本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛I will write in English since I am at office right now and my boss won't get a hold of me today. Business Analyst (BA), sometimes referred as Business System Analyst, is expected to understand both system world and business world with more focus on the latter. ONe o fthe major job for BA is to walkthrough the whole system development life cycle (SDLC), gather/document requirements, provide inputs in project planning, interview business client, prepare testing plan and coordinate UAT etc.
AS a BA, the most challenging things for me is:
1. understand the business process, especially those terms
2. understand the system your organization is using
3. strengthen your communication skills (listening, interviewing, presentation, I won't stress again the importance of spoken English)
5. understand the system development life cycle methodolgy
6. understand the project management methodology
recommended reading:
System Analysis and Design Methods 5th edition
by Jeffrey L. Whitten/ Lonnie D. Bentley/Kevin C. Dittman
This is the book that helped me a lot in my BA job hunting.
A little background knowledge about myself: MBA graduate last year, move to Toronto in last July, landed my current job in Oct right after 9.11. I will say I am pretty lucky this time. my salary : 50-60k quite blow my expectation as a MBA graduate, since my classmates usually earn 65-75k. Anyway, I love my BA job, if I could earn above 65k, I would be more than happy.
Get back to your questions:
1. Yes, one of the major repsonsibilites of BA is to gather rqts, but it is not limited to it, other responsibilities include testing plan, training, organizing meeting, meeting minutes, data modeling/ process modeling. I will say in large org, BA will probably focus on busiess requirements, for some small sized companies, BA may do a lot of works spanning from BA to database modeler, to testing analyst.
2. if you are doing software dev, that 's a good starting point since some BAs in my area were doing soft dev before, and you really have edge on understanding the SDLC, database concept, mainframe etc. this is your selling point. However , as a BA, you also need to emphasize your communication skills, hyour understanding of project management methodlolgy, and your industry background
3. education background can vary from computer science, MBA, BS, it's really not that important if you have 1-2 years of BA experience.
4. as much as you can in terms of English. LIstening, spoken, writing, reading are all equally important the most important thing is result-oriented, get the job done, it is not like making a high score in Toefl. I really improve my english a lot during this 1year period as opposed to my 2 year MBA study, I kept myself thinking in English when I am involved in meetings, interviews.
5. to land a job in BA, i will say:
BA skills (requirements gathering, meeting org)+
system analysis skills (data/process modeling, database, testing)+
Project management and system development methodology+
communication skill(last but not least).
By the way, I found a one org is offering some BA courses
www.cdilearn.com, i am gonna take a testing course next year(company paid).
Good luck man, way to go, this is a nice job where you can learn a lot adn have fun!更多精彩文章及讨论,请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net