10 Soft Skills of IT Analyst
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1. Negotiation skills: This will be of value when facilitating
negotiations between IT and business users, you and IT regarding development
resources, and you and the business users trying to minimize project scope creep.
2. Active listening: This will be of great value when trying to
collect business requirements, provide quality internal client service, and
when gathering information for status reports.
3. Dealing with conflict: This will be of value when IT and users
disagree and/or when deadlines are being missed and tensions are running high.
4. Quality client service techniques: As a representative of the IT community,
providing quality client service to the business users you support is critical
to your job performance and career advancement.
5. Decision making: There are many formalized decision making
techniques, such as a decision matrix, that can help you make quality, business
appropriate, and defendable decisions that can help you to best service your
internal clients and maximize your job performance.
6. Problem solving: Like decision making, there are formalized
problem solving techniques, such as Five Whys and Brainstorming that can help
you discover a problem’s root cause and define potential solutions.
7. Strategic thinking: Very often a business analyst must think
outside-the-box to find innovative business solutions that meet their internal
client’s needs. An understanding of strategic thinking techniques can help
facilitate this process.
8. Technical writing: A key role of business analysis is the
creation of business requirement specifications and other forms of
documentation. Your ability to develop coherent, informative, and usable
documents is a requirement for professional success.
9. Presentation and public speaking: Don’t underestimate the value of creating and
delivering quality presentations on topics such as application designs, project
status, and business requirements. Generally speaking, the people listening to
your presentations are senior IT and business management people. Your ability
to impress them with your presentation could have a significant effect on your
career growth.
10. Team building: As a business analyst, you may be required to
lead formalized and/or ad hoc teams. Your ability to structure, coordination,
and lead these teams can not only make you more successful in your current
role, but position you for future IT senior positions.