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Source of truth: how an analyst teaches a manager and a developer to work together


Guests of the new issue of the Dry Oars oversaw podcast , Veronika and Katya, Redmadrobot business analysts They talked about the features of their profession, the differences between the types of analysts and named the most important skill necessary to achieve success. Redmadrobot

developers Artyom Kulakov and Roma Choryev explore various aspects of creating IT products, share experiences and “draw” the most valuable secrets of the profession from their guests. We attach a podcast and answers to several questions exciting blood.



Timing


Where do they usually come from in this profession? - 1:13
What does the analyst do? - 3:32
What analysts are there? - 7:50 a
typical day of the analyst - 11:40
Where can I learn to be an analyst? - 17:00
Specificity of the Russian market - 20:37
Where to grow analytics? - 24:55
What to read on entering the sphere? - 30:45
“Pain in the profession” - 36:20
The importance of communication skills - 40:00 Freelance
analyst - a reality? - 45:48
Myths about the profession - 50:40

Analyst: how, why and why


The analyst connects management, client and developers, communicating with each of them in a clear language. For example, a developer does not think of business indicators like KPI, and a business does not operate on methods or architectures. It is this communication barrier that the analyst fills.

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As a rule, analysts come with a diploma in business informatics or software engineering, a lot of guys from the HSE. According to the guests of Veronica and Katya, such specialists have a basic understanding of business and programming languages, as well as how it should work.

From the books, our guests advised the Guide to the Code of Knowledge for Business Analysis (BABOK), as well as the works of Carnegie and Goleman for pumping communication skills.

By the way, about the "humanitarian". Despite the technical bias, people from non-core professions go to analytics: for example, project managers. There are more exotic options: the IT industry attracts people from many third-party industries.

Is there a specialization in the profession?


As the guests of the podcast explained, you cannot interfere with all the processes in one heap, so analysts can also adhere to a certain specialization.

A business analyst relies, rather, on a business approach: works directly with KPI, spends more time at meetings;

System analyst works at the level of several systems and their integration with each other;

A product analyst is rather a mathematician. It monitors how the product develops in terms of numbers, communicates more with the product-owner, but also communicates with developers;

Integration Analyst. As a rule, they are on very complex projects. Their task is to analyze specifications and partly play the role of an architect.

What is it: a typical analyst day


When faced with a task, a business analyst understands: the manager will not fully understand the essence of the problem, for example, how this or that feature will work, and, therefore, will present many questions to the developers. The analyst builds communication with the customer in order to understand what he really wants.

Analyst - it is about analyzing the situation and understanding how to continue to taxi it out. He looks at the metrics, realizes that there was some kind of failure. He communicates with the client, trying to find the answer to the question "what to do to prevent failure?

Once the position and requirements of the customer are clear, the analyst offers optimization options or ways to achieve the desired result with minimal effort.

It should be noted that in some companies, the analyst combines several roles, performing the duties of a manager or QA. In foreign organizations, as Katya said, there is often no analytics, there is only a product-owner and developer who communicate directly.

Where to grow further


Career growth is an integral part of professional development. As the guests of the podcast said, there are many ways open to the business analyst.

There are several development paths. Either become a leading senior business analyst, or go into business, become a product, for example, or go project manager.

Veronica added that a person can be "bored" with being an analyst, and, provided that the skill is preserved, the path to developers is open for him. Katya noted that with the item “business analyst” in the resume, you can even “fiddle up” with the account manager or architect.

What are the difficulties


As Veronica admitted, the main skill in the skill set of her profession is the ability to ask stupid questions. This is an important psychological point: after all, the fear of looking “wrong” can immediately “nullify” work, and the error will be noticeable only in the final product. Considering that sometimes work is carried out immediately on several features, it becomes difficult to keep the entire array of information in mind.

If you yourself do not understand this, how to transmit information to your colleagues? You cannot allow this, so you need to ask until everything becomes clear. Need to ask. Even if you're already tired of everything.

Another “minus” is the inability to work on freelance. According to Veronika and Katya, their profession should have a maximum level of “trust, good breeding, integration into the team”. When this is not initially available, it is very difficult to communicate remotely - to overcome the communicative barrier is much more effective with personal contact.

The debunking of myths


They say that a business analyst in an IT company should have experience in development or an IT education.

Opinions of our guests on this issue diverged: Katya believes that this is a desirable but optional item, while Veronika advocated the indispensable presence of IT education.

At the same time, our experts denied the need for development experience, as well as the ability to work in UML. And Katya called the most offensive the myth that "a business analyst is needed only to write spec." The latter should be especially carefully remembered: it is useful in communicating with colleagues.

Listen to the podcast on a convenient platform: Soundcloud , Apple , Google Podcasts .

Useful materials


Classic BA Literature: Developing software requirements. C. Wigers, D. Beatty ,
Still relevant book: “How to make friends and influence people. Dale Carnegie . "

Useful for understanding how to interact with different people on a project is emotional intelligence. D. Goleman , the same "BABOK" .

Previous issues of the Dry Oars podcast


→ QA for beginners: how to test a rocket or an airplane
→ Software Architect: why is it needed and what is its curse
→ CTO of all startups

Come to discuss the issue in Telegram chat .

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