Oct
24
Why Experience Doesn’t Produce Better Analysts
October 24, 2005 |
A while back, I was chatting with a friend of mine about a mutual acquaintance. My friend, who had worked with the acquaintance previously, described him as a intermediate-level analyst–smart, but not someone who could run a large analysis effort on his own, and not as good an analyst as I am. However, if you compared our resumes, most readers would place acquaintance at my level and possibly above it, as he also had significant development experience–and the person in question wasn’t padding his resume.
This got me thinking. In particular, what I realized is that the talent a person has for analysis is something that manifests quite quickly. Within a year or two, it’ll be quite clear whether a BA (or a developer) has the vision and insight to solve large, complex problems or is best suited for solving low-level ones. Experience doesn’t seem to change this. Neither does training, at least not as we currently do it. You can teach somebody new tools, but how well they use those tools doesn’t seem to change.
Experience doesn’t teach you how to solve harder problems. It may help you recall a solution that has worked previously, or help you understand how a particular organization operates. In other words, what people learn are the what the outcomes of their problem-solving efforts looked like, but they don’t get significantly better at actually solving new problems. We analyse faster, and repeat less mistakes, but that’s about it.
Training might be able to help here, but I think most analysis training focuses on outputs–things like object-oriented analysis and the like. I think it requires coaching to improve problem-solving–that is, the coach needs to be an expert analyst who will devote significant amounts of time to improving the skills of each analyst. That’s traditionally the role of a team leader, of course, but in practice the team lead is selected and promoted for other skills. But that’s perfectly reasonable, as the team lead will also spend most of his or her time going to meetings, or planning overall personal allocation, or dealing with hiring matters, and not coaching his or her staff.
The solution is obvious–either make this explicitly part of the managerial role and reduce the other demands on their time accordingly, or bring in outside consultants to do the coaching. Do most organizations have the will to make this happen? Probably not.
Comments
2 Comments so far
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With the accumulation of years of experience, you are less likely to make mistakes that you have learnt from past mistakes. However, there is no one size fits all solution to any business needs. Each needs has uniqueness in some way or the other. That’s when analyst with a fresh perspective comes in handy to take a different or better approach to addressing business needs. However, experience will definitely help you to be more efficient once a solution is found.
Wow! very well said but somewhat sad. company’s will NEVER put in the time and money to provide competent coaches. Great idea, though! 15 years ago, back when most companies had an active education department, this would have been a great way to train aanalyst.
With that said, if your statements are true, the IIBA & the BA Bok will not be able to produce qualified, business analyst. Stated another way, If a person is not a good analyst by nature…no amount of training or experience will make him good.
Am I gleaming too much from your statements and thus I have ended up with erroneous conclusions! I hope so!