Core Skills
Typically, if business analysis is a good career choice, you’ll be able to tick off these skills (or be extremely excited to go to work right away on improving these skills just because they sound interesting).
Communication Skills
Business analysts must be good communicators. This means they can facilitate working meetings, ask good questions, listen to the answers (really listen), and absorb what’s being said. In today’s world, communication does not always happen face-to-face. The ability to be a strong communicator in a virtual setting is equally important.
As a new business analyst, you may not have experience in a variety of business analyst specifications but it’s quite possible that your strong general documentation and writing skills will get you started.
Problem-Solving Skills
No project is without problems. In fact, the entire project is a solution to a problem. At the highest level, BAs facilitate a shared understanding of the problem, the possible solutions, and determine the scope of the project. You’ll also find BAs in the midst of facilitating teams to solve technical challenges, especially when they involve negotiation between multiple business or technical stakeholders. Often we start this by analyzing the business process.
Critical Thinking Skills
Business analysts are responsible for evaluating multiple options before helping a team settle on a solution. While discovering the problem to be solved, business analysts must listen to stakeholder needs but also critically consider those needs and ask probing questions until the real need is surfaced and understood. This is what makes critical thinking and evaluation skills important for new business analysts.
While communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills are core to being a good BA, they are not all that’s required. Let’s look at the skills specific to the business analysis profession next.
Business Analysis Skills
The following skills are specific to the business analyst role, but even as a new business analyst or someone looking to enter the profession. At Bridging the Gap, we organize the key business analysis skills into The Business Analyst Blueprint.