One BA’s Shifted Paradiagm: How I Became a BA

Scot Witt, Friday, September 28, 2007 @ 11:42 am

I've been a professional writer for more than 25 years- heck, I was stringing for the local newspaper when I was in high school. I spent the first 25 or so years post high school in the wunnerful world of Radio News. Then I figured it was a. time to get out of a dying industry and b. make enough scratch to help the kids through college.

So I spent 18 months on a help desk. Ugh. I have all the respect in the world for those special people than have the patience. I realized I don't. Anyone that 'names' their 'hard drive' Freddie seems a bit off to me.

So I took my minimalist technical skills (I am an amateur radio operator and had been playing with 'puters since the first TRS-80 came out- was the first on my block to have a Radio Shack Color Computer, connected to a black and white portable I traded for a 30-30 rifle I knew I'd never use) and my writing skills and declared myself to be a Technical Writer.

Wasn't hard. Except for Word. The organizational abilities and putting one word after another is pretty much the same.

Instead of story telling, I was writing incredibly difficult to understand Step Action Tables with Slot B and Post 34 merging into Compressor Cylinder 2 output going into the PDF to create an audit trail for  the Content Manager component of the  WinNT4.0 Server Security Accounts Manager.

There's a reason technical writers are a dime a dozen. In my experience, many can't write their way out of a paper bag. Many of the really good ones reinvent themselves. I always stayed with the really good ones. And I watched, read and asked for help when I didn't need it but wanted another point of view.

So I was consulting as a 'Content Manager' (read: Metadata Classifier), which was about 10 bucks more an hour than a tech writer gig. Momma didn't raise no dummy.

At a couple of application design sessions I noticed a couple of people who called themselves Business Analysts. They were very well dressed. Had nice shoes. I asked around. They made $20-$50 more per hour than I did. And they weren't bored.

I'm in.

• I read about UML. Process. Modeling. Seems pretty straight forward- that's what writers and tech writers do.
• I wrote a few cost-benefit analysis papers. Templates. They work!
• Use Cases- hmmm. Need another book.
• Action Diagrams- VISIO is a wonderful application.
• Iteration. Yeah, makes sense. If at first you don't succeed...

Kewl. Now I Are a BA.

Some observations as a BA on a few projects:

• SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) don't seem to think their company spending 34 gazillion dollars (that's a real place holder- a 1 followed by a jillion zeros) for an application is really that important to them. Which means I don't get all the requirements- no matter how many questions I ask, how I ask them or search the company's archives.
• Nobody seems to think my Use Cases and fancy schmancy VISIO diagrams are important. So they ignore them. I don't get sign off.
• Um, why, oh why, does the manager in  charge of part of the project keep coming up with new stuff she wants? Who is she talking to and how do I find a ninja when I need one?
• Hey! Mebbe you forgot to tell me you needed an interface to the U.S. Department of Heavy Handed Security, but the week before deployment is not the right time to tell me!
• Am I the only one who thinks four months planning the first phase of the project is, I dunno, excessive? Do we really need to dot all these i's? As long as we identify traceability to the requirements, isn't that enough?
• If the customer has the domain knowledge. And the Development Team has the technical knowledge. And if both sides want the application to work and work well, why is everybody pointing fingers at the requirements documents and the Statement of Work? They all signed off on them, didn't they? See second bullet.

Well, Bunky, some smart guys realized that and didn't tell me about it until I got my current job.  No, it's not a panacea. But it works a lot better for medium and smaller applications.

And no one points fingers.

Because we're all on the same team.

It's called Agile.

Next up, coaching a UML-guy into Agile.

Technorati Tags: Agile, UML BA, business analyst, watefall, iterative

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