The Department has, as you would expect, an in-depth understanding of the Australian business analyst jobs market as well as access to statistics and data not necessarily available to private industry.

One of the Department’s initiatives is the Job Outlook website and within this a section devoted to ICT Business and Systems Analysts.

As well as providing an overview of the analyst’s role and the tasks undertaken, the website also throws up some illuminating facts. For example the number of people employed in the profession (23,900 in Australia) and the average yearly salary before tax (just over $95,000). Employment profiles – by state, age, gender, etc. – are also covered. Job vacancies by state are also included.

The site also has a particularly interesting section on skills. Critical thinking is rated most important followed by active listening. Under the abilities section, information ordering, oral comprehension and problem sensitivity are rated equally important. If you’re beginning to see a trend here then consider this – in the knowledge section, an understanding of IT is considered the most important followed closely by the English Language.

For a business analyst who’s life can all to easily revolve around processes, systems and technology, the role and value of soft skills should never be underrated!

You can view the full Jobs Outlook website here.

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The post Jobs Outlook for Business Analysts appeared first on IRM Training.

And not a technical solution but a business solution. As a business analyst you definitely need to understand how technology can be exploited. Just leave the technical (i.e. physical) design to others who specialise in this field.

As mentioned, the BA can add the most value by designing a business solution. So why isn’t the word “designer” in the job title?

There’s a great article on this topic by Tony Heap, an agile coach and trainer in the UK. Tony now calls himself a Business Analyst Designer rather than a Business Analyst. Taking this a step further why not Business Solution Designer?

What about you? Do you just gather requirements or do you also help your customers design business solutions? Read Tony’s article here.

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The post Business Analyst or Business Solution Designer? appeared first on IRM Training.

A recent (July 2016) article in ITWire – based on research conducted by recruitment company Hudson – throws up some interesting statistics:

• 31% of Australia companies surveyed plan to increase hiring
• 44% of employees were actively looking for new jobs

So the good news for job seekers with ICT skills is that there are a lot more jobs out there. The bad news for managers is that there are a lot of unhappy staff.

Also nearly every employee surveyed (98%) said developing their skills was important and yet 50% felt they weren’t supported in this by their manager.

As a training company, we’re not unbiased in publishing this news, but the fact remains that employers and employees face a number of challenges. We’ll use a recent and much published quote to recommend a solution:

You can read the ITwire article here and view extracts from the Hudson report here.

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The post Boom in ICT hiring but are your skills falling behind? appeared first on IRM Training.

However there are not may jobs requiring a strong mix of both hard and soft skills, the business analyst being a notable exception. You’ll need people skills to empathise with clients and explore their needs yet also have the hard skills necessary to specify these needs as requirements.

The following diagram by one of the pioneers of business analysis training neatly illustrates this.

Notice that good soft skills are closely related to how to think compared to hard skills –  what to think.

Herein lies the problem as it’s well recognised that many analysts will exhibit a leaning to one set of skills or another.  You see this every day, some prefer a defined, structured role where they can apply their skills to get the best possible outcome. Others prefer the unpredictability of dealing with problems or issues where no two days are the same and where the definition of success can vary on a case-by-case basis.

Many organisations have a “workaround” for this – two teams of business analysts. The soft skills team – called business BAs – and the hard skills team called IT BAs. But the well-rounded, most effective and most employable analysts are those who have strengths in both hard and soft skills. So how do you acquire these skills?

Hard skills tend to be knowledge based. You can often learn them from a book although you still need to practice them to be good. However it’s not so easy to learn soft skills. For example you can’t practice interviewing skills by yourself !! There’s no substitute for learn-by-doing.

A final word – don’t think you don’t need both. I remember a team of business BAs who came up with some beautiful process diagrams for a new workflow system – but were not aware they needed to investigate where the data to support the process was to come from. After some embarrassment – and lost time – it was back to the drawing board.

For more on the types of skills needed by analysts, visit our training roadmap.

