Journey to become a business analyst in health IT

Now I regret the way I handled the "out-of-scope" issue. I shouldn't have gone to my project manager directly without negotiating with the client first. Instead of communicating with the client, my project manager escalated it to the executive level, and the client looked bad in front of their superiors, and of course the client got pissed off at me. The lesson learned here is: notifying the project manager may not be the best solution all the time even when the client is obviously wrong. There are things I could have done myself, such as let the client know I am not qualified to do the work that I was asked to do; the implications of documention something I am not familiar with could be fatal. I could have simply done the work and then let things slide instead of escalating before my work is complete. The relationship is broken now despite my previous effort to earn trust and building rapport. Well, as I have been told, there is never failure only lessons learned!

I learned an important lesson today. Be aware when the client requests for out of scope deliverables. If the assignment sounds like it's out of your area of expertise or not in the project plan, chances are, you shouldn't be doing them. By agreeing to do the extra work, you may run the risk of producing something inaccurate, illegitimate which may ultimately hurt you and your company's credibility. Being an consultant, it's important to always provide help when you can, but you also have to make sure its within the budget, and the "help" you are providing is covered in the budget, otherwise you waste time doing something that doesn't contribute to the deliverables agreed upon. In the end, consultants are being measured against what you agreed to deliver, not something that wasn't in the contract, and doing so will always delay the expected deliverables

My consulting job exposes me to the whole spectrum of people out there. Thanks to my experience of growing up with a clinically depressed parent, I am able to almost "read" people because I am sensitive to subtle cues people send out about their inner-self. Most people carry this vanity bubble around them, some big, some small, they come in different shapes and colors, some came cameflouged, but everyone has one, but only manifest it differently(this is starting to sound like celestian prophecy). One of the most effective technique I have learned is to identify a person's vanity bubble as soon as possible and try to work around it, once burst, it can result in counter productive work relations. Personally I have no issue working with big-egoed people as long as they have integrity.