The Artistry of Business Analysis

If you’ve ever wanted to be a creative type that is paid well for your efforts, then becoming a Business Analyst is contrary to popular belief, quite the viable option.

Apr 16, 2024

Innocent half-truths

Whilst people will lead you to believe that business analysis is all about data, numbers, charts, insights, and other such things 📊, I want to tell you that is not even half the story…

Not only do you have to be creative, original, an out of the box thinker and hugely flexible in finding fresh new solutions for people, systems, and processes, you must be a mastermind who can bring people together to discover synergies and sometimes perform a bit of magic 🧞.

Business Analysts love 🥰 to do ‘Improv’

Have you ever seen people get onto a stage and improvise for fun?

This is what Business Analysts do every day for work and in many different ways.

Every time a business stakeholder asks for a new feature or function, the business analyst must put their creative hat on to orchestrate a solution within the realm of agreed scope (and possibility), in collaboration with the orchestra 🎻, that is the project team and within the theme of the concert, that is the perfection being sought by the end customer.

Creative Types 💃 vs Business Analysts 🧑‍💼

You might think: “Creative types live a completely different life than a Business Analyst. They are considered ‘creative’ whereas a Business Analyst are considered ‘logical’ in their thinking.”

This is where I do not agree and with years of experience as a Business Analyst, I know that the more creatively you can think as a Business Analyst, the more successful you will be.

Two common misnomers or perhaps overlooked similarities between Business Analysts and more traditionally named Creative roles include:

Creative types say they don’t like doing routine work. If you’ve done Business Analysis for any length of time you will know that not only is our work not routine based but in fact, something will be terribly wrong if your work is considered routine work.

Creative types say they don’t want to follow a script in life. With Business Analysis not only do they not follow a script at work but there is in fact no script to follow.

Whilst Business Analysis sounds like a highly organised, structured, and regimented profession, in it’s true essence nothing could be further from the truth.

Conclusion

Some of the many attractions of becoming a Business Analyst, include the desire for variety at work, the ability to be creative in many different ways and to be stimulated with what can sometimes be complex problem solving challenges. This role has never been a rigid and data only focused role but rather a creative business role with many tools and techniques (including some data and AI) at its disposal.

If you’ve been a Business Analyst for a while, what has your experience been like?