"Business Analyst"?

[nemorathwald]

A few weeks ago I found out from renniekins that my long-term career goal is called "Business Analyst" at her company. That's been repeatedly independently confirmed, once again in comments to my latest LJ post. I expressed incredulity at the misnomer. renniekins and I carefully described the job functions to each other, to make sure we were talking about the same thing. There could be no mistake. It couldn't have been more camouflaged against my notice than being named "Business Analyst".

Wikipedia's article on Business Analysis does not describe the same job. I hypothesize a reason for this situation. What if there are many businesspeople who are good at the things that article describes, who ended up getting shunted instead into the tasks I like (software mockups/demos, use-cases, interface specifications, and documentation)? What if that's why they keep the title of Business Analyst, because they'd rather be working with organizational structure, strategies for the enterprise environment, and shuffling money around, than translating between technical staff and end users?

I greatly prefer "Requirements Analysis", if I had to pick a necktie-sounding term. That article is far more recognizable. Compared to my previous career, in 2007 I've taken a huge step in that direction. Five to ten years from now I'd rather spend a larger percentage of time thinking about happy and productive end-users of a software package than thinking about employees and money, if I can help it.

And yes. I am good at it.

P.S. I like netmouse's suggestion of the term Human Factors". I also like the Menlo Park article. My interest in alphabets, human languages, text-entry alternatives, measurement systems, spelling reform, game design, and software interfaces has been a long-standing manifestation of my fascination with cognitive ergonomics, before I knew the term.

Comments

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

Well, there you go then.

Requirement analyze away!

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

:D

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

And then there's Menlo's term for it: "High Tech anthropologist"

Business Analyst, Human Factors Engineer, sometimes "Team Lead" is also the term for that work, and in some places it's part of the marketing department, which is weird.

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

And then there's Menlo's term for it: "High Tech anthropologist"

See, to me, that would be someone who studies high tech cultures and whatnot. Or geek culture. But I could see how that would fit.

[temujin9.livejournal.com]

In that case, if you're interested, I have a project I may farm out to you: UML workup for an Altered Reality Game. I've gotten most of the way through the use cases, but gotten bogged down in the accounting portion. Unfortunately, the demands from my current contract are killing me; I can't muster enough time to break my mental logjam on it.

If you're interested, I'll send you details. Assuming you take it the rest of the way, the entire bid price ($500) is yours, as is most of the credit.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Please do send me details!