Transition from Software Tester or QA to Business Analyst
Transition from Software Tester or QA to Business Analyst? – A Quality Analyst tends to focus on ensuring that the requirements or specifications have been implemented correctly by the system and this does not give a chance to learn about problem-solving. QA’s have migrated to this role are those who take advantage of their experience & hard work have acquired a deep understanding of the product/ application & have contributed towards product improvement by identifying usability issues while doing testing. The major difference is that QA gets defined scope on which they design test strategy and test plan, whereas Business Analyst has to define assumptions, validate and define the scope of work before actually to start gathering requirements.
To shift career successfully from QA to BA needs to work on the below:
- Improve Communication Skill both written and oral.
- Domain Knowledge or Knowledge of different product
- Job Shadowing with a BA
Apart from that, a Software Tester needs to explore the opportunities to make a move to Business Analyst Role:
- Should try to interact more directly with business stakeholders, by sitting in on requirements meetings or facilitating user acceptance testing. Learn how to elicit information and move from vagueness to clarity.
- Should try to tackle solutions to significant defects, which gives an opportunity to get ahead of the process and essentially be the business analyst on a project inside a project.
- Try to facilitating meetings to solve critical project problems in order to get a glimpse of a BA role.
There is a lot a QA can do to make a career shift to BA, push to his limit to be an active participant in all the meeting related to the project. Discuss the career shift with the Project Manager so that he/she can let you (QA) take active participation in a project. As QA is testing a product as per the client’s requirement, so this would help them to convert the Client requirement to a product of their need.
They need to upgrade to move to the new role of a BA in term of analytical thinking, conveying the message (Communication both Verbal and Written), take part in different types on meeting that happens during a project.
