Is switching from QA to BA a good career move?

The quality of the project or product is managed by a QA professional. They are expected to try their hardest to test the system/application and find as many bugs as they can to ensure that the system functions as desired/expected in the environment it was designed for. From the beginning of the process until the release of the application, it is heavily involved. At a high level, QA is primarily concerned with making sure that the system correctly implements the requirements or specifications with the least amount of troubleshooting required.

Career Advancement brings QA to a decision point where they must choose which path they want to advance in their career.

Business analysis is a natural progression and a great career move for QA professionals involved in many overlapping activities like BA work. Business analytics is certainly a high-profile, high-payingcareer and it is one of the fastest growing professions with an all-time high growth rate of 14%. In short, a career change to business analytics for QA is much more promising and lucrative in today’s scenario.

Business-certain behavioural skills are essential for anyone wishing to transition to this analyst role. As a QA professional, if you have excellent verbal and written communication skills, are used to working with customers, and have good analytical skills, the business analyst role is perfect for you.

Good QA professionals who pay attention to detail are more likely to succeed as business analysts.

Here are some reasons why a career change from QA to BA makes so much sense.

 

Fair Understanding of Requirements

QA professionals read, analyse, and review requirement specifications based on their job profile to ultimately understand better testing. While doing this, the Quality Analyst improves their requirement/domain knowledge day by day. By putting extra effort into requirements analysis and business domain understanding, QA professionals can better plan their career change to the business analytics profession.

Intelligent at Documentation

QA specialists are involved in documentation like test planning, test case development, and error reporting at every stage of the project lifecycle.

Documentation competence is another essential skill for a business analyst. By learning new tools such as diagramming/modelling tools and effective communication skills, QA professionals can acquire the skills they need to become effective BAs.

Learning and Refining Requirements Documents

Write or document the best requirements over time. Critical and unconventional thinking. A good QA Professional is someone who has the ability to think critically and out of the box while solving drawn gaps in business problems and requirements.

Understand User Expectations Better

When testing an application for different roles/privileges, the QA expert can know what users expect from the application.

The question that then arises is whether these qualities are sufficient for a QA professional to smoothly transition to the role of business analyst. While these inherent qualities as a QA will aid in the transition, QA professionals need some degree of career development and planning, learning new skills, and maintaining existing need to improve the skills.

So here are some pointers to help the QA professional advance her chosen career as a business analyst.

1. Understand Business Fundamentals

The various organisational functions and how they directly or indirectly serve internal and external customers should be well-understood by BAs. It is significant. A QA professional must first comprehend how a business runs, how its revenue stream’s function, and what it does. We advise reading through the APQC-provided common process classification framework before getting started. I also advise reading introductory books on marketing, operations, finance, and business strategy.

2. BA Learn Processes, Tools, and Techniques

Like other activities, business analysis follows a process. The best free resource available is IIBA’s Business Analysis Core Standard. This is a short document, about 50 pages, but a very informative overview of the BA process. It gives you a good idea of how business analytics are actually done in your organization.

BAs use a variety of tools throughout their work.

They frequently employ the business process modelling, state modelling, and use case modelling tools.

Most organisations use Microsoft Visio, Lucid Chart, and BizAgi Business Process Modeller, which are all very well-liked tools.

3. Fully understand your field and industry

The Internet offers numerous resources on almost every subject increase. Search business term repositories (domains) available on a project or client/web. You can also get the manual for the domain you are on. If you work in retail, look for the Handbook of Retail. Reading the manual will give you a pretty good idea of ​​how a retail domain works. More insight and knowledge about your domain and organization will improve stakeholder acceptance. And stakeholder acceptance is key to business analyst success.

4. Actively participating in requirements gathering

Gathering serves as a foundational study for the requirements generation phase. Requirements research is one of the most important tasks for any BA. As one scholarly article puts it: „Collection errors are often the leading cause of system failures and crashes, making the overall loss or error correction cost very high. “

Participate actively in the requirements gathering process or contribute.

To better comprehend the project and its value to its users, it is imperative to become familiar with the various requirements gathering techniques.

Frequently acting as a liaison between clients and other stakeholders. They collect requirements, serve as a liaison between developers and testers, and resolve conflicts on both sides. Improved behavioural skills are needed for this. Communication, stakeholder dialogue, active listening, facilitation, conflict resolution, and creative thinking are essential business analysis skills.

5. Training & Certification – The Ultimate Key to Success

BA Certification & Training enhances professional skills and business knowledge. A Business Analytics certification expands your horizons on BA techniques and approaches. Accreditation can improve overall performance, eliminate uncertainty and expand market opportunities.

IIBA’s ECBA certification is the right place to enter the field of business analytics. ECBA not only provides a solid foundation for starting the BA profession, but also helps with global accreditation. ECBA accreditation does not require aptitude standards related to training and covers aspects related to requirements extraction, requirements analysis and management, stakeholder management, technologies used by BAs, etc.

Experience Abundant BA trainers. This increases your chances of passing quickly on your first attempt.

6. Participating in the Implementation Process

During implementation, there are many important tasks that the business analyst must perform. These tasks contribute to the success of the project and ensure that business goals are met. Most prioritizations and workarounds are resolved during this phase.

Future BAs should participate in the implementation process and learn all the processes, techniques and nuances involved.

7. Seek Internal BA Role Changes upon completion

BA training and certification, you will be able to leverage your newly gained knowledge and experience in your industry/domain by seeking opportunities within your current organization. The first thing to do is look for opportunities for internal transfers. Discuss your career goals with your manager and look for opportunities to practice your bachelor’s degree skills/techniques.

It is often said that in order to be successful, you need to be proactive and not wait for life to come your way.

Accompanying business analysts on specific projects within the organization helps them understand and apply the concepts they learn. Put yourself in the shoes of a business analyst and evaluate and learn from what you observe.

Conclusion

Moving from Quality Assurance to Business Analytics seems possible. In fact, QA professionals are the perfect people to transition into the field of business analytics.

As you move forward toward your goals, there are„ what if “moments and stumbling blocks that will test your resolve. All it takes is dedication and a willingness to learn and succeed no matter what. Remember that a good business analyst is one of the greatest assets an organization can have. Having a good and capable bachelor’s degree in an organization is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.