Case study: Meet Rory

Rory completed the business analysis diploma with Metadata Training last year. He managed to take some time to share his experience with us.

What made you decide to take the diploma?

“Well it was when I started at my company. I worked for consultancy so we can be put in different types of roles and there was an opportunity to join a project where, the role was a business analyst and I was keen to do that. I was actually lucky that I was surrounded by other business analysts who weren’t necessarily on the same project or the same client, but we all worked together in the same location and so therefore I had that support network to learn about what the role was really about. The problem with that is, you then become dependent on these people to give you time to learn about the role and understand it.

Whereas I thought and did a bit of research. I looked into what sort of qualifications existed around the role as a way of getting some formal training, to understand what the role is all about. I think lots of people can do the work and be a business analyst and have the skills and knowledge to do so but they won’t necessarily know what the best practices or the best way or approach to take when doing that analysis. Now, obviously every client is different and BAs will do things in their own ways and you can learn from them. But I wanted to understand the bigger picture, what people had recommended as the best way to approach certain situations and all the analytical work that needs to get done.

So, I found that the BCS was a potential pathway to follow. There are obviously other bodies out there that offer business analysis routes and pathways of progression but I just thought that the BCS one was a good choice. It made it really clear on how you could choose different modules and sort of, specialise in areas that interested you. So, I knew it would be a good thing to really learn the best practice and obviously you get some certifications on top of it as well to formalise my experience. So, it was a fairly easy decision and I wanted to build that toolbox of techniques to bring to certain projects and situations and have the confidence to use those, knowing that they’re industry-led and industry-recognised, as opposed to doing things how I think it should be done or how other people think it should be done, which might not necessarily be the best way it can be done.”

What were you doing before starting the training?

“I had a chance to get into a BA role where I was doing it with the help of other BAs. So, there were other more experienced senior BAs who’d done lots of BA work before, on the same project. So, I could learn from them and understand how to approach things and approach tasks. So this whole BA diploma gives people confidence, definitely for me, with how to approach things especially from a holistic point of view. The diploma forces you to do and to think wider than initial assumptions and not jump ahead.”

How do you think that studying for the diploma and achieving it has changed the way you approach your work?

“I think it’s provided me with a proper structured framework and essentially a process to follow whenever I’m doing my work. With my work I’m involved in different types of things. So I work across projects and they all sit at different stages of a typical project lifecycle. Sometimes, I’ll be doing like non-traditional BA work, but a lot of my work will be sort of classic BA work. But for any projects where I’ve been involved end to end, the diploma has been really useful for understanding where I sit within the wider project, understanding what a typical project lifecycle looks like, and then understanding where I’m involved and where I’m expected to be involved and where I could be involved.

It’s opened my eyes in terms of understanding, as BAs we could really be involved at pretty much any stage of the project life cycle, because we’re often involved in the weeds and the detail. Therefore we can be useful from an end to end project perspective, whether it’s right at the beginning where you’ve been chucked into a situation where you’re just doing some investigative work and understanding the situation. But then you might be working on that project all the way through to when it’s actually being implemented.”

What tips would you give to anyone thinking to study for the diploma? Would be your advice?

“It totally depends on their position but if they’re new to the role and they’ve got some people around them that they may be able to talk to, who might’ve done that diploma before or done like a similar certification, they should definitely talk to them to get some feedback and advice on it. If they don’t have other BAs to talk to, to understand the role and what the expectations are, then I’d recommend the diploma for sure. It’ll give them a good long-term view of what a BA actually does, what value they offer to organisations, where they sit and the type of work they can do, and they’ll also be able to match up with it.

If they’re thinking about it, there’s so much information in terms of what the BCS provide around the various modules – what they have to do and then the various optional ones. So they should look at those and explore those. They should think about the type of work that they might be getting involved in the future and if they want to go towards a more specialised route, then they might want to tailor their modules in the BCS pathway towards those opportunities.”

Were you scared of exams before you started and looking back now, how do you feel?

“I wasn’t too apprehensive based on the fact that I sort of enjoyed all the modules I’d done and I was pretty happy with the previous exams that I’d done. I guess the new part was the fact that it’s an oral exam. So all the previous exams were written exams but this was an oral one. I hadn’t really done that before for a long time. When you first look at it, it can be quite overwhelming. In reality, it’s a test of stuff you’ve actually already been examined on. I put in a few weekends worth of work beforehand to make sure that I was on top of things and I could revise everything again.

I guess I was uncertain in terms of, I wasn’t quite sure what kind of questions they’d ask or the format of those questions, how many I’d get and what the format of the exam is. I reached out to people that had done it before and got some advice. I got some information that helped me understand what kind of questions I was going to be asked, which gave me the confidence in doing it. If you don’t have a network or a support network around you, maybe with your company or with your client or whatever position you’re in, I would just say use something like LinkedIn. It’s easy to find people who might’ve been involved a bit or might know something. And if they don’t know, they can usually point you in the right direction.”

How has metadata helped you to get the BCS diploma?

“There’s like a big differentiation between the way that metadata delivered their courses relative to other providers that I used. I think it’s just little things like the trainers always have a decent amount of experience themselves, especially in business analysis. So they understand exactly the workings of the role and they’ve got a lot of experience that they can draw from. So that’s really useful when they’re trying to teach and explain things because it puts things into context. They’re also really good at understanding who’s on the course and what their own backgrounds are. So I’ve found that they often drew what they were trying to explain into the context of our own industries and backgrounds. So, that was a useful way of helping us understand things better as part of the syllabus and the way they teach is really engaging and interactive.

I love that you could speak to other BAs who are in completely different industries and work on different projects. So you’re not just learning from the trainer, you’re all also learning from each other; the different approaches that they take and techniques that they use.”

You didn’t do all the courses with us, what made you decide to change from them to us?

“Choosing your providers can be a minefield. The courses are the same but the providers are different and therefore, the format slightly differs across them all. So I found that there was a difference in terms of the quality of the training. I thought, well, if I’m going to continue, I’d like to at least make a better effort at finding out which are the better-rated providers based on people’s experience and feedback. I was chatting to people at my company who had done courses with metadata before and their feedback was always really, really good. I was thinking about that relative to the courses I did and I thought, okay, maybe I’ll give metadata a go. It was particularly good and that’s why I did the next one with metadata.”

If you wouldn’t have achieved the diploma, how would your working life have been different?

“I did the diploma over the past couple of years. It’s definitely helped me in terms of the progression of my role. At first, I focused on one project and then over time, I’ve now been able to focus on multiple projects at once. As I said earlier, they’re currently at different stages of the project change life cycle. So the diploma has helped me understand where I fit in across each project. It also provides you with techniques and tools to use where appropriate. So it’s definitely given me confidence. I’ve been able to progress, sort of ,into a senior consultant position. So,this all helped towards that.”

We wish Rory all the best in his career!

Find out more about the BA Diploma