What is the career path for a Business Analyst?

1. What is the career path for a Business Analyst?

A Business Analyst in the IT field has many varied directions among which to choose a career path. The most direct would lead to a Lead Business Analyst position and then Project Manager whereby the incumbent manages projects through the entire lifecycle from inception to post-implementation including the management of business analysts’ system analysts quality assurance analysts and most likely development project managers or team leads. That path would then lead to Program Management perhaps PMO management or Product Manager and on to Directorship. In addition a good Business Analyst may find they are heading toward a Customer Relationship Manager position whereby they become the primary IT interface to a given Business Unit (BU). This role most often leads to a position within the BU as a Manager of Applications or a Process Management role. Process Management opens many jobs including process re-engineering quality program development and large scale or enterprise process management programs such as ITIL or Six Sigma initiatives. These roles will continue to proliferate as companies realize the benefits of having a SME in process and quality. And still many Business Analysts find their understanding of business process entirely portable into purely system related positions in the business side that are only peripherally related to IT. These of course may lead to quantitative roles manager roles or operational roles such as supply chain logistics et cetera.Of central importance to a successful Business Analyst is the interest in speaking to people. Face to face verbal communication is paramount to support other tools such as surveys and diagrams. Incumbents must be interested in understanding not only the pieces that comprise a system but the people that comprise it and the realities that embrace the system. Briefly the Business Analyst must understand and not judge the what should be and the what is.

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