Miving from developer to BA

[blacjac]

Anyone done it? Any advice to give? Any reccomended reading?

I've been a developer for 13 years, contracting for 4. However The last 2 roles (including current perm job - warchest ran out) have been pure programming with no analysis or design at all. This has made me realise that the part of the job I really like is the analysis side, mixing with 'the business' working out what they really want etc...

Has anyone else sucesfully made the jump to BA? Did you manage to do it as a contractor or did you have to do some perm roles to gain experience? Most of my roles have included some BA type work, and my first contract (which ended up running for 3 years!) was more anaylisis than development.
I am tempted to start applying for BA contracts, but I think I need to read up on something first to make sure I know what all the current BA buzzwords are .

[northernladuk]

was more anaylisis than .

Good place to start would be spelling the main function of the role right

[d000hg]

Rejig your CV to focus on analysis type work, get an interview or two - permie or anything - and FIND OUT what you don't know that way... make notes of questions you're asked.

[blacjac]

Miving?

What the hell is miving?

Oh and....

Good place to start would be spelling the main function of the role right

oops

[Random]

yes terrible spelling. "reccomended" "sucesfully" etc list goes on. Not being OTT but this is really very bad. What industry do you work in? It sounds like you only want to move in this direction to earn more $$?

I recently did the opposite and made a move from BA to Developer. As a BA you need a natural ability to work with others to extract information and have a good head for analysis. TBH they are very different skill sets and although you can take BA courses it will be difficult to make the move after 13 years developing. Not impossible but I would not be confident if my BA coudnt spell correctly

[matzie]

In my permie days I've recruited and managed both developers and BAs and I for one would have given an interview to a person in your situation as long as in their covering letter they'd explained that they were looking to "mive" and why. If that checked out at interview, I'd have negotiated a lower salary for first year with regular reviews.

The best BA I've ever worked with was a developer first (well, he mived both directions a couple of times in his career) and I think that a hybrid person who can do both roles is a real asset to an organisation, able to liaise equally well with business stakeholders and development teams.

My advice is to consider your motives very carefully (from what you said, I don't think you're just in it for the money) and if it really is about aligning your career with the parts of the industry that turn you on, then go for it, being prepared to face a fair few rejections until you meet someone willing to give you a chance. Good luck!

[Pungnan]

without wanting to annoy career developers it's a fairly logical progression in my opinion. Tester. Developer. Analyst. Manager/PM. Not that there's anything wrong with staying focussed on any of these roles especially in the contract world.

Not sure about key 'buzzwords', maybe learning the fundamentals would be more beneficial, but as far as I'm concerned the key skills involve identifying and recording user cases & user requirements. As others have said the ability to understand what the business need rather than what they think they need (without being overly condescending) is also helpful,

[blacjac]

yes terrible spelling. "reccomended" "sucesfully" etc list goes on. Not being OTT but this is really very bad. What industry do you work in? It sounds like you only want to move in this direction to earn more $$?

I recently did the opposite and made a move from BA to Developer. As a BA you need a natural ability to work with others to extract information and have a good head for analysis. TBH they are very different skill sets and although you can take BA courses it will be difficult to make the move after 13 years developing. Not impossible but I would not be confident if my BA coudnt spell correctly

Totally agree, spelling is one of my personal bug bears, absolutely no excuse however the time of my initial post might explain things slightly (hic).

In my permie days I've recruited and managed both developers and BAs and I for one would have given an interview to a person in your situation as long as in their covering letter they'd explained that they were looking to "mive" and why. If that checked out at interview, I'd have negotiated a lower salary for first year with regular reviews.

The best BA I've ever worked with was a developer first (well, he mived both directions a couple of times in his career) and I think that a hybrid person who can do both roles is a real asset to an organisation, able to liaise equally well with business stakeholders and development teams.

My advice is to consider your motives very carefully (from what you said, I don't think you're just in it for the money) and if it really is about aligning your career with the parts of the industry that turn you on, then go for it, being prepared to face a fair few rejections until you meet someone willing to give you a chance. Good luck!

It is something I have been thinking of doing for a while, but only really decided I wanted to do it recently, money is not a motivating factor, I genuinely feel these days that I have 'had enough' of programming and gone as far as I want to go, which has surprised me a lot. I considered training as a PM (which tends to earn more than both BA & dev) however that does not interest me as much as becoming a BA at this time.

My current plan is to stay at the company I am currently a permie at for a good while and see if I can get an opportunity here and get a year or two under my belt before contracting again, however I was wondering if anyone on here had actually managed to make the jump while contracting. A couple of the contract BA's where I am did, but they both just fell into it - clientco wanting them to do a couple of months BA work to keep them on the books while the next development job kicked off.
I was wondering if anyone on here had made a conscious decision to do it and could offer any advice.

As for the buzzwords, I fell foul of this about 7 years ago before contracting, I was asked in interview if I had any exposure to a methodology. I was honest and said that I hadn't however I later found out that I had actually been doing it for about 3 years but they called it something different where I was working!

Thanks for all the advice and keep it coming!

[MarillionFan]

Rejig your CV to focus on analysis type work, get an interview or two - permie or anything - and FIND OUT what you don't know that way... make notes of questions you're asked.

Just made the jump myself. It's thinking in a slightly different way and BA is more process driven. As long as you have the documentation and some methodology to follow it's not to bad.

I do find though with being a BA though, it does require slightly more thought and input than being a developer. With development, a large proportion of the design work has been done for you. You need to know how to carry it through and if it goes slightly wrong you can always blame the architect or BA.

At the BA/Architect side - you're producing the requirements or instructions for a developer to follow. It's a little bit more brain active!

[blacjac]

I do find though with being a BA though, it does require slightly more thought and input than being a developer. With development, a large proportion of the design work has been done for you. You need to know how to carry it through and if it goes slightly wrong you can always blame the architect or BA.

Bingo!
All my previous roles to the last 2 have been titled "developer" or "programmer" but in reality the real work has been a combination of BA and programmer, now that I have done a couple of pure development roles I see that it was the BA side of things that has been keeping me interested...