How to Be Awesome At Being A BA

Posted June 3rd, 2010 by Chris Gurney

This post also appears on the Blueprint Blog.

Chances are, if your career has landed you in the role of a business analyst, it was probably by accident.

Even if it wasn’t, I’m willing to make another guess: You’ve probably never received any sort of formal BA training, and you’re wondering if there is even such a thing.

How did I do?

The roles of BAs vary, for the most part, based on the size of the company: Simply put, BAs seem to do more in smaller organizations. But in any sized company, I believe that I have observed some traits that are consistent across the most skillful and, dare I say, awesome BAs that I have had the pleasure of meeting.

So, instead of looking at any methodologies behind business analysis (there’s plenty out there already), in this article I intend to examine those characteristics of the awesome business analyst, and point out some specific tools and resources that I guarantee that you can use to make yourself awesome (or awesomer, as the case may be).

In a nutshell, the role of the business analyst is to capture, organize, and communicate large volumes of information.

Let’s start with the capturing part.

Capturing

To record information, you use a computer: You know, that thing you sit in front of all day? How good are you at using it, really?

Learn how to type faster.

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but it astounds me how many people still hunt and peck for letters on a keyboard. At the very least, at this point you should know how to type without looking at the thing. If you’re not there yet, take lessons, or just force yourself not to look at your keyboard; that’s how I learned (and look how I turned out!).

Use technology to take shortcuts.

…after all, that’s what technology is for, isn’t it?

Start by spending less time with your mouse. What you don’t realize is that you’re constantly costing yourself time by using the mouse, especially when you don’t have to. Your mouse has two buttons, and your keyboard has, what, a million? Those magical keys can do so much more than simply put letters on the screen!

Windows has a ton of built-in, time-saving keyboard shortcuts that you may already be using, that work in pretty much any application you use. Here are my favorites:

• First, there’s the old standbys: Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V), and Undo (Ctrl+Z).
• Then there’s some for getting around Windows faster: Switch Between Open Programs (Alt+Tab), Show Desktop (Windows+D), Run (Windows+R), Open Explorer (Windows+E).

Want more? Here’s a rundown of keyboard shortcuts for Windows.

The tools you’re using also have keyboard shortcuts of their own; by all means use them. You can typically find a list of time-saving key combinations in the User Guide.

If you have the ability to, there’s also some tools you can install that will speed things along even further:

• Use a text expander. Texter is one such tool. What this little beauty of a utility does is run in the background as you use other applications, and when you type something like “tss” it expands it to “The System shall”, or whatever you tell it to. The beauty of it is that it works in any application where you type, be it Word, your email, your web browser… or your favorite requirements workbench.
• Use email templates. Chances are you probably bang out a lot of emails that look similar to one another: “You’ll find the answer here…”, or “Talk to the following people about these areas…”. You can use Texter, or Outlook Templates, or even just keep a text file handy (accessible via a shortcut) with a bunch of common responses, to do this. The trick is to not sound like a robot, so be sure to add at least a bit of personalization and warmth to it.
• Search first. Don’t trust whatever filing system you came up yesterday, as that may no longer apply today. While Outlook’s email search capability has improved over the years, it’s still not as lightning-fast as Xobni, or Lookout.

In general, what I’m recommending is to look at the repetitive tasks you do every day, and think about ways you may be able to automate them, or at least ways you can get faster at them. (So, basically, do for yourself what you already do for your business!)

Organizing

As you capture all that information, in all of its various forms, you also need to organize it, so you can later communicate it effectively. But, let’s take care of something, first:

Organize yourself.

Your job requires you to talk to a lot of people in order to discover your business’s needs, and then to communicate them. Unfortunately, this requires time-consuming activities such as those dreaded meetings, and frequent distractions such as constant stream of emails — the combination of which prevents you from actually getting your real job done.

Combat this!

• Manage your time. In particular, guard that time wasted by meetings. Block off your calendar for meetings with yourself. Ask why you end up in the meetings you get invited to. By the same token, don’t waste other people’s time: Provide an agenda, a clear reason as to why you needed certain people to attend (make it clearly optional for everybody else), and aim to end the meeting as soon as you can while still achieving its goal.
• Reduce distractions. This is probably my biggest pet peeve: It’s time to turn off those vibrations, or blasted little pop-ups that let you know you have a new email every five minutes. There’s no reason why you need to know about every email when you can’t act on the majority of them right away; you’ve got your job to attend to, remember? Other tricks such as email filters, and BlackBerry Contact Alerts help to weed out the important people from the noise.
• Manage your tasks. Adopt a task management system. Once you learn a process, it will help not only your professional life, but also your personal one. I’ll defer to an article I wrote on my blog about this. Once you’ve done this, read, and apply the principles of Getting Things Done.
• Manage your inbox. Adopt a dead-simple filing system, such as The Trusted Trio, and discipline yourself.

Get good at structuring your thoughts.

When considering what groceries to buy, you might work through a stream of consciousness, as follows:

“I need spinach, and a couple pounds of cheese. My Mother also really likes that frozen casserole we had the last time she was here. What was it called again? I’ll probably recognize it when I see it. Hmmm. On second thought, I probably don’t need so much cheese…”

Instead of writing it out that way, you take the time to list each item out in a nice, orderly list. Why? Because it’s easy to read, and to check off (process) as you make your way around the aisles. Yet, a lot of communications we receive really is just a stream of consciousness.

How can you make this sort of structured thinking a habit? I believe that it can start with improving the communications you spend the majority of your day writing: Your email.

Here are some of my suggestions for composing better email messages:

• Include the thing you want me to make sure I see at the top of the message.
• If you have several questions to ask, list them out and number them, so I can respond to each one easier.
• Clearly list out the actions you want me to perform.

For more tips, buy a book on writing email, such as this one. (I haven’t read it, but the reviews seem overwhelmingly positive! If you have any to suggest, feel free to mention them in the comments.)

Your good email habits are bound to carry over to the other part of your job: Actually writing requirements.

Communicating

Learn to write more betterer.

Outside of work, and your email client, consider spending time writing about something you’re passionate about.

Start a blog about gardening. Write about your Lego collection. Tell everybody about that time that thing happened.

You only get better at expressing yourself by writing more.

Learn to network.

Your job is also about making connections and knowing the people in your organization.

Connect to other people in your company via LinkedIn. This is an innocent way of saying hello, without really saying hello.

For those of you who consider yourselves introverts, or are just shy about approaching strangers, I heartily recommend Leil Lowndes’ How To Talk to Anyone.

Learn to think in flows.

I’m going to suggest something here that some of you may consider controversial. Are you ready?

Take a simple programming course.

This will, at the very least, get you to start thinking in terms of processes, and breaking down things into a step-by-step, logical series of events. This is a concept that a fair amount of BAs I have encountered have some trouble wrapping their heads around.

Remember that you’re a translator, so knowing both the language of the business, and the “language” of your implementers is vital to bridging that gap effectively.

Learn to think like a designer.

In case business analysts don’t do enough, they also frequently have to play the role of a designer.

In this area, I suggest reading books on user interface design, starting with The Design of Everyday Things.

Another way to look at design is that of “selling” information: Think through how to best present the data you have, and how to make it look good. To help here, pay attention to things like templates you like, to print advertisements in magazines and the layout of designs on bus shelters; examine the fonts chosen, and the structuring of the information it’s aiming to convey.

How Are You Awesome?

I hope you find something in all of this somewhat useful. If you have any of your own tips to offer, please post them below!

Photo by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent)

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