Changing from Developer to Business Analyst is a good idea?

[Rogerio Kioshi]

Hello

I work as a Developer for a consulting group. The official position is System Analyst, but my activities are more related to development/programming using J2EE. Although I like programming, sometimes I think I should try to do something more related to Analysys itself, to develop my career. Several jobs opportunities (about 20) has been appeared for us, at the same company we are currently in, to work as Business Analysts. It is a big project (about 5 years), but it has nothing to do with programming in J2EE. The job will be more related to write the Requirements for the system and modeling (construct Entity Relationship Models, Use cases, etc). Besides they use Mainframe (Cobol, CICS, DB2).
I think it is good opportunity to practice my skills in Analysys, but I don't know whether is it worthy to forget all the investment I did studying Java/J2EE.
One good thing that I also see in this opportunity is that you have a guaranteed job for at least 5 years.
Is it a good idea?

[stephen gates]

I don't know about "guaranteed" but if your company has a position that is a most definite 5 year plan, why not learn it.

Keep your J2EE skills and everything else up to speed, but learning about the bigger picture is always a good thing. Just don't become one of those Analyst's who know how to play cards more than analyze.

[ravi janap]

I also ponder this question at times. I work as a developer doing mundane programming. I see no future or growth in the current job. Should I seek a BSA job or move to learn a new skill like SAP where I can make more money. I feel that working as a developer or a programmer doesn't command much respect in the IT industry.

[Kevin Thomas]

Just don't become one of those Analyst's who know how to play cards more than analyze.

This is an interesting comment. Because what I've found is most people bluff their way through IT. I've seen this especially in management with some pretending to understand what their developers are talking about. Then taking it back to their managers and trying to regergitate the buzz words. Eventually, it catches up with them.

Many times even developers bluff their way through by exaggerating their resume & learning on the job when all the time they convinced the interviewer that they know the technology well. Although, I believe the latter is many times required because technology changes so fast that one cannot possible know the in's & out's of such an abundance of technology at all times. I've also experienced the ones that lean on others constantly, but can't return any assistance in return, to keep their jobs.

The key to being a good technologist whether in management, development, or business systems analysis, is quick learning skills, not bluffing the whole way through.

[stephen gates]

I agree with what you say. You can't know everything there is and then some. A few years back there was no JSTL. Now there is. EJB's were a pain in the butt, but with EJB 3.0 things have gotten a little better. There are a billion open source projects, plug in's and software.

And when many billion dollar corporate businesses see more $$$$$$$$$ for their wallet's and bottom line if they use the latest and greatest open source technologies instead of having to purchase IDE's, software, plug-in's and so on, you are forced to adapt.

It's been better for the job market lately, but certain reports say it's going to decline slowly. Meaning Employers will have the upperhand again.

Right now the hot commodity is Ruby on Rails... But the reality is, most people aren't using Ruby for anything but cool "Web 2.0" social networking kind of sites. And many of those are start up's or side projects. But it's the new buzz word.


As far as the card remark, i've worked on enough projects as a consultant and contractor do get a feel that many business analysts are better at playing cards than doing anything else.

There are some very very good analysts, but from my experience, it seems many companies have programmers who are the programmer and the analyst while the Business Analyst is a good enough politician to where they get to play cards all day long. Not sure how that happens or for how long, but I've worked on a few projects where those BA's played cards 6 hours out of the day, went to lunch 1 hour out of the day and did something for 1 hour. And this was on a project for 18 months. It never changed. The few programmers were overworked while the analyst's plugged away making the same amount of money. For me, it didn't matter. I was a consultant. But for the few FTE at that company, it had to be a nightmare. Not enough resources and FT employees who for all intensive purposes, played cards all day.

[ravi janap]

Definately being a BSA is much more fetching than being a developer. A BSA goes on to become Sr IT Managers based on how good they are in their job and also based on how well they play their cards. They get to do all the fun things in an organization. A BSA can quickly analyze a system whereas a programmer spends days/weeks in figuring out the implementation details. A BSA job is definately more attractive than a programmer or a developer job.