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New Post 4/23/2015 9:30 PM
User is offline sam
1 posts
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Struggling BSA 

Hi All,

Any help here would be much appreciated!

I have started working as a BSA 2 years ago but i have been struggling. The company i work for is one of the top investment banks. Our department supports pubic and private (where clients can login) websites. There are several product management applications which, manage contents for web, create pdf files to post on web (500+ reports monthly), Systems they have developed are used to manage and assign text and other contents to products etc... etc... etc...

There are good amount of functional specs for the tools

My challenges are:

hard to work with development team, since they are most upto date on how all systems are integrated and how they functionally. It doesn't matter how much i read through the functional specifications but most of the time i hear is i missed x-y-z 

i am not able to participate much during the project team discussions because i am afraid of asking wrong questions. 

I have done several projects with the help of peers and ended up with good functional specification. 

PLEASE HELP ME WITH ANY SUGGESTIONS ABOUT WHAT SHOULD APPROACH SHOULD TAKE FOR ANY PROJECT TO CAME UP WITH RIGHT QUESTIONS? AND TO BE IN A RIGHT DIRECTION? 

 
New Post 4/24/2015 1:16 PM
User is offline Sandy
74 posts
8th Level Poster




Re: Struggling BSA 

Sam,

It sounds like you might be a bit too focused on being the expert, being right and proving yourself. Asking questions is your job - there is no such thing as 'right' or 'wrong' questions.

Your development team members are experts, and you don't have to compete with that. If they tell you information that you missed or don't know, then they're just giving you expertise that you need - and that's a good thing! You can certainly go back to the functional spec to see what you missed and why you missed, to improve yourself. But you're not expected to be a subject matter expert yourself - as a BA, your job is to get the experts to tell you what they know. Sounds like you're doing that. Welcome it, and be glad they're willing to share their expertise with you.  

For project team meetings, do your best to inform yourself ahead of time. But in the meeting, don't hesitate to speak up or ask questions. If you've missed anything, the team will tell you - then you will leave the meeting more informed than when you went in. Meetings are not always the best place to get detailed explanations - unless of course, that is the original purpose of the meeting. So if topics come up that you don't fully understand, ask the person if they are able to meet separately with you and provide more detail. Most people are willing to share their knowledge, as long as you don't overburden them with these requests. It doesn't matter if some people say 'no' to these requests; even if just a few people agree, you will still gain a lot of knowledge this way.

Remember that your job is to learn from the experts, not to be an expert yourself - then you will be more comfortable asking the questions that you need to ask, and participating on the project team as a valued and productive member.

Sandy

 
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