Future Career Path and Scope of Business Analyst

Most of the Information Technology jobs incorporate a flawless, clear, and a precise job description and career path. But the career path of the business analyst may have a tendency to vary according to the set of working responsibilities. The business analysis plays an important role in the growth and fast development of the industries. Nowadays, the business analyst has to perform several roles. According to the requirements of the project, he can act as a facilitator, connector, or a project communicator. His work is to bring the various requirements of the business together. They need to spend a lot of time to analyze and solve the various business problems. An effective and successful business analyst should have the right instruction and the communication skills required by organizations. In most of the organizations, the role of a business analyst is uncertain. Thus, it is required to understand the role and responsibilities of a business analyst intensely.

Once a person becomes a Business Analyst for a couple of years, he needs to progress to the next level of his profession as a Business Analyst. The future career path for a business analyst has not well-defined, due to the varied set of opportunities that exist for an experienced Business Analyst. This article presents a few career options and scope for a Business Analyst.

1. Be a Career Business Analyst: Basically, a person can become an expert Business Analyst. This is because the job contains a greatly specialized skill set, which can be applied to any of the industry and any of the area successfully. This enables a BA to transfer between industry, company or in a subject matter area in an easy way which becomes their career development and focus of professional development. When you gain experience as a Business Analyst, you can make the transition between industries smoothly. The business analyst can also perform different activities at various levels of the organization- right from the enterprise level analysis to the detailed system requirements. This career path is suitable for those business analysts who like the current project environment and the need for solving the complicated business issues. If you are not a Business Analyst then you can start working as a junior business analyst, and in the event that you are now a Business Analyst and would like to enhance your career in the similar field then you can switch the industry every couple of years to obtain more detailed and practical experience and also can work towards the professional business analysis certifications like CCBA or CBAP.

2. Business analysis manager: Well, it is a good career option for an experienced Business Analyst who likes to manage a team and would also like to provide a leadership to a team. This is a good team based role and has the possibility to ascend in the career growth. This role is suitable for those business analysts who like to enjoy a diverse role in the resource planning, handling people with line management activities. But with this career option, you cannot apply practical business analysis techniques daily. With this role, you can become a counselor, advisor, and line manager. To become a Business analysis manager, the business analyst can follow the ideas below:

• Be practical: As an initial step, help in some opportunity to complete a project for the group that will develop the complete business analysis practice.
• Act as a mentor: As a Senior Business Analyst, you should guide and provide help for the associate business analyst actively.
• Fix objectives: It is required to state the objectives of becoming a business analysis manager at the time of performance reviews with the line manager.

3. Project Manager: This role is the most common for Business Analysts because they are aware of this role. They frequently have a functioning example, in the form of a project manager to learn daily. However, the role of a project manager requires a diverse set of skills and the effort is entirely different from that of a business analysis. It is a good career option if the business analyst would like to change the directions and skills completely. This option is a very satisfying and highly rewarding career path and a traditional direction in which many BA wants to move. One should follow the below points to become a project manager:

• Help the project manager with the distinctive responsibilities related to the project management: This is very self-evident, but a Business analyst can gain the practical project management experience by acquainting the project management responsibilities.
• Planning of the business analyst activities: This involves the demonstration of your project management skills and knowledge with complete business analysis plans, breakdown structures, estimation of resource and effort.
• Get qualified as a project manager: It is a great idea to get some proper project management training.

4. Relationship Manager: This role is all about speaking, understanding, influencing and discussing with the individuals. The business analyst should be able to develop robust stakeholder connections all through their roles. With this competency, the relationship manager is the perfect career path for a Business Analyst, who want to grow their career into another specialization and progress and improve their profession at the next level. To become a relationship manager, the business analyst must follow the below idea:

• Focus on results, not on documents: To become a relationship manager, the business analyst must achieve the result of the strongest attributes for example persuasion, negotiation, and listening skills. The relationship manager should focus on gaining a positive result, instead of emphasizing documentation.

5. Business Analysis Competency Manager: This is another business analyst career option for those who want to play a role in starting this rising profession within the organizations. This career option mainly emphasizes on the improvement of Business Analysis competencies to help the business analysis proficiency development within the organization. This career option is mainly suitable for those people who want to hold the theoretical and development aspects of Business Analysis instead of practical experience.

One should follow the below idea to become a Business Analysis Competency manager:

Become the champion in your business analysis practices or department for the things related to the business analysis process, tools and best practices. One should always help to lead and contribute in internal business analysis development prospects.

6. Business Architect: The other career option for a Business Analyst is Business Architect. This career path is suitable for the senior business analysts with a good understanding of the enterprise and the ability for observing the organization from a general perspective. In this role, the business analyst is closely involved in the combination of informational requirements. This is a growing profession within the industry, but it is a very satisfying career path for those business analysts who want to improve their business efficiency and rationalize their business operations in an integrated manner.

To become a business architect, first of all, make sure that you are working in an organization which has a role of a business architect. The business architect role is probably one of the toughest roles to discover and get into.  It is required to find a project where you can get involved and get exposed to the business architecture type activity or project.

7. Subject Matter Expert: This is another career option for the business analyst. It is a very pleasant opportunity for a business analyst to become a subject matter expert. This career path is the role of being proficient in a particular domain, industry or subject matter area. It can be an interesting and a stimulating career path for those people who are interested in a particular domain and want to make their career in that area. As a Business analyst you will find different subject matter domain and thus you will find the most challenging and interesting careers to follow.

It is required to focus on becoming an expert in the selected subject, rather than being unsure about the approach as a Business analyst.

Role of a Business Analyst:

Following are the roles of a business analyst:

1. The BA works with the business to recognize the opportunities so that the business operation and processes get improved.

2. The Business Analyst is also involved in the designing and modification of the business system.

3. Their primary role is to gather, document and analyze the business requirements.

4. They also involved in solving business problems as required and also designs technical solutions.

5. They also provide their support to test the system and produce the system documentation and user manuals.

6. To make sure that the system is implemented correctly, they have to interact with the system architects and developers.

7. They are also responsible to document the functional and technical design of the system.

8. The Business analyst also works together with the stakeholders and subject matter expert to understand their problems and needs.

Well, the scope of the business analysis is increasing worldwide. It has become important in most of the organizations. The business analysis includes different things such as right business objectives, correct technologies, resources, business culture and top management. The business analytics tools are used in most of the organizations such as Infosys, IBM, so that they can accumulate intelligent business solutions which are relatively cost-effective. The business analyst should be assured of his job responsibilities and areas of improvement to become a successful business analyst. If the business analyst wants to speed up his career growth, then he should learn the big analytics tools and techniques which are utilized in most of the companies.

Go through our Business Analysis Interview Questions to crack the Interviews

Conclusion:

Once a Business analyst has become an expert in his field, he can enhance his career. The Business Analysts have lots of alternatives to progress in their future career path, as there are great career opportunities available. As a business analyst it is imperative to study the numerous potential business analyst career path alternatives and then should have a particular career objective set to achieve them.

I hope that by now you have had an overview of Business analysis. Before you enroll in ZaranTech’s certification course on Agile BA do check out this demo video: