Core Skills of a Technical Business Analyst
As the mediator, you are tasked with breaking down problems into smaller structured pieces. These pieces help facilitate perspectives and connect ideas. They also help aid your team in finding the most optimal solutions.
My journey as a Technical Analyst for a RegTech startup just kicked off in February this year, after studying and transitioning from marketing and content reviewing.
After three months of baby steps and piqued curiosity, I have delineated three core skills and areas to continuously and deliberately improve.
Technical Skills
In Danish, there is a saying that — literally translated — corresponds to “A dear child has many names” (“kært barn har mange navne”)
Any given subject can have a range of labels in different contexts. The concepts, platforms even titles will be increasingly bountiful. The core concepts will always trace back to their first principles. I take solace in this fact and channel it as a guiding light when overwhelmed.
To change lanes I chose the path of a fast-tracked diploma in Computer Science with a focus on Software Development. A well-rounded introduction that awarded me opportunities to come face to face with many of the essential first principles of software engineering. If I knew my path would lead me further down the analyst road and barely encompass programming in practice, I would have approached my learnings differently.
The more a business analyst can independently dive into large data sets and answer business-relevant questions, the more independent avenues to create value will present themselves. You are in good shape if you can speak programming language and write in a querying language. You do not have to develop the solutions, but you need to understand as many details as feasible. An analyst in information technology generally has data on the menu. The ability to access and extract the data from the menu is expected. A great place to start is with the foundations of data and databases. Excel, Sheets, SQL.
Data wrangling is the procedure of cleaning and unifying messy and complex data sets for easy access and analysis. With the amount of data and data sources rapidly growing and expanding, it is getting increasingly important to organize large amounts of available data for analysis.
Once you ingest raw data into SQL the next steps often include loading, organising and analysing the data in Google Sheets or Excel.
Due to Google, StackOverflow and the multitude of resources out there, there is no need to commit to memory all existing formulas. That is never a bad idea but should not come before comprehension.
The important part is knowing how to solve problems.
Problem-solving
Breaking down ambiguous problems and root cause analysis.
Being part of what creates frictionless processes to getting to solutions is key for a business analyst. Tasked with being the bridge between management, developers and designers, means you have to master the ability to go from high level to low(deep) level detailed thinking and relay information efficiently consistently. As the mediator, you are tasked with breaking down problems into smaller structured pieces. These pieces help facilitate perspectives and connect ideas. They also aid your team in finding the most optimal solutions.
A classic and recurring task example is any that entails root cause analysis. Why are we losing users? Competitors? bugs? or poor service performance? Why is one area of business performing better than the other? What insights can we gather from external and internal data available? And so the cookies keep crumbling.
Problem — pieces — data — insights — recommendations.
Communicating top-down is the way. This approach to sharing information is a method I am attempting to incorporate and improve daily. The goal is to share knowledge by central insight first, then dive into the details as necessary. The only road here is trial and error with well-structured presentations and practice. With practice, it gets easier to share and extract information effectively at meetings. The goal is to listen and gain insights first then address blockers with your team.
Strategic Thinking & Business Acumen
Thinking like a technical business analyst is a multi-faceted role and you are only as good as the specific requirements and actionable insights you offer.
Strategic thinking involves having a holistic view of all the pieces on the board and planning with the target being positive impacts on business decisions.
It is not about how many programming languages you know or how much data you can gather and share. It is about the ability to tie all the information to positive-sum games your team and business can play in that fading slice of time. SO WHAT? Every time you gain insight that has no direct correlation to a current problem, park it. Why does your team need this information? What are the feasible options to address it?
This core skill is the hardest to earn and has been the hardest for me to build so far personally. Fortunately, I trust it holds the most upside in terms of improved outcomes cascading as my recommendations improve. A way to mould this skill is by reaching out to different teams or colleagues and learning how all parts come together to create value in and for your company. Details matter.
Hopefully, this helps shed some light on the core skills of a Technical BA. Happy learning and best of luck.
