How to Start a Business Analyst Career: The handbook to apply business analysis techniques, select requirements training, and explore job roles leading to a lucrative technology career

by Laura Brandenburg, Ellen Gottesdiener (Foreword)

With the average salary for a business analyst in the United States reaching above $90,000 per year, more talented, experienced professionals are pursuing business analysis careers than ever before. But the path is not clear cut. No degree will guarantee you will start in a business analyst role. What's more, few junior-level business analyst jobs exist. Yet every year professionals with experience in other occupations move directly into mid-level and even senior-level business analyst roles.My promise to you is that this book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities. What's new and noteworthy in the 2015 second edition has been re-organized, expanded, and updated for 2015 and includes a new forward by Software Requirements Memory Jogger author Ellen Gottesdiener.There are two brand-new chapters on career planning along with expanded descriptions of business analyst job roles, a walk-through of a realistic business analyst workday, and discussions of how the latest certifications fit into your career plan.Here's what's included in How to Start a Business Analyst What It's Like To Be A Business Analyst - Learn what a business analyst really is, experience a realistic sample work day, and receive answers to dozens of FAQs.2. What You Need to Know About Business Analysis - Decipher the key skills a new business analyst needs to be successful in this career.3. How to Expand Your Business Analysis Experience - Receive dozens of ideas for how to gain valuable business analysis work experience, whether you are in a technical role, business role, or unemployed.4. How to Connect With Business Analyst Professionals - Learn how to leverage the strength of the business analysis community to accelerate your career.5. Focus On The Right Business Analyst Role For You - Eliminate the perplexity of today's business analyst job descriptions, by absorbing the descriptions of the most common types of business analyst roles.6. Your Career Transition Strategy - Confidently decide on your best path into business analysis.7. Move Toward Your Business Analyst Career Goals - Create a career transition plan that helps you experience success sooner than you might expect.What's more, as you use How to Start a Business Analyst Career to plan your next step, you'll be able to download a BA Resource Pack full of electronic worksheets that walk you step-by-step through the planning process.Click the button above to order your copy today.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 4, 2015

About the author

START YOUR BUSINESS ANALYST CAREER

Laura Brandenburg, CBAP is an internationally-recognized leader known for helping mid-career professionals start business analysis careers.

Laura brings more than a decade of experience in the business analysis profession, filling such diverse roles as a full-time business analyst, consultant, and hiring manager. She brings all of these perspectives into her writing, presenting, coaching, and training to help you find transferable business analysis skills, expand your business analysis experience, and start your business analysis career with confidence.

If you'd like to know more about how you can get started as a business analyst, scroll down the page and check out the different books Laura has published.

Reviews

[Shannon McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a stereotype surrounding the technology world that you have to be a developer or an engineer to get a job. But that’s only one path. Business Analysis is a relatively new field and a lot of people don’t know about it. How to Start a Business Analysis Career is fantastic, low cost, resource that can kickstart your career transition into technology. If you’re new to the work force or if you’re wanting to make a change and re-invent yourself, this book will help you evaluate your career interest in the context of the technology industry. The author outlines all of the steps to identify your existing transferable skills and maps them to a business analyst’s day-to-day work environment. You get the big picture overview of the industry as well as the specific details that make this a very practical guide. Not only will you know more about the industry, you’l learn a lot about yourself and how your current expertise can be applied in new ways. Gaining clarity around a BA’s daily functions, takes the mystery out of what really goes on in technology jobs. Plus, you will learn where the jobs are and how to go about landing your first job in the field. There are great additional resources and links, embedded in the book, which have been thoughtfully curated, saving you a lot of time in researching other quality sources. It is worth it’s price alone, as a reference tool.

If you’re even remotely interested in getting into the tech industry, but just never thought it possible because of your outdated work history or education, please get this book and read it. You may find that you don’t like technology and have saved yourself a lot of time, cost and effort. You may find you only like a specific area of technology, and you can refine your focus. Or you may find that this is a way to leverage your domain knowledge from your career in sales or administration and add a new level of value to your company. Business analysis is a cross functional role that cuts across every aspect of a company. By reading this book, you have a much broader picture of what really goes on when an organization makes technology decisions. And by following the author’s advice, you can refine your own path; either from the start, or as you progress. At any age, ethnicity or gender, business analysis is an open field of opportunity. I’m living proof. I started as a woman at age 47 with no technology background. I was that analog worker on the brink of being irrelevant in today’s digital high tech job market. I began my transition and skills upgrade by starting as a business analyst and am now leading product development at a major media company working with emerging technologies. Laura Brandenburg’s comprehensive guide was my first step and I still refer to this book for ideas on process and draw inspiration from these pages.

