Continuous Learning

The most important quality to a BA is the desire and ability to acquire new knowledge and skills. I have a list of things I want to improve and have taken initiative to embark on the jounrney. What I did not expect is the language demand in my new job. The health care industry has a much higher standard on the handling of the English language, being able succinctly articulate business cases catered for various levels of stakeholders. I regret not spending more effort to think through how to approach each stakeholder, how I should interact with different personalities, my tone of voice, how to euphemize the difficult messages. Ignorance is costly. I kept on using "English is my second language" as an exuse to use sloppy English. If I had an exuse, then I didn't have the change it.
I am writing this blog as a reminder to hold myself responsible to improve. I shall know how much I've improved when I read this blog in the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Benefits of exposing UI mockups early in requirement cycle

During a recent use case walk through session, I presented the UI mockup before we finished going through the whole use case. We ended up spending the whole session discussing the UI because people were so adamant on what they want on the UI they lost the big picture of what the use case is trying to accomplish. That said, my lesson learned is to walk through an entire use case first before showing any UI. This doesn't mean the approach of exposing UI early in requirement cycle is inappropriate, in fact, I preach religiously the benefit of having UI as supporting document to the use case. 1. UIs are so easy and quick to understand, they accelerate the requirement cycle. They help you to expose missing requirements or reach agreement with stakeholders early, thus save time and money on having to rework the requirements later. Personally, I'd rather find out any conflicts, issues early so I can form a plan to address them. 2. Stakeholders are involved early in design and help to ...
Read more

Best Screte to Being a Successful BA

Excerpt from Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis: Your biggest challenge is to convince these (business) people that they should spend time with you and tell you everything that you want to know about their business. Successfully convincing them that you are on their side and working to help them is the best secret to being a successful BA. This is probably the most important thing that one should remember as a BA. Some people are natual "people" person, some are more introverted like me and need to work on "people" skills. I find that if you take a genuine interests in everyone you meet, pay attention to what they say, observe how they interact, you can become better at networking with efforts. In fact, in my opinion, introverts tend to be better at observing details and they listen more than they talk. This is actually a good people person skill, which is to focus/prob more about others and less on themselves.
Read more

The Day Has Arrived

Three years ago, I set a goal to become a business analyst specializing in the health IT industry. I wasn't a BA back then and I wasn't working in the health IT industry. I anticipated I can probably become a BA in three years, and maybe another 5 years or more to get into the health IT industry. I became a BA 9 months later, and got a job as senior technical business analyst in health IT two years after that. Now that I look back on the journey, I realize how incredible it has been: of all the hardwork I have put in, all the amazing people that helped me to get to where I want to be, and all the mentoring and support from friends and family. I have to say I am very fortunate to have all this. I hope I never take things for granted and never forget how I felt, for I am living my dream.
Read more