Hi there,

A little background: I am in my early thirties and have been stuck in a dead-end job (medical-legal industry) for a few years. I am very motivated to make a career change. I have two college degrees (in English Linguistics and Literature) that I obtained in France where I am originally from. I have been living in the US for the past 9 years.

Even though I have been unhappy with my job, it has at least taught me one thing: Business Process Management is something that interests me greatly. I like analizing process and trying to determine what makes sense, what doesn't, how things could be improved or changed etc. Stop me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me that BPM - and by extension BPI (Improvement) and BPR (reengineering) - are subsets of Business Analysis. Is that correct?

My problem is that it looks like Math is a fundamental part of the education/training in those fields. I was and still am absolutely terrible at Math beyond arithmetics. And by terrible, I mean hopeless. My ex-wife graduated as a French major but before that was a Business major (she switched half-way) so she had Math classes (statistics, maybe calculus). Her first job was as a Customer Rep in a call center where she used her French skills. She quickly made a name for herself and was offered by her company to follow a Six Sigma training class. She is today a Project Manager (another closely related field if I am not mistaken). My point is that I think the science classes she took in college helped her with the math portion of Six Sigma.

My question is this: How big is the math in the training of a Business Analyst, Business Process Manager/Analyst and in quality assurance methodologies like Six Sigma?

Is there any hope for someone like me who is hopeless in Math? Don't be afraid to tell me like it is. At my age and in this economy, I can't afford to dwelve on hopes of becoming something I have no chance of becoming given my natural abilities.

Thank a lot for any advice you can give me.

Gregory

Hi Guy,

first of all first for the insight. There is still hope after all, it seems.

Making a 180 degree career change is no easy task, but I have to admit that this particular field makes things even harder. Here are a few sources of intense frustration for me as I am trying to get my bearings:

1) Nomenclature.

Business Analysis, Business Process Analysis, Business Process Quality Assurance, Business Process Management, Improvement, Re-engineering, Modelling, Mapping...etc.

For someone totally new to this field, all those terms can be extremely confusing, especially because they are thrown left and right without much clarification over:

1) What they actually mean.

2) What set of tasks they are constituted of and who performs them.

3) Where those tasks intervene within the entire analysis process and what they are of subset of.

Establishing what is a subset of what is really helpful for newcomers as it helps getting a clearer understanding of the big picture as well as defining its components.

If I understand correctly, mapping and modelling are phases of the Business Process Analysis, which is itself one of the phases of a business analysis. Is that correct?

***Business Process Management (analysis > improvement or re-engineering) is the area that really interests me, so I need to ask this:

Are there people who work on this specific area and whose title is Business Process Managers, or is it one of the Business Analyst's hats?***

The confusion is furthered by the fact that initiatives / institutes, training courses and Bodies of Knowledge do exist for both Business Analysis and BPM, making it hard to draw a line (if there is one to draw) between the two. They are obviously interwoven, but it is hard to know if they can be two separate practices (meaning they can performed by two different people within an organization) and hard to know where I need to go from here (Business Analysis or BPM?).

***In Summary: Is BPM an entity of its own, or is it a specific subset of Business Analysis?***

2) Training and certifications.

I have done a lot of googling to find training sources. At this point, and as I have illustrated above, I am still not sure what actual field I want to get into. To add to my confusion, I am noticing that the various training courses and certifications offered out there (through initiatives or private education providers) are aimed at Business Analysts with a certain level of experience or people with skillsets positional duties I do not have (Operations Managers, IT officers, Systems Engineers etc...). I cannot seem to find a training course aimed at total beginners who want to learn, starting with the very basics.

***What advice would you give to a total beginer? Where to go, what books to read, what specific course(s) to take? Those training courses are not cheap (they all cost thousands of dollars) and I will not be sponsored by the company I work for - thus I need to make sure whatever course I will choose will be adapted to my level (or lack thereof) of proficiency.***

Finding a mentor would be ideal, unfortunately I do not personally know any Business Analysts (or Business Process Managers, if there is such a thing).

Thanks for bearing with me and answering my many questions!

P.S: Grammatical analysis does use mathematical-like formulas!