From a Business Analyst to a BA Practice Manager

Have you been promoted to a Business Analysis Practice Manager? Great!

Now What?

I don’t know about you, but as far as I am concerned, when I “grew up” in the Business Analysis career, and stopped doing the actual analysis work, it felt more like a punishment than a promotion.

You see, I was still enjoying the challenges that came with this work.

Meeting stakeholders, navigating the complexities of relating to them, sitting with a paper and a pencil to re-arrange the story in my own way, and emerging with new insights.. this is what I know how to do best and what I deeply enjoyed.

I find that more exciting than allocating team members to projects, solving allocation problems, putting together training plans, and reviewing deliverables.

So now what? I still need the career growth. My employer needs to make better use of my experience, and junior analysts have the right to go through that joyful experience as I did.

Well, then – like how it is with life – I accepted the change. It is life and people grow out of things and step into new things.

But then came the next issue: How on earth can I manage those individuals with their analytical minds?

How will the team judge me? How do I know everything is heading in the right direction; and most importantly how to do it without driving myself or others crazy? My team has first-hand exposure to the projects; I don’t. They are focused on that one specific project all the time; I am not. If they seek my advice, I don’t have enough information about the context. If they don’t, I have no clue what is going on.

I worked with many companies with different shapes, coached many analysts and team leaders, and I saw the frustration of both the manager and the team. With time, the Business Analysis practice manager stopped being hands-on, and felt trapped in a boring role, isolated from the actual work. They became theoretical, even obsolete. They, as well as their organizations, questioned the value they were bringing to the table. Since many companies are matrix companies that rely on nuclear teams to do the work, practice managers do not really contribute much on the project level, and that makes the practice manager’s contribution minimal or irrelevant. After all, how can you influence something you are not part of?

If my role diminishes to logistical activities, it is a loss for everyone – not just me.

So I sat and thought of a setup that enables me to access information at appropriate times and levels, by choosing the right checkpoints and monitoring mechanisms that allow me to give input where my experience is needed without unnecessarily interfering in the team’s space.

The answer seemed simple: I don’t become a manager. I become a coach and an internal consultant.

How? The recipe is a combination of a number of elements.

Those elements form a framework, explained in details and hands-on practical way in my book Leading Business Analysis Teams.

They also compose the content of a 15-hour course with the same name Leading Business Analysis Teams.

Get in touch if you want to buy the book or learn more about the course.

courses@reqmaster.com