Hi, everybody and welcome back to the Better Business Analysis
podcast with your host Benjamin Walsh.
And today we are going to be talking about a topic that's
unfortunately is a little bit uncomfortable for myself and
maybe for some of you who strongly wear the BA T-shirt or
wave the BA flag. And that is from requirements to
product ownership. Why more BAS are making the
switch. There is a major shift happening
in our industry and it is resulting in a lot of more
business analysts transitioning to the product owner role.
So if you're ABA wondering what your next career move might be
because of the market or you're just curious why this shift is
happening, this episode is for you.
The Better Business Analysis Institute presence, the Better
Business Analysis podcast with Walsh Not too long ago, the
Business analyst was the go to person for bridging the gap
between IT and business. We talk about the software, we
wrote business requirements documents, we ran stakeholder
workshops, and we made sure developers had clear
specifications to build from and testers could know what to test.
But into agile and Agile changed everything.
And even though agile is kind of died in some ways or been
absorbed, we are now left with this tricky conversation about
product owner role. So, you know, this is more than
just a shift from the traditional waterfall project.
I don't believe B as were there. So we had, you know, the bank
wants to launch a mobile app and the old model BA would spend
months gathering requirements, writing the documentation,
handing it off to developers. Six months Fast forward and by
the time the app is ready, the customer might change their
requirements. And then an agile.
There was no six month wait. The product owner consistently
worked with developers, adjusting priorities, showing
ensuring that each Sprint was delivering real value.
Instead of an intermediary, the PO or the product owner is in
the trenches making product decisions on the flight.
Now the reality is most BAS are doing the product role on the
role as well as the upfront requirements, right are doing
both of those things. That's what I see on a daily
basis. But the bigger the company or
the bigger the country, the more specialization that's happening.
There is a shift which means that the business aren't really
interested in the VA value of BA or upfront requirements and the
more about people making product decisions, OK.
And this is an important discussion here and it isn't the
fact that they don't value the skills that ABA brings.
But there is a bit of a shift between BAS being asked to step
into the product delivery focus. And that is kind of where we're
finding more BAS on the scale is tipping towards that.
And this is what I would say traditional product BAS, so #1 I
guess is that there is a skills match, right?
So BAS make great POS. We I know this BAS coming from
ABA background, they make much better product owners than those
who are SMEs or just coming from the business.
So some people think of moving from APBA to APO is a massive
leap. Not at all B as already have 80%
of those skills succeed as a product owner and I would say
that they are the BA role is a greater role than APO and there
is a Venn diagram. So you don't get all the skills
if you just are ABA. But let's break it down.
ABA and a product owner role needs both understanding
requirements. They need to understand
stakeholder needs. They need to manage a backlog.
They need to understand what the business wants and what business
value is. They need to translate the
business need into technical work like user stories, refining
those stories, prioritizing them.
No one just does solution requirements anymore.
They need to manage competing requirements and priorities,
business goals, technical feasibility, logic and user
need. And OS need to do the same thing
but with more authority over the backlog.
And this is where the O role is shifting or making it clearer
that BAS need to have authority. So it's it's it's it's chilling
out roles and responsibilities a bit more clearer for what BAS
didn't have historically. And now the PO though, is going
to Chig thanks to Agile and Agile Manifesto.
It's chiseled out roles and responsibilities.
And obviously you need to communicate with DAS, developers
and architects and BAS must explain requirements and POS
must be able to do that as well. And there's some really bad POS
who just don't get down to user stories or then outsource to a
junior BA to do these user stories and acceptance criteria.
And when I say PO here, I mean a capital P, capital O, where
being a product owner who does all those things well and isn't
outsourcing anything. So the key difference is that
ABA delivers insights and that's the word I live in.
And APO delivers decisions about a product.
So you will be walking away from business insights to product
insights. And that just sadly is just
where BAS are going. And I say sadly, but actually
it's just an evolution. So let's take our an example of
a real world transition here. Let's take Emma.
She's a former BA at an ecommerce company.
This is a great example. It's around the company in
context. She gets frustrated because
their requirements are often ignored by developers.
So when the company decided to adapt, adopt Agile, she
volunteered to take on back load backlog management, excuse me.
And within six months, she transitioned to a product Owner
role. And now she is the one deciding
what gets built next. So that's quite a, you know, the
decision maker here. For many BAS, becoming APO is
less about learning a new job and more about stepping up as a
decision maker as opposed to ABA, who's not a decision maker.
OK, I hope you understand the difference there.
And the other thing I'm finding in the market, I'm sure other
people have views here is that it gives you that more
influence. There's actually probably now on
average for those who are not kind of strategic BAS more pay
and maybe more opportunity. So that's the elephant in the
room and it might be the money. So moving from BA, and this
isn't always the case of 0 massive financial company pays
their BAS much more than their POS, but that's because their
BAS are doing strategy works and not product BAS and their POS
are doing product work. So there might be just a
financial growth for you. So a mid level BA might earn
between 80,000 and 110,000. This Is Us really.
And a product owner might be more in the upper quarter from
100 to 130, OK. And then of course, there is a
transition from senior product owner to product manager and
that's a fun 150 mark, right? And heavy tech industries.
So that is making it clear about where we go.
And that brings me to the career trajectory.
A lot of BAS, you know, you finish at senior or you become
maybe a business architect, but a product owner has a very clear
transition. So head of product, Chief
product Officer, you know what I mean, product manager and if
it's an A tech company, maybe even CEO.
So that's more than a traditional BA role can give
you. So companies want leaders who
think strategically, right? And if you're a tangible
strategy is what I like to say. So sometimes even though BAS are
more strategic in terms of a business sense, if you're
tangibly strategic and linked to a product, then APO may have a
serious advantage by showing the value through the product
they're delivering, right? And I guess we need to talk
about that transition. So if you're ABA and you want to
make the jump to PO, and I don't see it as a jump up, it's a jump
sideways, here's what you need to do.
You need to start thinking about customer value, product
management influences and business impact for the product.
And so it is more wrapping around the product and outcome,
not the project. You need to think about the
features in terms of why a good PO will and you need to move
away from any form of kind of the upfront documentation still
needs to be done. You can't just leave a gap.
But you might say, I'm going to become the product owner and I'm
more than happy having an enterprise BA going across and
giving me some insights across the top.
So that will allow you to transition.
It's more around understanding technology as well.
You need to get hands on with the backlog management.
So you need to live and breathe JIRA, DevOps, Trello.
And if you're not really using these tools, you need to start
using them. You need to volunteer to manage
the backlog through a project. And you need to explain you
can't necessarily do your OVI job forever because you're APO.
Now, if your company is launching a new feature or very
product related, then that provides a huge opportunity for
you to to move into APO role. And you need to really
understand product knowledge. So NVPAB testing, product
analytics, all the product management stuff, Google
Analytics, you know what I mean? And that will make you 10 times
more valuable as APO. You can become a certified Scrum
product owner. I am one of those and that's
probably the best transitional certificate you can get.
So my closing thoughts on this topic is there is a shift in the
market from BAS to product ownership and not as a crew, as
a sideways career and mind shift away.
And it's really saying you have the foundations to this role and
you're moving towards the product world.
And those who are left in the BA world may, may be evolved into
strange strategic business analysts.
If you were to move all product BAS out of kind of the realm of
business analysis. And this is where me or and the
institution is, is different to the IBA who of course, push for
this all being under the BA umbrella.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share
it with your fellow BAS and keep pressing the boundaries and
pushing hard of what's possible. I'll see you next week.