Business Analyst Generalist or Specialist

When I embarked on my business analysis career, I believed that the most important thing was the ability to listen and to help others. Over the years I have done that through a variety of roles and titles.

In the last few years I have heard the role of Business Analyst described in extremely technical terms. A BA needs to have a coding background or be a SME associated with a specific industry.

I live in the SF Bay Area in California - where Silicon Valley influences everything.

Business analysis here does not express itself in most places. Instead of an emphasis on requirements management and analysis, there is often an emphasis on agile, products and technology. This focus seems to forget that all change impacts people. And by people I mean more than customers - it impacts workers, vendors, etc.

The foundational knowledge that drives business analysis is there. However, the titles doing the work have been parsed out and that leads to areas where entry is more difficult. One such impacted area is product management.

The discipline of business analysis is not being driven by the practitioners, but by the industries and companies. Many companies seem to think business analysis, and business analysts, are not as important. In truth, the business analysts have simply taken their highly valuable skills and morphed into product owners, product managers, software engineers, and other roles.