Being a Biz Analyst How to Move Your Career Forward: Always be leading even if not long-term. The funny thing about being a BA is the challenge of using leadership muscles, when the role does not give you consistent opportunities to do so, as you might not work with the same people on a regular basis. Join us on how to move your career forward to develop leadership skills in a role where there is not a lot of opportunity. --- Send in a voice message:...

If this is you, and you are thinking it would never happen for me, think again! I have seen tonnes of stories of people who transitioned from some of the most odd careers to business analysis, and become massively successful, including yours truly!! Every month we explore one of the following per week: The BABOK talk, Lead with Soft Skills Not Hard Skills, How to Move Your Career Forward, Retrospective. Join us! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/being-a-biz-analyst/message

Biz Analyst Moments lead with soft skills not hard skills: Own Your Career. The issue with excuses and blaming is that it does not produce value, and even destroys value in most cases. The great thing when you truly own your career is that you always know the next step to improvement. Join me to find out more about ownership and how to take action! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/being-a-biz-analyst/message

Headed to BA/PM World to speak on October 29'19, and started a new position. Episode on the challenge (published around Aug 1'19) mentioned bin this episode was called: "Biz Analyst Moments Are you up to the final quarter of 2019 challenge". --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/being-a-biz-analyst/message

Biz Analyst Moments Case study: rapid feedback from event attendees to improve experience. Today is the episode we look at a case study, and this week we are using BA Performance Improvements as the theme for the case study. Join us! Free use case template to level up: http://bit.ly/UCpod --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/being-a-biz-analyst/message

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: Being ethical in the face of requirements...this is definitely going to be a hot topic today as we are discussing ethics as described in the BABOK as an underlying competency. Although, a hot topic, one that I rarely see discussed by the other educators out there. I will be exploring the topic from a point of view of the reality of deadlines, demands of stakeholders, and other pressures that come up in a normal work environment. Also, I will look at how to deal...

Biz Analyst Moments The BABOK Talk: BA Performance Improvement, a crucial missed step. How often do we actually take a step back and look at our work, or our capacity to do the work, and ask what is the quality of my work? How often do we ask for feedback from others? If you are like me, very rarely, maybe we find it scary or cannot be bothered as it takes time we do not have. I get it and that is why task 3.5 of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, called Identify Business Analysis...

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: Visual thinking and comics...Adam, an Archie comic and Business Analysis, I do not get the connection?!?! Don't worry I will explain in the second half of the episode. In the first half, I explain the underlying competency of visual thinking and communication, and the power it has over verbal or written communication. You are not going to want to draw away from this episode, as it is to visually appealing, see what I did there!!! --- Send in a voice message:...

Biz Analyst Moments Lead with Soft Skills not Hard Skills: ...be a collaborator...don't be a dictator. All to often we forget just how much we need others, and how much they need us. We all to often feel we are not valued, or that people who work for us do not respect us. And maybe that is true, as you are in a dependent relationship with that person. We live in a World that demands interdependence, and yet we act like the World demands dependence. How do we begin to make that switch from...

Biz Analyst Moments Retrospective: How to handle stress on your Business Analyst career after it has been introduced, and taking ownership for all the effects that result from the stress on your business analysis career. For more on this topic and the best solution listen in! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/being-a-biz-analyst/message

Biz Analyst Moments Retrospective: #BusinessAnalyst #lifestyle can determine ability to deliver #business #value. We all want to think we can go hardcore for ever, but as I discuss in this episode we learned this month that it is not sustainable. Also, we looked at how do we become more valuable as a BA by recapping the chicken and the egg problem, and how the BABOK teaches us how to deliver value as a BA. For the conclusion listen in, this is more important than learning any #technique! ---...

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: Impact analysis for your career, and why/why not would you want to change? The interesting thing about career changes, small or large, is that they WILL have an impact on the rest of your life. Impacts on your life can be big, medium, or small, but one thing is for sure they are inescapable. Even if you are not willing to look at the impact of a career change does not mean you will not experience it. How do you do the impact analysis, and how do you determine...

