A T-shaped professional is someone who has extensive knowledge of their speciality as well as broad generic knowledge of other areas. This combination of talents helps them to address challenges within their area of expertise while also effectively communicating with colleagues and stakeholders from other areas.
- The vertical bar of the 'T' represents extensive knowledge and specialisation in a particular field.
- The horizontal bar represents a breadth of knowledge in different fields, allowing for collaboration and cross-disciplinary understanding when interacting with different stakeholders.
As someone who aims to share and grow my knowledge as a Business Analyst, being 'T-shaped' is something I currently am, but there are also areas I strive to improve on.
So what exactly does it mean to be 'T-shaped'?
There are three main categories of competencies for a Business Analyst.
Personal Qualities, Business Knowledge and Professional techniques.
Personal qualities and Business Knowledge both belong in the horizontal section of the 'T' as they represent the broad range of skills. Whereas professional techniques sit at the vertical section of the 'T' as they represent the deep expertise and specialised skills.
Let’s look at these sections further, with some reflections on my current knowledge and skillset.
- Description Requirement engineering involves processes such as elicitation, analysis, and modelling to define requirements. BAs create and develop business and IT solutions from requirements, therefore this is a vital skill.
- Description: This involves identifying stakeholders, evaluating their importance, analysing their perspectives, and creating strategies for managing them.
- Description: Business modelling uses conceptual models to visualise business activities. Business system models show a complete system in overview. Various methods can be used to represent a business system, such as a business activity model BAM, value chain, value stream, organisation model, or capability map. areas for improvement. BAs should be skilled in mapping and analysing business processes, as well as understanding flows, bottlenecks, and opportunities for optimisation.
- Description: Analysing the data stored and used by a business system offers critical information about how that system operates. A data model represents the information requirements of an organisation as well as the business rules inherent in the data structure.
- Description: Business analysts must understand their organisation's strategic context to align solutions with objectives and strategy, and establish necessary tactics for strategy execution.
- Definition: Communication is an important skill as it encompasses a wide range of skills such as building rapport, listening, influencing and building empathy.
- Description: Business analysts often advise options and actions. Influence is crucial if the outcome contradicts preconceived notions or requires bold or unexpected action.
- Description: Analytical skills are crucial for business analysts. It requires delving deeper to find the real issue. It requires sorting through often-conflicting data to find meaningful insights. It means not accepting the obvious and not leaping to conclusions. Analytical thinking also involves communicating analysis results to stakeholders.
- Description: All business analysts must comprehend the area and industry in which they work. This allows them to ensure that any proposed course of action or improvement alternatives correspond with their organisation's business environment.
- Description: A subject matter expert refines domain knowledge to a lower level. Understanding a product line or service's terminology, processes, and constraints is crucial to building customer trust. It also helps to avoid assumptions and identify errors of and information gaps.
- Description: Business analysts often evaluate business problem solutions and their costs and benefits. Management accountants and others evaluate business case options and analyse the financial impact on the organisation. Business analysts must understand financial issues to discuss them with other specialists and managers.
- Adaptability: T-shaped BAs may easily transition between roles due to the multitude of competencies, making them excellent assets in fast-paced business contexts.
- Partnership: From understanding how to think and interact with various stakeholders to having specific techniques to help them perform their role more effectively. This depth of knowledge allows for more effective collaboration with multidisciplinary teams.
- Innovation: Having a good understand of their organisation and domain exposes BAs to many domains to help them develop innovative thinking by combining the business knowledge and experience from different project environments.
- Career Progression: Because of their diverse skillset, T-shaped professionals frequently have more opportunities for advancement.
Being a T-shaped Business Analyst entails balancing specialisation and generalisation. In an era when adaptability is king, this holistic approach not only improves individual career possibilities but also increases the value offered to the organisation. As I aim to share and grow my knowledge and skills, maintaining a 'T-shape' as a BA will be at the core of my future successes as a Business Analyst.