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.