Biz Analyst Moments lead with soft skills not the 9 to 5: scope of our careers, what does it include? We often consider the 9 to 5 and the string of positions we have held over the years to be what defines our careers. Today we explore the reality of defining scope for our career, I think what you hear will surprise and enlighten you to what it means to make a career change on your whole life! Free training: http://bit.ly/BPfreetraining. The Business Analyst Blueprint:...

Biz Analyst Moments Case Study: How to choose the techniques to learn first in your career! No one has time, money or any other resource to spend on learning and getting good at every #BusinessAnalyst #technique. There are 48 techniques that #IIBA Global believes you need to have an understanding of, but even they do not expect you to be perfect in your execution of all of them. How do you decide then on which ones to learn and get really good at? How do you know what techniques you need...

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: Conceptual thinking as part of a solution to the chicken and the egg problem! We are all familiar with the two frustrations of making a career change. The first is the actual chicken and the egg problem which is do I do experience first or get a position first. The other related issue is do I get experience or education first, obviously experience is a direct route to a position--hard to get without at least some education on the topic. Both are issues that new...

How to move your career forward: How to get out of the chicken and the egg problem in a BA career. The issue for many new Business Analysts is how do I get experience without a position? Or how do I get a position without experience? A very common and frustrating problem for which there are 3 major solutions I have heard to be successful. The last one I have a solution you can start implementing September 18, 2019. Free training:http://bit.ly/BPfreetraining. The Business Analyst Blueprint:...

Biz Analyst Moments BABOK Talk: The BABOK details how a Business Analyst delivers value for an initiative. I find when I am talking to people studying the BABOK they sometimes get confused once they see the table on predictive vs. adaptive approaches for the task Plan Business Analysis Approach, in the knowledge area Planning and Monitoring. They begin talking about Project Management, and the different approaches to managing tasks and resources. Although, that is not the purpose of that...

Biz Analyst Moments Retrospective: Realities of being a business analyst. I was looking at the 2 episodes I did for the final episode of each week this month and I noticed a theme of reality. I believe that with any career change reality is the hardest part to deal with. As many of you know I started my own career change, and the road has been long. And reality is like a poor friendship that keeps coming back and slapping you silly, career change will do the same. Unfortunately, you cannot...

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset Retrospective: Agile mindset is a combination of many skills and mindsets. We bring together many skills or mindsets to have an Agile mindset, and two of those skills are problem solving and systems thinking that we also covered this month. I find it so interesting how to be effective in Agile requires the skills and mindsets from many different areas, and the more we unpack what is Agile the more we recognize what we see as skills or mindsets we started learning...

Biz Analyst Moments Retrospective: Being a more effective Business Analyst. To be an effective BA involves skills from many different areas that creates that ideal T-SHAPE of skills and skill sets. Also, with the rapid changes in customer demands it is imperative that as BAs we adopt at least an understanding of Agile and how you can be the model for adoption of the organization if they are not ready yet. Lastly, being an effective BA means understanding the BA body of knowledge or BABOK....

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: How does everything fit together... systems thinking to learn the content of the BABOK. What if you could be thinking about the impact of how everything from a single task actually affects the business outcomes, do you think you could assess the most valuable solutions more effectively? I would say so and thus we take the time today to discuss how to be a better systems thinker, and how does this link back to our discussion of using the BABOK as a reference rather...

Biz Analyst Moments BABOK Talk: Understanding the value of the BABOK. The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge is written in a very specific way that most people do not understand, find boring, and claim "this is not how I do Business Analysis". I understand where you are coming from, listen in on my opinions to develop an understanding for the value the BA body of knowledge provides and another resource you can use to get started on your journey to understanding the whole BABOK by starting...

Biz Analyst Moments Case Study: Being Agile means actually thinking and acting like it! It is great to discuss Agile and Agile analysis, but so what... let's take this time to listen to an example of actually taking action in this week's case study. Your link to the free training mentioned in this episode, which will help you with being an Agile Business Analyst, is found at this link: http://bit.ly/UCpod

Biz Analyst Moments Mindset: To be Agile...is to prioritize people over everything else! The Agile Manifesto describes 4 values and 12 principles. Although, really if you understand the first value everything else is redundant. Find out why this is so by listening to this episode of Biz Analyst Moments!