Tag: Business Analysis Career

Strategy for offshore Business Analysts

Posted on October 3, 2020 Last updated on July 1, 2025 by admin | 3 min read | 324 views

Business Analysis is a job that makes more sense when you work closely with customers at onsite locations but it doesn’t always happen that way. Many a times Business Analysts work from offshore and help the technical team clarify key questions. The offshore BA sends questions through email, schedules virtual meetings with business stakeholders and tries to get clarity on requirements. Now, all of a sudden, an onsite person from your team starts to interact with the customer and takes the lead on requirement clarification but you know it will not work as you have been through the questions and you only know the background of them. Hence the onsite person needs a knowledge transfer from you so that he understands the intention of the questions. You seem to feel bad that why you are sitting in offshore and not at the client side. You may have your personal reasons to stay back in offshore but it’s painful sometimes.

What should be your strategy when as a BA you are stuck in offshore:

  1. You cannot be a generic BA in offshore, rather you need to know the technology to become Functional Consultant so that you can discuss key techno-functional aspects with developers and suggest a solution to your client.
  2. You cannot be in a 9 to 6 job, rather make yourself flexible to overlap the office schedule to spent some hours with customer schedule either early morning or late night.
  3. Define a clear responsibility for the onsite person of your team. Both of you should not do the same set of work, rather ask him to take handover from where you leave it day before.
  4. Make sure you are not left out from some critical meetings that happen in onsite. If the schedule doesn’t match with you, ask someone to record the meeting and share with you.
  5. Always take email or chat approvals from your stakeholders for any decision you make. Do not assume. Keep all approval mails in a single folder.
  6. Don’t take up unimportant and unnecessary works just because you are in offshore. Avoid saying YES. Learn to understand your role in the project and focus on the specific outcomes only.
  7. Don’t get too much involved in outside project work to impress your boss. If you manage some time, learn something, document it, align it to your current engagement and share it with others to show your Knowledge.

BAs in offshore may face a lot of issues for not being available in the client site. I have tried to highlight some points so that you can enjoy your place and still be key player in the team.

Will you be a Business Analyst for ever?

Posted on August 11, 2020 Last updated on July 1, 2025 by admin | 2 min read | 27 views

Well many people argue that Business Analysis is a lifelong profession but I have a different take on this topic.

The Career Architecture for a BA mainly depends on his or her learning abilities and applications on the same. If you start your career as a Junior BA, you work under the guidance of a Senior BA and your responsibilities are scheduling meeting with stakeholders, taking meeting notes, preparing BRD.

Have you ever noticed what the Senior BA is upto?

Well, he is probably working with more complex requirements and explaining the problem to the technical team. He is also giving input for Technical Design.

If you observe one ladder up, you will probably see the there are BA Managers, Functional Architect, Solution Architect who are working on more complex assignments.

So my point is never consider yourself a BA for lifetime. We all know requirements are key in any project and as a BA we have to be on top of it but you also need to see what next. Get involved in Design discussions, don’t hold yourself back because you are a BA. With more experience you will probably be able to guide the tech team in Design.

But….. before you go there maintain the flow of your understanding as below –

Business Requirements Clarity > Functional Architecture and Process Clarity > High-level Design Approach > Low-level Design Approach

Make yourself comfortable but don’t be too proud to restrict yourself to chop the onion. You will end up learning more, you will end up creating value.

Career Options for Business Analysts:

Continue as Business Analyst:

Product Manager:

Product Owner:

Domain Expert:

Functional Expert:

Process Consultant:

Pre-sales Consultant:

Business Architect:

Iteration Manager:

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