ideas as well as use text and written communication to represent your ideas so that's probably the most important skill communication and you might have that for a variety of different job backgrounds the other core skill that I think makes for a really good successful business analyst is problem-solving right we solve problems we solve business problems as business analyst and so we need to help create a shared understanding of what the problem actually is why are we doing this project what is it intended to do and accomplish what is the benefit to the business and get everybody's perspective of that and really get into the root cause and understanding of that problem and then a company that is a critical thinking skills so are we actually solving the right problem here what are the possible solutions to this problem can we change the business process do we need software do we need to reorganize the team like looking broadly and thinking critically about what the potential solutions are and creating alignment on what the solution will look like for your project okay so those I think are the core foundational skills so communication problem solving critical thinking that really set you up for success now let's talk about some of the very specific business analysis skills like things that you might learn in a business analyst training program like ours we offer a variety of online on-demand business analysis training at bridging the gap to help people build their business analyst skills and also enhance those core skills that they might already have and bring to the table and the business analyst blueprint goes through the key techniques that business analysts use particularly new business analysts or mid-level business analysts on a typical business process change or software project and that blueprint is divided into analysis and communication and it's also in the three levels of requirements so the business level the software level and the information level and that's because as I mentioned communication is super important so we don't need to just know how to analyze the requirements we do need to know how to analyze the requirements and that's how we find it figure out the problems that we're solving how we perform critical thinking as business analyst you also need to communicate to discover information that will help us discover what the problem is help us think critically about the problem of the solution and so that's why the blueprint has two levels like that and then let's talk about business level software level and information level these are three key levels of skills or three key ways that we look at the requirements so business being what does the business do how does the business performance functions day to day this is that and end business process we might create process Maps or workflow diagrams along with a textual business process model it describes how that process works then at the software level a lot of times we need to do use cases some where agile teams will ask us to do user stories user stories are like little bite-sized pieces of the software requirements which can be a very important communication tool but use cases allow us to think in terms of how does the user interact with the system and we need some way to be able to critically think about that user system interaction that allows us to get really clear on what the functional or software requirements are for our project or for our solution and so use cases are a great critical thinking tool that enable us to get to the right level of the software requirements and then finally we have the data or information level and these are the sets of techniques that allow us to really understand how information is organized and stored in our organization we teach techniques like entity relationship diagrams and glossaries and data dictionaries and data mapping and system context diagrams so all techniques that allow you to just get a view of where's the information what kinds of information are we collecting how does information transfer between systems how does the individual data fields transfer between systems a really important view that enables technology today to automate so many of our business processes by passing data back and forth if we don't know what that data is or how its organized or how its useful to the business we really can't automate what the business does so data and information modeling is becoming increasingly important in today's skills and then finally those are all the techniques that we might use to analyze discover communicate about the requirements but we also need to be open for been aware of the end end business analysis process so bridging the gap we teach an eight-step business analysis process that starts when you like get assigned an ambiguous project and have no idea what to do and flows all the way through to finding the problem figuring out the solution analyzing the requirements supporting the technical team supporting the business team and ultimately assessing the value of what actually got delivered easily do what we said we were going to do did we solve the right problem and presenting a report and a characterization of that project that really supports both the business analysis effort and the effort of the entire team in terms of what the project performed ok so those are the core business analysis skills and again we have courses that teach all of those skills at bridging the gaps so if you are interested in learning more definitely get in touch with me about that let's talk now about some of the softer skills so like none of this happens in a vacuum right it's not like you just learn how to put the right documents together and poof they magically get created so there's a lot of soft skills that go into truly being successful relationship building is one how do you build trust with your stakeholders to get them to share information to get them to open up to get them just to come to your meetings right a lot of that comes back to how you plan and structure those meetings which is important also building a really positive and open relationship with them business analysts tend to be very self managing meaning hopefully in most situations we don't think something like looking over our shoulder every day making sure like we do this this and this we don't have somebody organizing our time and telling us what to do when we have to look at the big picture of what we need to accomplish possibly on multiple different projects and use that and plan to that and work ahead of that to really be managing ourselves towards that and this is where the process framework that we teach can come in really handy it's not about project managing the whole team that's a project manager's role but about managing ourselves consenting ourselves but for success and making sure we're thinking ahead and allowing people to know how they need to show up to support the work that we do as business analysts as well I also think business analysts need a little bit of a thick skin we can wear our heart on their sleeves sometimes we can get overly emotionally invested in our work but we need to have a thick skin when we put a requirements model out there draft the solution to a problem like it might be completely the wrong thing the first time and so not getting attached to those ideas not taking