3 Ways Your BA Skills Position You to be a Leader

You have been working as a business analyst for years, and you’re ready to take on more responsibility. When organizations describe what they are looking for in a leader, they use phrases such as “able to adapt”, “communicates clearly”, and “ability to prioritize multiple tasks”. As a business analyst, you have developed these skills in your day to day responsibilities. Here is how you can leverage your skills as a business analyst to take on a leadership position.

1. Adaptability

Leaders need to be able to adapt to rapidly changing business needs. As a business analyst, you have had the opportunity to work on different types of projects, which require you to adapt the way you work. When positioning yourself for leadership, be sure to emphasize the situations in which you have had to change your style for requirements elicitation based on the working styles of stakeholders. In addition, many BAs have had to adapt to work in a different project environment, such as SDLC, Waterfall or Agile. Being able to adjust to changing work styles and project styles is a great way of demonstrating your adaptability.

2. Communication

A great business analyst must be an adept communicator. Business analysts need to effectively communicate with stakeholders to elicit and define requirements. You also need to be able to clearly communicate with technical teams and developers to ensure business requirements and appropriately translated into the technical design. Your experience as a business analyst has given you experience working with cross-functional teams and with communicating in various written and verbal styles to a cross section of stakeholders of varying levels within an organization.

3. Prioritization

As a leader, one of your key responsibilities is to manage multiple tasks, often with competing timelines. As a result, leaders need to ability to assess and prioritize these tasks. Business analysts also need to be able to effectively prioritize. When managing project requirements, a business analyst considers the benefits, costs, time, dependencies, level of effort and other factor when defining the scope of project requirements. These are same factors that a leader must consider when managing operational tasks.

You are an experienced business analyst. Think about the projects you have worked on, and how you have flexed these three muscles. Use these experiences to demonstrate to organizations that you are ready to take on more leadership responsibilities!

Summer Hamilton is a CBAP certified analyst. She has deep experience as a professional in Life Sciences and enjoys mentoring and coaching business analyst. lindedin.com/in/summerhamilton