Project manager route or business analyst?

[zara_backdog]

As a BA I have also project managed successfully when the company kicked out all the PM’s, , and have had a couple gigs as a PM. However I enjoy the BA aspect only thing is you can end up being a ‘Jack of all Trades’ and I often end up testing, training and supporting the product.

I have always had a good relationship with my development team:

Some are excellent analyst’s who enjoy taking to the business \ client to ascertain what’s required and provide solutions

Others (like the SW house I am dealing with) only think they know what the Business/Client wants and carry on developing regardless and have come up with:

• I did not have time to read the spec
• It would take too long to write, so we simplified it
• Why don’t you want users to delete their own accounts?

Most are quite happy I deal with workshops, users and the politics and provide then with the requirements and we work together to get the job done, and if we can’t deliver what the client requires I will but the alternative to them.

Well – in true BA style I waffled on, but at the end of the day it should be Team Work, I can only say the developers who hate us (aussielong?) you have not worked with a decent BA

[TykeMerc]

Well said Zara_backdog, that's a perfect illustration of how a proper BA adds value to a project team.

[cojak]

Originally Posted by zara_backdog

Most are quite happy I deal with workshops, users and the politics and provide then with the requirements and we work together to get the job done, and if we can’t deliver what the client requires I will but the alternative to them.

Well – in true BA style I waffled on, but at the end of the day it should be Team Work, I can only say the developers who hate us (aussielong?) you have not worked with a decent BA

Bravo that BA!

Put in a diplomatic way - BA's do that stuff so that developers don't have to!

[tim123]

Originally Posted by zara_backdog

As a BA I have also project managed successfully when the company kicked out all the PM’s, , and have had a couple gigs as a PM. However I enjoy the BA aspect only thing is you can end up being a ‘Jack of all Trades’ and I often end up testing, training and supporting the product.

I have always had a good relationship with my development team:

Some are excellent analyst’s who enjoy taking to the business \ client to ascertain what’s required and provide solutions

Others (like the SW house I am dealing with) only think they know what the Business/Client wants and carry on developing regardless and have come up with:

• I did not have time to read the spec
• It would take too long to write, so we simplified it
• Why don’t you want users to delete their own accounts?

Most are quite happy I deal with workshops, users and the politics and provide then with the requirements and we work together to get the job done, and if we can’t deliver what the client requires I will but the alternative to them.

Well – in true BA style I waffled on, but at the end of the day it should be Team Work, I can only say the developers who hate us (aussielong?) you have not worked with a decent BA

Well I'm afraid that I just had my spitting the coffee at the screen.

You really mean that you work with developers who CAN'T work all this out for themselves?

What are they, still in nappies?

(It really really really isn't like that in the companies that I get to work for!)

tim

[cojak]

Quite often developers don't want to get involved, Tim.

I've forgotten the amount of times I've heard developers saying they hate the politics of projects when they just want to code.

The meetings, the diplomacy, the knowledge of external events that impact your project and the heading off at the pass anything that could steam roller over it (including customers who aren't quite sure what it is they want) is the territory of BAs and PMs.

I'm not saying that all developers are like that, it's just that there is enough of them wanting to avoid that kind of stuff to give the rest of us work..

[tim123]

I didn't mean the bit about meeting the client.

I meant the bit about not starting until they have a spec. There is just no point, you might waste your time producing something completely wrong and have to start again.

Someone, somewhere along the line has to produce a list of requirements before I design the solution. Whether that's the client, or my boss, I don't really care, but this buck stops on someone else's desk, not mine.

And to be clear, I only need the requirements, I don't want to be told the implementation solution, that's part of my job as an engineer, rather than a coder.

tim

[cojak]

God I wish there were more out there like you....

[tim123]

Goes with the territory.

You do not find people working in the embedded field as coders. They all do their own design, code and module test. It used to be that they did their own integration as well but that has been hived off into a separate function at most places.

tim