What is the standard career path for a BA to follow if they are not interested in Project Management?
I tried doing PM work once and found it incredibly boring compared to the job that a BA does.
Our standard path is something like
Business anaylst -> product manager -> senior product manager -> general manager
product managers own the full life cycle of individual features of a product. They might work with marketing to do studies to determine what features the market needs. Then they work with business analysts to write a spec. Developers to build the system. Trainers or business stakeholders to deploy the system.
senior product managers own an entire product from start to finish
general managers own a series of related products
I found a blog post I wrote on the subject a few years ago. I think it is still applicable
http://requirements.seilevel.com/blog/2010/06/career-progression-for-business-analysts.html
here is an interesting wired article about how google and now yahoo view product managers
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/marissas-secret-weapon-for-recruiting-new-yahoo-talent/
That's interesting as I have come across Product Managers at my company and they always seemed like they had good BA backgrounds. The difference I would say where I work is that there is a lot of project work and the BA works with the PM to deliver software or changes. The subject matter experts are effectively the product managers and they work within the business already...ie they work in the business ina non IT role whereas all the BAs work under the IT umbrella. So for a BA to become a product manager, they would have to break out of IT?
My experience has been that business stakeholders dont have time to "own" the product because they typically have a day job. The subject matter experts dont generally have the inclination to write anything down or ensure it all gets delivered properly.
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