it personally when somebody's like I didn't want this I wanted something else right and having that confidence and ability to embrace that feedback into take that to the next level now finally a really clear relationship with ambiguity and ability to both handle ambiguity meaning we're gonna start projects not knowing much about anything we might not even be knowledgeable about the business domain right you might not be knowledgeable about the technology there might be a lot of ambiguity for us and so we need to be able to succeed in the context of that ambiguity but with the guide of bringing forward towards clarity right so we're always trying to translate ambiguity in to clarity it's part of our business analyst manifest so it bridging the gap is we take chaos and turn it into clarity like we check the ambiguity and turn it into clarity so super important super important skill as well and the requirements models and the elicitation models and the discovery models that we teach you if regime that help you create that kind of clarity okay so that's it from a core ba perspective you might be thinking like more when I go to look at jobs there's all these other things gonna get layered on and so what about these more special skills and you know there's that's the reality is that a lot of times we will see technical skills whether that's like how to code or how to use a specific software system you don't need to know how to code to be a business analyst you don't need to know how to write sequel as a business analyst there are reasons that technical skills end up in business analyst jobs that's the topic of an integrally another video that I can share the link with you but like I'm you don't need to have those technical skills you can have those technical skills I personally didn't come from as much of a technical background it came from more of a business background about half of the business analysts come with can business expertise and about half of us come with more technical expertise so whatever camp you're in you're in good company but you might feel overwhelmed that like the other half of the profession knows more than you do about their specialties so when you talk to a software developer who's now a business analyst because they wanted to get out of the rat race of always needing to know that like latest cutting-edge how to do everything are gonna be much more technically competent than you but you need to know how to have conversations with that technical person and understand the possibilities of Technology not necessarily how to code or build that technology another area that tends to come up is specific methodologies whether that's agile or Six Sigma or BPA and or any sort of specific way of doing business or creating change in a business and again this is just a layer on top of your business analysis skills you don't have that core foundational thinking of how to be a great v8 you know you're probably gonna suffer if you're just an agile expert trying to be a BA and an agile team you've got the agile knowledge but not the BA knowledge right they need to go together and that agile could be a layer on of your business analysis skills that makes you really really marketable in an agile product owner role or agile business analyst role and then the other area that we see get layered on is like an industry or a domain experience so like being an expert in the insurances industry or knowing the accounting domain are knowing a lot about human resources or knowing a lot about marketing right so knowing having a specialty from a business perspective and this is where the technologists often look at the business the Behe's of the big sis background and be like oh you have such an unfair advantage because you understand the business and I don't right they see how it's kind of a double-edged sword no matter what side of that you're on you're gonna feel like somebody else has more expertise than you and there are roles that that do appreciate more of a generalist business analyst and that ability to learn in any situation and survive and thrive and any note any domain but a lot of rules today do look for experience or expertise in a particular specialty so if you are do have a deep background say 10 years of experience in the insurance industry the best way to start moving towards a business analyst job role is in the insurance industry will leverage that domain experience or look for related domains where the the function is similar or the experience you have is similar and relevant helps you move forward more quickly and same thing even if you're in a more of a tech background look for the kinds of systems you've used look for the kinds of industries you've worked with and been exposed to and leverage that background to get your start and then what we see as the A's expand in the profession is they start to move around between different domains and they leverage that expect expertise to get really into their first role and then they move around to multiple different domains to build out more of a generalized expertise and more that confidence that I can work in any situation any domain and I can be successful and that's when we see people go from really successful as up like a proven first-time business analyst to being more of a superhero and sought-after on any kind of project okay but you don't have to start there you don't have to start by knowing all of the domains that's another limiting belief I see getting people's way like oh my gosh I need to qualify for all the jobs with all of these different industry experiences that's like completely possible focus on where you're gonna have the best chances of success first okay final point on skills this is a big topic we could talk about this for hours I actually have a free training that you can there'll be a link below that you can opt-in for and we'll teach you more about the business analyst job role some of the skills that are required the framework and the techniques that you need to be successful so we'll do a deeper dive because we can't cover it all in one video unfortunately but the last thing I wanted to share is that we see these skills show up in business analyst job titles but also roles that aren't quote unquote business analyst roles and so they might not have the job title but they might be called project manager they might be called process process analyst they might be called any kind of other role and they're really doing business analysis work and so look at the skills that are needed to be successful more so than the titles his titles are used really inconsistently okay so fine but that's just my take on what key skills you really need to be successful to get started and prove yourself as a business analyst again we have our quick start training if you want to follow the link below it's completely free to do a deeper dive on some of these skills and what you need to be successful to get started and if you're looking to really invest in improving your business analyst skills as well we do offer online on-demand instructor supported endorsed courses at bridging the gap comm because we're all about you we build our profession one business analyst at a time success starts with you again I'm Laura Brandenburg from bridging the gap and we help you start and succeed in your business Kayla's career [Music] you