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Sometimes our job can just become one problem after another. We’ve got to be careful not to get depressed by all the challenges we face!

So rather than just asking analysts what problems they have, what issues they need to tackle, we’ve also been asking them what problems give them the most satisfaction in solving.

Here are 12 positives to the business analyst job based on some recent surveys run by IRM. The list below is what business analysts said when we asked…

Which sort of problems give you the most satisfaction in solving?

1.    Working out why something is failing then working through it to a solution
2.    Delivering positive business benefit to clients
3.    Finding a simple solution to a complex problem
4.    The more difficult the problem, the more satisfaction in solving it
5.    Those that help people achieve more
6.    Help the organisation grow
7.    Making people’s job’s easier, simplifying their work
8.    Challenging – think outside the square
9.    Analysing to find the root cause
10.    Working as a team to come up with a solution
11.    Problems that initially present themselves as difficult or challenging
12.    Solving problems based on intuition

As you can see, there are lots of positives to the role, even if it can be hard to see past the next problem to solve. This can be part of what makes the job so enthralling.

If you’re considering becoming a business analyst or are looking to upskill or refresh your knowledge, feel free to check out our courses for business analysts.

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The post 12 Positives To Being a Business Analyst appeared first on IRM Training.

But in any given year we typically deal with over 100 organisations. We get a great insight into the issues facing business analysts and their managers. So to help those business analysts looking for a new job – and those analysts looking to progress their career  – we’ve compiled a list of hints and tips on our Linkedin page.

There are already several articles on the page:

Analysis of BA job ads
How do you become a business analyst?
Modelling and your next interview
What’s your elevator pitch?
Do you know how your company makes money?
Tips from Google’s head of HR

Our aim is to post advice every few weeks – advice based on feedback from business analysts, the needs and concerns of their managers and our own observations of the business analysis profession.

Check out the Linkedin page here, or search for “IRM Training Pty Ltd” from within LinkedIn or click on the LinkedIn icon on the header of this website.

Good luck with your job hunting!!

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The post Hints & Tips for BA Job Seekers appeared first on IRM Training.

Fast forward to the present and you’ll see everyone from the International Institute of Business Analysis to the Project Management Institute emphasising the importance of business skills. A recent article by Jas Phul posted on the Business Analyst Times makes exactly the same point. Jas’s article identifies 6 critical business analyst skills essential for your current job and your future career:

1. Understanding your organisations business model
2. Understanding your organisations customers and competitors
3. Understanding how your organisation makes money (or delivers value)
4. Communication and collaboration skills
5. Helping your organisation re-think it’s business processes
6. Helping to achieve the benefits described in a project’s business case

Before you get to cynical and say this doesn’t apply to me, I only work on the maintenance of XYZ system, just ask yourself “Do you still want to be working on the XYZ system in 5 years time?”

To read Jas’s full article, go to The Emerging BA Role.

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The post Six Business Skills Every BA Needs appeared first on IRM Training.

And it’s not just business analyst job interviews. On many projects you’ll come across a user who’ll say “I haven’t got the time to explain to you how my business works”.

Nobody can be an expert at everything but as a business analyst you’ve actually got some real advantages – tools and techniques to understand any business and any process by modelling them.

Here’s a useful article from Modern Analyst on how to use an entity relationship diagram to build a picture of the business – and how to use a context diagram to describe the system under consideration and how it interacts with other entities.

If the person interviewing you is any good, they’ll realize that what they’re looking for is not an industry expert on XYZ business but someone who can take a detached, analytical approach and offer fresh ideas.

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The post Modelling and Your Next Interview appeared first on IRM Training.

Interestingly, the issues raised by business analysts are less to do with project methodology or personal skills but rather people and organisational problems. Take a look at the following issues list from just one course. The analysts were from government, health, energy, consulting and financial services organisations.

