Reply to: Something been bothering me

[Coalman]

Most BA's just get in the way. A good BA can save you a lot of time though. These are very rare, just like great testers.

BA has grown out of *analyst* programming because a lot of techies dont want to, or just cant talk to the business - because they don't want to learn the business.

BA's do a lot of testing - what ex-programmer wants to do that?

There are far more programming jobs than BA jobs. We have 15 programmers, and 5 BA's. The level of business knowledge a BA must have is far deeper than what a programmer can get away with. Most of the finer details of the business are boring. I'm mainly talking about banking here since thats my bag.

If you keep up your programming skills, you can build software at home and eventually sell your own applications. That's where i'm headed. I'm just about to release my first app. If you truly focus on BA work, you will lose your coding skills.

Couldn't agree more (except for the last para - I'm a BA!).

My domain knowledge is very narrow, but at the moment it pays well, and I get home to see my kids nearly every night.

Trying to diversify to cover not getting gigs in my niche is a worry so refreshing my old DB / Report Developer skills as a backup - will also be able to use/train on current project so woo hoo!

[suityou01]

My experience is that most projects would be way better off without the management.

And this has been tested in practice at one pension company where they had a big cull of permies due to the bank crash. Nearly all the permie management were immediately shown the door, but the contractors, as they were being paid for until the end of their contracts were kept on.

They had the three smoothest month ends ever.

Senior management being such extended everyone and gave some of the independent contractors management titles and a raise.

I've seen that too. I prefer projects were people are cooperative, competent, hard working and not hung up on titles.

Very few of these projects around though.

[threaded]

My experience is that most projects would be way better off without the management.

And this has been tested in practice at one pension company where they had a big cull of permies due to the bank crash. Nearly all the permie management were immediately shown the door, but the contractors, as they were being paid for until the end of their contracts were kept on.

They had the three smoothest month ends ever.

Senior management being such extended everyone and gave some of the independent contractors management titles and a raise.

[suityou01]

As a senior developer at a bank I had two BA's(Churchills Bitches) working for me - still think it's a step up?

They are currently meeting with the PM to get you fired.

HTH

[Churchill]

As a senior developer at a bank I had two BA's(Churchills Bitches) working for me - still think it's a step up?

[Scary]

In my experience I have found very few good testers who are good programmers and vice versa.

Spolsky agrees with you (and so do I) http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/01/26.html

You don’t have to be a programmer to be a tester. A lot of companies want testers to be programmers who write automated test suites. It seems more efficient that way. This reflects a misunderstanding of what testers are supposed to do, which is evaluate new code, find the good things, find the bad things, and give positive and negative reinforcement to the developers.

Also it's a bad idea to give testing jobs to bad programmers.

A particularly terrible idea is to offer testing jobs to the programmers who apply for jobs at your company and aren’t good enough to be programmers. Testers don’t have to be programmers, but if you spend long enough acting like a tester is just an incompetent programmer, eventually you’re building a team of incompetent programmers, not a team of competent testers.

[NickFitz]

In my experience I have found very few good testers who are good programmers and vice versa.

Developers like to make things work. Testers like to break things.

It's analogous to the difference between the kids who built really complex model railways and then configured them so that everything would run smoothly just as if it was a real railway, and the kid next door who said "Cool! Can we make them crash?"

I was the kid next door, and got told that "No, we couldn't" because it might damage the trains - but it turned out that his dad had built it anyway

Thirty-five years later, I'm a developer, but I still have a healthy appreciation of the benefits of making things crash, especially when I've built them

[aussielong]

Most BA's just get in the way. A good BA can save you a lot of time though. These are very rare, just like great testers.

BA has grown out of *analyst* programming because a lot of techies dont want to, or just cant talk to the business - because they don't want to learn the business.

BA's do a lot of testing - what ex-programmer wants to do that?

There are far more programming jobs than BA jobs. We have 15 programmers, and 5 BA's. The level of business knowledge a BA must have is far deeper than what a programmer can get away with. Most of the finer details of the business are boring. I'm mainly talking about banking here since thats my bag.

