Business Analyst - Career Questions

Query 1

Transition from programmer/tester to BA role

Recently i got a mail from member of Business Analyst community on orkut. He wanted to pursue his career in a Business Analyst role.

Roles and Responsibilities which he was performing

1. Gathering functional requirements.
2. Preparing Functional Specifications.
3. Initiate kickoff meeting to communicate requirement to the Development team.
4. Communicate with User to resolving requirement issue for Dev team.
5. Preparing Test Plan.
6. Processing change requests
7. Designing and/or reviewing test cases
8. Executing test scripts.
9. Signing off application after QA for Release.

He is a engineer
Queries:

1. What are the Things missing in my current roles and responsibilities, which I can work out to Excel in field of Business Analysis?
2. Are there any training programmes (Business Analysis/Financial Trainings) which can help me to achieve stated goal?

Could you please guide me to pursue my Career in BA?

Hopefully this should make clear most of your doubts(my ans)
1. You can be lucky if you have a MBA degree, however this doesn't stop BE's who are in this industry to move in to Business Analyst role.
2. People who wish to migrate from a development role need to posses the responsibilities as mentioned above excluding 8th point that is "Executing test scripts"
This reflects more like a Hardcore Testing person.
3. The only difference you can make here is by having domain knowledge which in general most of the developers or even Project manager don't have... so would suggest you guys to stick to a domain (like Banking, Insurance etc) get as many certifications on the same.
4. Even when you move to different project for anyother role then see to it that you don't loose out on domain. Stick to it and learn as much as you can.
5. Try to get in to this role in your existing company .. work for sometime on the project , try to get exposed to the responsibilities as mentioned above..
6. And most important thing ..when you thinking of shifting to another co. in a BA role. emphasize on the designation because Business Analyst designation carries a a lot of weightage

Please leave your queries on this blog/mail me .. will try my best to answer those.

Kindly ignore spelling mistakes (if found any)