Here are some of the common business analysis problems:

• Conflicting views and opinions from stakeholders
• Resistance to change from end users
• Unrealistic timeframes
• Lack of access to subject matter experts
• Unrealistic user expectations of a solution’s capability
• Poorly defined business needs and objectives
• Incomplete/missing documentation on current systems
• No planning or (or over planning) in the business analysis process
• Under estimation of scope, funding and necessary resources
• Information silos across user departments
• IT (not business) driven solutions
• Lack of big picture vision by users and stakeholders
• Lack of expertise on the project team
• Scope creep and/or shifting requirements
• Not asking the right questions
• Poor communications between analysts and developers
• Lack of ownership (sign off reluctance) by users

How many similar problems do you come across in your job?

Notice that none of the issues on this list refer to expertise in a particular industry or specialisation. Sure it helps if you can talk in the same language as a subject matter expert, but knowing how to tackle and resolve these sorts of problems relies on good business analysis skills rather than specific knowledge of trading systems, call plans or whatever your employer specialises in.

After all, your employer can teach you all you need to know about trading systems but will this make you a good business analyst?

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The post Common Business Analysis Problems appeared first on IRM Training.

With so many experienced business analyst looking for work, those employers who were hiring had the pick of a very experienced talent pool. Colin Penn, a business analyst with over 20 years experience, was one of the people looking for work and has given this personal analysis of how he saw the business analyst jobs market in the second half of 2009. It took Colin a few weeks of scouring the job ads to find his next contract but during those weeks he identified several profiles which came up repeatedly.

1. Technical BAs with facilitation skills. These analysts were required to have a working knowledge of IT architecture, applications and systems so that they could guide and advise participants during facilitated requirements gathering sessions. The ability to facilitate sessions was as important as a working knowledge of current technology.
2. Technical BAs with a development background and specific knowledge of .NET, JAVA, XML, SQL or similar. Whilst the jobs were advertised as a business analyst, the analyst would predominantly be working with specifications and dealing with development teams.
3. Business BAs with expertise in a specific industry. Many of these BAs were originally seconded to projects as the subject matter expert and from there made the transition into business analysis. Specialities in demand included banking, superannuation, utilities, supply chain logistics and telecommunications. Also in high demand was expertise in ecommerce, web based services (B2B and B2C) and specific software applications such as ERP (e.g. SAP, Oracle) and CRM (e.g. Siebel). Business BAs also operate at the strategic level although it’s rare these days. Current strategic thinking has evolved past the “aligning IT with the business” approach to now viewing IT as an integral part of the business strategy. More and more executives are becoming both IT savvy and business analysis aware, lessening the need for traditional, high-level business BAs.
4. Maintenance BAs are used by many organisations where there is an ongoing need to provide enhancements and changes to production systems. This includes both commercial and government organisations and is work carried out either by IT staff performing a BA role or business people who have been transferred into the role. There were not many positions advertised for these roles as the work can usually be performed by lower paid staff (higher paid contractors were the ones being laid off). Many graduates also start their careers as maintenance BAs and as the economy improves expect to see more business analyst jobs for this type of position.
5. The BA/Project manager was a common job description. Often advertised for medium sized projects, it can be OK in small dedicated teams, but the two roles can be contradictory on a larger project. The BA wants to find every important requirement whilst the project manager wants only the essentials in order to meet the deadline and the budget.

Previous project experience was also sought and popular areas included data warehousing, data migration, enterprise architecture integration and process automation. UML modelling skills were also in demand and to a lesser extent BPMN. There was also a distinction between data and process BA’s.

For a number of positions a testing background was also well regarded. This may emerge as a separate BA speciality with its own skills – testing tools experience and programming skills (such as SQL) for querying test results.

While not rigidly discrete, these classes of business analyst jobs show the diversity of the role and the fragmentation in the market. As in many professions, employers are becoming more demanding in the number and diversity of skills they want – especially in difficult economic times. Expect this to decrease as the economy improves and the pool of available talent shrinks.

A final word – all the job ads emphasised good communications skills. This has been, and continues to be the common factor for virtually every job that is advertised.

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The post Analysis of Business Analyst Job Adverts appeared first on IRM Training.