The Accidental BA

I wrote this piece for the BA Digest, replicating here for posterity.

I wasn’t always a Business Analyst.

I started my working life as a technical administrator; essentially a technical dogsbody for a small I.T. firm, a bit of database work here, a bit of user documentation there, and it was the latter that took me into the world of Technical Communications. It was in Tech Comms I flourished, grew a career, became a manager, spoke at conferences, and eventually slide sideways into what I refer to as my B.A. adjacent years. I wasn’t yet a Business Analyst but I worked with, and managed, a couple of great B.A.s within my team, learned a lot from them, and realised that my career built on writing technical documentation wasn’t all that different, it was just at a different point in the software development process.

Technical writers who create user documentation (think user guides) based on the solution that is being built, are known to be user-focussed and look to provide instructions to get the most value from a process or system whilst understanding the end goal the user has in mind. Sound familiar? Shift that thinking to before the solution is being built and, et voila, hello Business Analysis. As I made the transition in career so too did some of the writing team as well, and we ended up creating a user documentation driven development process; the developers would use the pre-written documentation as part of the requirements to help build the solution, it worked well in tandem with some artefacts from test driven development processes.

That transition took place at one company over many years but eventually redundancy arrived and, after a couple of months of taking stock (essentially a holiday and a lot of trips to the cinema during the day), eventually I needed a job, saw a contract role for a Business Analyst and thought, well why not! The interview was fascinating, lasted about 8 minutes and consisted of me being asked what I thought a B.A. did, to which I respond something about figuring out the As Is is, and what the To Be could be, and was told that was all they needed to ask me… and 10 years later I’m a Business Analyst.

I don’t have any formal qualifications, and if I’m honest I feel a bit long in the tooth for that these days. I have been an Operations Manager, worked with Product Managers, Technical Architects, Software Developers, Testers, Technical Writers, UX Designers, Business Managers, Team Leaders, team members, end users, and people on a production floor. What I’ve learned about being a B.A. I’ve learned by observing how things can be done, what doesn’t work, and critically how to understand who needs to know what.

It also means that I don’t adhere to any specific methodology as I didn’t learn to be a B.A. by following one. Like the best Agile development teams will borrow and adapt from different Agile processes, rather than adhering to the given rules of, say, Extreme Programming, or SCRUM, I think the best B.A. teams do the same, tweaking and adjusting common working processes to best suit their needs. I think being able to flex your approach, and focussing on value add, has been a key mindset that has helped me in my career so far.

This is not news to you, we all adapt how we work to the environment, the processes, and the people, we work with. It’s impossible to make every environment fit within a rigid methodology. To those who determinedly hold to a specific practice and the processes it entails I ask this, do all of the things you do offer value? Are there some parts of your processes that you are doing because it’s just what is done? As B.A.s we challenge this thinking regularly with others, but how often do we look at ourselves and how we work?

My career path is atypical, and I’ve always had a problem following rules, and whilst all of what I know I’ve learned on the job, I think I’ve weaved a good enough path through the myriad of different views and voices telling me how to do my job. I’ve still got a lot to learn no doubt, but I’ve googled, I’ve asked colleagues, I’ve read books (yes that book!), and articles and I think I’m ok at my job. I’m also always happy to learn and improve, something my time as an Operations Manager taught me well; a good retrospective is a powerful thing.

I have a personal motto, I’ve had it for many years now, Keep It Simple (Stupid). That last word isn’t the insult some take it to be either, or at least I don’t take it that way, rather I look at it as an instruction, to keep things simple for people who aren’t as skilled as others, or as I’ve heard it called, be stupid in context. I’m stupid when it comes to welding, but a welder isn’t. It’s an important mindset for a B.A. I think, to keep some humility and remember the “curse of knowledge” (hat tip to Chip and Dan Heath for that phrase).

I have enjoyed my time as a Business Analyst, through a myriad of responsibilities and processes at Virgin Money, to my current role with Golden Charter. I am happy that I can bring both experience and some knowledge but, and I think most importantly, I bring a mindset of challenging how things are done, poking and prodding at processes for improvements, both within our team and for the wider business. I’ve been very lucky to have worked with very gracious and intelligent people along the way too, so whilst I didn’t start my career as a Business Analyst, it feels like I finally landed in the right role for how my brain works.

So I’ll keep learning as I go, I’ll keep challenging practices and processes, and do my very best to keep things as simple as possible. It’s how I work best.