If you keep up your programming skills, you can build software at home and eventually sell your own applications. That's where i'm headed. I'm just about to release my first app. If you truly focus on BA work, you will lose your coding skills.

[Gonzo]

Current gig is a step up for me (Business Analyst) from code monkey. I am enjoying it, and doing well. But there are less BAs than code monkeys, or should I say less BA gigs than code monkey gigs. Should I be worried about gig continuity? Did anyone make a step up while contracting? Did it increase bench time?

I never worked as a Dev. I went from a support/systems manager role -> tester -> BA as a permie before I started contracting as a BA.

I have found it completely impossible to change industry as a BA. So despite ensuring that I was trained up with good BA skills that can be utilised in any industry, outside of banking and finance I don't get a look in.

I don't think that it is just BA gigs you would be looking for, it is BA gigs for projects similar to the one you are on that you will be looking for. You will find that that limits the opportunities considerably.

Having said that, it is very much harder to outsource the BA work (famous last words) so for longevity it might be a better option, unless the whole world goes Agile mad.

[MPwannadecentincome]

More frugal projects make the players 'wear many hats' - hate that expression. So you are tearing around like a blue arsed fly being developer, BA, tester. Some people are good at it, but I think it makes for stressful work, poor quality deliverables and is largely a false economy.

I agree about the tester being better suited for that move comment too. Testers generally in my experience have better overall domain knowledge as they usually work with the whole system, whereas programmers are more often limited to smaller parts of bigger systems.

just IMHO :-)

In my experience I have found very few good testers who are good programmers and vice versa.

I was PM at a smaller company for many years battling with the directors about the lack of proper testers in the company. Eventually I had a project with a big enough budget for me to get my own testers in (on contract of course!). Then the other PMs noticed and pestered the directors for access to the same resources too - things improved pretty quickly from that point.

[suityou01]

Or, when not importing people, exporting the work in the name of holistic corporate efficiency. As I said, well done.

One point. You're quick enough to winge on like a banshee while you feel you have a point to prove. I man up and offer an apology and you are not even gracious enough to accept it.

Twunt.

HTH

[suityou01]

Being a programmer who actually understands the business, I can't see the need for a BA half the time.

Most of the time I'm explaining the latest structured derivative (or whatever) to the BA!

Quite right! Not every project needs a BA. Or a project manager for that matter. Maintenance programmers often know the business inside out and have a good rapport with the end users.

Financial Trading is a set business model really. Trade legs, LCH, back office. Again programmers that know the business inside out are paid handsomely for their knowledge. Try and outsource that to Mr Shawadiwadi!

[Moscow Mule]

Being a programmer who actually understands the business, I can't see the need for a BA half the time.

Most of the time I'm explaining the latest structured derivative (or whatever) to the BA!

[threaded]

Yeah I'm getting tired of the .Net rat race, having to re-learn a skill every few years just because the corporate dominators want to force upgrades and cash in on the relicencing fees by reinventing how the wheel should be bolted together.

Absolutely. I've done a contract where the system essentially did list processing, then number crunching and finally graphical display. Each part would be a simple job in a language designed for the purpose, but no, they have to use the one company mandated programming language, at a particular version number, and topped off with a barmy coding standard.

You know it is pointless trying to improve things when the clients programming standard mandates 'set' methods for immutable objects.

[suityou01]

As a programmer you're pretty much stuck inside one domain too, either a business sector or a programming language. And which one is pretty much determined by what you did on your last contract.

In that respect I have been lucky. My first job was working for a thermal printing company. I was the programmer, who wrote all of the bespoke system integration type stuff. Loverly job til I outgrew it. Saw a lot of the country, different people, different business sectors.

I've worked in Automotive, Charity, Legal, Investment Company, Online Trading, Telcos, Three man bands and plenty more besides. I think that is why I think I make a reasonable BA. ClientCo thinks so, stakeholders think so. Developers think so. (at least that's what they tell me )

I recall one of the many PMs on here complaining his BAs were too territorial and would not muck in when needed. 'That's not my area of expertise' yada yada.

With my varied background I can usually lend a hand in most scenarios and am happy to do so.