Business Analysis: Never a dull moment!

Date posted
12 July 2016
Reading time
6 Minutes
Alison Coote

Business Analysis: Never a dull moment!

From Hardware to Software I'm a Business Analyst, that probably won't mean much to some of you who are reading this or indeed if you are technical you might already have switched off by now. That was certainly my view when i was at university, and to be honest, up until that point my background was more in hardware than software. I worked part time in a computer repair shop so I considered myself a hands-on techie. I quickly felt that there was something missing, so I thought I would give the development thing a go. When I graduated, I applied to Kainos. My first role was on a Dublin based project. Back then, some 16 years ago, developers would go down on site for four to six weeks, and work with the client to come up with the requirements. We would then develop the code before finally returning to the clients site for a week where we showed them what had been developed and made any minor alterations. A change in direction... During this time I found out that while i could "cut the code", I was really engaged when I was on site working through problems with the client. I also found value in observing users, as I got to see first hand where their difficulties were, and immediately wanted to make their lives easier. I was happy with my role, but l wasn't entirely sure if it is what I wanted to do long-term. I tried project management for a bit, but I discovered I missed being the glue between the customer, users and the developers. Kainos is great at letting you explore different career paths and support you with all the necessary training, mentoring and coaching if you want to change disciplines. Career progression and opportunities I finally decided to make the full time switch to business analysis and leave the coding behind about eight years ago - and I've not looked back. Since then the biggest challenge for me personally has been the mindset change I needed to make in terms of moving from a traditional delivery environment to an agile environment. In order to help my transition Kainos placed me on projects with more experienced colleagues in this area so I could learn from them, as well as sending me on a number of conferences and training courses which were attended by some of the thought leaders in the field of product management. The highlight for me has to be the Mind the Product Conference in San Francisco which I attended in early 2016. Kainos has always given me assignments which stretch me and allow me to progress my career - today I head up the Business Analysis practice on one of the UK government's digital transformation programmes. No two days are the same for me. For example, last week I was at the pilot site working through the operational changes they will need to make for the next set of features being delivered. I also worked with the product owners to understand what the roadmap for the next three to six months is going to look like, as well as sitting with the business analysts from the various scrum teams where we sought to understand any cross team dependencies for the upcoming sprints. Life is never dull being a business analyst and Kainos has certainly kept things moving for me career wise. Interested in working with us on life changing projects? View our Business Analyst roles here! Kainos-Recruitment-Email-Signature

About the author

Alison Coote