How can I become a business analyst without an IT background?

Is it necessary to have an IT background to become a Business Analyst? Can you become a Business analyst without an IT background? In this article, we are going to lay down an approach for becoming a Business Analyst.

Why become a business analyst?

Need for a Business Analyst

The demand for business analysts has grown over the years. Enterprises are becoming more and more software applications driven. The applications have become more complex. A specialized business analyst role becomes critical to project success for the following reasons:

Understanding requirements and objectives better
Not missing requirements
Managing Stakeholders better

Demand for a Business Analyst

There is a growing demand for Business analysts. Look at some statistics about the demand:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the need for business analysts to increase by 14% by 2024. This is one of the highest average percentages among growing occupations.
The number of jobs for all US business analysts will increase from the current 364,000 openings to 2,720,000 by end of 2020
The average salary INR 489,416 as per payscale.com in India and $ 51,000 to $ 62,000 in the US (Source: Ziprecruiter, Zippia and payscale). Detail overview of Business analyst.

What if You don’t have an IT background?

Is it mandatory to have an IT background for becoming a Business Analyst? This is an important question, and it’s futile to answer this as binary “Yes” or “No”.

We need to understand the relevance or irrelevance of IT background for business analysts. Here are some pointers:

First thing first, you don’t need programming skills to become a Business Analyst
But, understanding the IT concepts and systems (for example what is data analysis, what is cloud computing, etc.) is important and helps a lot
So, which skills does a Business analyst need? Techcanvass has developed the CRAFT framework for representing the skills for a business analyst, as shown below.
Having an IT background is useful but does not become a rejection point while recruiting a Business Analyst. So, go ahead and achieve your goal. In the next section, we have provided an approach and step by step roadmap to become a Business analyst.

Steps for becoming a business analyst without IT background

This section describes the suggested steps to become a Business Analyst. It would be best if you were ready to work for around 120-150 hours of work. In our experience, it takes about 2.5-3 months to complete all the steps.

So, here are the steps to become a Business analyst:

Acquire a thorough understanding of the role, responsibilities and skills of an entry-level business analyst. (Resources provided in the last section)
Determine the gaps in your skills with respect to the required skills.
Prepare an approach to acquire the requisite skills. You can go for self-learning or join a training program.
Certification is important as it will help you in getting your resume shortlisted for interviews. We recommend IIBA ECBA Certification, the most reputed certification.
The course usually takes six weeks (around Twenty Four hrs) to complete. Be ready to spend 6-10 hours per week for self-study. This is needed to practice and prepare for certification
Once you finish the course and preparation for certification (target to finish it in 7-8 weeks), appear for the certification exam.
Modify and align your profile/resume in line with a Business Analyst resume.
Upload your resume on job websites.
Make sure to have a good dry run for the interviews. This will help you in cracking the desired interviews.
Make sure to adjust the timelines as you seem fit, but it is essential not to have long breaks in your endeavor as it will derail the whole process.

Useful Resources:

Here are some useful resources which will help you in your endeavour.

IIBA ECBA Certification – https://techcanvass.com/blogs/ecba-certification.aspx

Understanding the roles and responsibilities of a Business Analyst – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwjhwCDjQgo

Entry Level Business Analyst Resource Library – https://techcanvass.com/blogs/ECBA-Resource-library.aspx

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