How do you see yourself ten years from now?

This comparison between 2009 and 2019 at social media encouraged me to do some reflection about my achievements. I spent some time to see how I am now and how I was ten years ago. And most important, how I am now and how I want to be ten years from now.

To some people, this kind of reflection might be something to be proud of. To a few people, this might mean nothing as they're at same as they were ten years ago. But, to other people, this might be a motive of great frustration due to some lost or some regression.

The fact is that on our daily tasks we caught ourselves living impulsively not considering a more significant objective or purpose. The problem is that if we take too long to have this perception, there is a risk of being awarded great frustration when looking behind.

But, enough reflection for today. This article's objective is to talk about the next ten years from a planning perspective. I want to encourage you to have a life project, no matter if it is professional, personal or social. Having a project helps you to define an objective, define the required resources to achieve it and how and when you'll make it.

Here follow a few tips that can help you create, execute and accomplish your life project:

1 - Define an objective

Also known as a scope, it means where you want to go and what will be the obtained result after all the done effort.

Define tangible objectives that add value and also are reachable. If you miss one of these characteristics there is a chance of your project fails.

Start with small objectives and define bigger objectives as you achieve them.

2 - Define effort and resources needed

Find out what's gonna take to reach your goal. It might be financial resources, material resources, human resources, intellectual resources and etc. It might be a personal effort, third-party effort, manual effort, mechanical effort, digital and etc. Make sure you have all you need to continue your journey towards your objective timely.

If any resource or effort needed to achieve your objective is not available, your project stops, and for that, you'll have to plan it again. The lack of resources and efforts can even make your project unviable.

Be aware so your resources don't become an objective in smaller projects, but if so, do what you have to do.

3 - Project deadline

Any project must have a deadline, and its execution needs to be sliced in tasks. Define a deadline for your project and also a start and delivery date to the smaller tasks. Remember that tasks consume resources and demand effort, and besides that, they can be predecessors or successors to other tasks with a dependency level between them.

To know how what and when to do things is indispensable to the project's success. It's in the execution of smaller tasks within the given time that you'll have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

The project may be delayed or anticipated. What can not happen is give away the objective promptly due to time. If a project is delivered too late, its purpose might not be as valuable as it was on project's start.

4 - Enumerate risk and action plans

Any project is subject to risks, no matter if the risks are an internal or external agent or if they are known or unknown issues. It might be resource unavailability, unforeseen events, objective changes, etc. The fact is that you'll have to enumerate as many risks as you can and establish an action plan for each one in case they become a reality.

As you establish risks, see the impact that may be caused by each one. Some risks have a minimum impact on your project. Some risks cause a problem but they can be mitigated, but there are risks that can make your project unviable.

5 - Write down everything

There is no problem at all in projecting something to your life on your mind only, but surely the action of writing down in a paper, document or sheet makes it formal and externalize your purpose, making you deal with it in a different manner.

Give emphasis to victories and small deliveries, take note of your problems and learn with them. Check if you aren't leaving the path set at the beginning of the project and be persistent. There are some projects that are problematic ones and they demand a lot of you.

Make your project, execute it and deliver something to yourself that used to be virtually impossible to reach before. You will be surprised rather with the achievement or the learned lesson.

Business Analyst Career Path. Where Will You End Up?!

Your career path as a business analyst is highly dependent on your preferences and strengths as an individual.

Not everyone who starts out who is currently a business analyst not necessarily stays there very long.

In my mind, there are basically 4 high-level trajectories your career might go depending on whether you go the BA Specialist route, management route, subject matter expert route or choose to make a lateral movement along the way. So let's break down each.

Business Analyst Specialist route

First, when I say BA Specialist, I mean a person who has decided to hold their skills as a business analyst. They are masters of all competencies in the business analyst body of knowledge and they are well-versed on all the knowledge areas.

This person starts out as a junior business analyst or an entry-level business analyst and travels to level 2, which is a senior business analyst and so forth.

If you go this route your skill set will more cycling drive you to be an enterprise architect, which is kind of a super business analyst. The quick version is that you look at the business as a whole and not just to an individual or silo, and determine strategies for how IT as a whole cant help meet objectives.

Management route

This is pretty straightforward and suitable for people who have a passion to help others grow in their career. 

At this point, you are a mentor to other business analysts and are likely to work as a business analyst lead or manager. Is important to remember that being a manager doesn't mean you can't be something else. For example, enterprise architects might have business analysts working with them.

The Subject Matter Expert (SME) route

The SME route has many flavours and usually revolves around a particular industry like business division or technology. 

Some examples are health information systems BA in the health industry or a human resources information systems BA for the HR's division of companies or a sales force BA specializing in the implementation of sells force for sells organizations.

Industry or subdivisions SME often move into a direct partnership with the business sort of things or just cross over into the business altogether because they're so well-versed in the ins and outs.

Technology experts are most likely to become consultants and help companies adapt to technology successfully.

Making lateral moves route

Last but not least, this has many flavours but the short version of it is that a good business analyst has to dive in the skillsets of many professions like user experience designers, project management, process analysts, product ownership and the list goes on. If business analysts find one of these careers interesting than they can refocus their career in that direction fairly easily.

Do I really need an IT certificate?

"The mind that opens up to a new idea never returns to its original size." - Albert Einstein

 
Because we're passing through the great era of "Digital Transformation," besides the market, the IT sector is being influenced too.  Among several changes that are happening, I want to talk about a specific matter, which is the growing incentive and facilitation to get IT certifications.

A few years ago, to get an IT certification (no matter what speciality), was something that demand effort, dedication and most times, was expensive. The certified professionals were more valued and some of them even were part of a select group, depending on what certification they had.

Nowadays many companies are providing easier ways to get certifications at foundation levels, which in some cases can even be free of charge. This is very common in fashionable matters like Scrum, Agile, DevOPS and etc.

We can clearly see this "certification fever" on LinkedIn when some company decides to make a campaign of study material and certification issuing free of charge.

But, is this a problem? Actually no. What happens is that the fact of certifications at foundation level being popularized creates a tendency of devaluation of those same certificates. A natural reaction of someone who had a hard time studying and expanded a lot of money to get the same certificate in a higher level.

But then did the free, entry-level certifications lost its value? No, but you'll need to be careful to not to become just another professional taken by the fashion of the moment.

I believe that a certification changes the person's mindset. It's impossible that someone who studies for any certification keeps the same old way of thinking. The practice and the experience expands the knowledge acquired and make ir solid. Experience without certification is almost equivalent to certification without experience. Whoever seeks a certification must seek his immersion into the market to put that knowledge into practice.

Knowledge takes no space. We're living the era of knowledge but, unfortunately, there are people who still want to restrain information.