Getting retrained can be costly and time consuming. There are no shortcuts, but there are other ways to make a transition that leverage your existing skills, and this book will show you how to get going. For anyone who is interested in making a career shift into the world of technology, starting as a BA, can be a lucrative opportunity open to people from all backgrounds. How to Start a Business Analyst Career is a rich resource, gives you all the tools you need to get started, and puts you on the right track from the very beginning. It is an essential guide to becoming a business analyst and can be your personal gateway to a new career in technology.

[Reno Chew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought the 1st edition couple of years back and this is the second edition. It is a very good refresher to what I was doing and what I did not. I'm between jobs and this book helped me to restructure my resume. The result of that is I got a 100 % hit rate for of call back (or maybe the job market is in need of BA!)

One thing I like about this book is Laura incorporates practical ideas from courses she conducted and professionals she mentored into this book. This means you are reading into what other professionals has been doing and not solely experience from the author. I'd say this book worth your time.

Need not to say, this book is written in a plain English and easy to read. I recommend anyone who is aspiring to be a BA, want a sneak peak of how BA works or thinking to move on to another BA job, should read this book.

[Atanas Nikolov · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book is good as a general overview, I don't think you'll find anything here that cannot be found in a few YouTube videos, even those by the author. I wanted something more in-depth, with a focus on profession-specific skills. You won't find that here. The book was touted as the first thing to read if you want to get into the field, but I don't think it's worth your while or your money in that regard.

The book is fine if you want general advice on career change. It's bad if you want to specifically get into BA. Sorry, I don't want to be so critical, but these are the facts. It's not that the book isn't useful, it's just that everything it talks about is so painfully obvious, if you've ever been on a job search before.

Let me provide some evidence for my case:
1. The book talks about how to network. I don't care about that, if I did, I'd buy a book on networking.
2. It talks about some BA skills - AWESOME! It does nothing to actually learn anything regarding those skills, and doesn't provide references either, aside from a few mentions here and there.
3. It talks about how you can get to know more about the BA field... Okay, isn't this what I'm reading this book for? It tells you to find a BA and talk to them. Duh, thanks. Couldn't figure that out myself.
4. It lacks practical examples. I don't care about stories. I mean, thet are fine, but they are not a substitute for clear and concrete examples. Good luck understanding what use cases, epics, user stories and how they differ from functional requirements.

Now on the bright side, here are some useful things you can get out of the book:
1. A general overview of what a BA does (though not enough time was spent on the BA in Agile teams, which are the majority of IT teams currently, but let's assume this wasn't the case in 2015).
2. A general look at the core competencies you need to have to be a good BA.
3. How you can gain BA experience without being a BA (though this should be rather obvious, and if you need the book about that, you might not be a good fit for a BA)
4. Some strategies on how you can get into the BA field, which may or may not be applicable to you. Keep in mind that the situation in 2022 has changed compared to 2015 and the BA field has been growing at twice the rate of other IT jobs.

Here is what would've made the book better:
1. A more in-depth look at the core skills and competencies with some examples.
2. A look at the tools a BA would use and how they'd use them with clear examples.
3. Some case studies, rather than couching client stories.

[Jonathan Gillespie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent real-world guide

I have found this book to be an excellent and practical guide to the path of the BA and some steps to get one moving towards that goal. Laura has a gift for shooting straight and not overpopulation the book with too much esoteric jargon. This is not a guide to BA practices. There are plenty such resources. Rather, this is a practical overview of the profession as a whole, with advice on career transitioning that I find humble and honest. Highly recommended.

[Lelde · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found most of the advice common knowledge, but perhaps it is intended for people who haven't worked on project management and are contemplating whether to do it or not.

[ttalibzadeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good for those who plan career in current field.