Coaching or Mentoring Business Analysts

Suppose your boss, the business analyst manager, project manager, PMO director, or whoever, asks you to coach a group of business analysts, or to mentor an individual business analyst. What would you focus on? What would you consider to be the most important aspect to improve the business analysts you are culturing or mentoring?

Of course; a lot would depend on the experience level of the people your coaching or mentoring. One might assume that you might be mentoring a less experienced business analyst, perhaps a person who is new to the profession, and providing coaching services to business analysts who are somewhat experienced. After all, even the most experienced of us can benefit by coaching, even if the coach is less experienced. But that would be a topic for another blog later

The question here is what areas of the entire business analysis spectrum would you choose to begin your coaching with?

Obviously; most of us would start a coaching or mentoring initiative, as I have in the past, by asking the coach cheese or protégés where they would like help, or where they feel they are the weakest in their skills. Clearly focusing on what they need first and foremost would likely get the best bang for the buck, the most improvement for the leased time invested. But then there is the issue that the area that they request help in is also an area that you need help in. For example, if they are running into issues with basic data modeling since they are getting into some data analysis projects, and you don't know how to spell ERM, entity relationship modeling much less have ever done it, your coaching would not be exceptionally effective. But a request for something specifically technical like data modeling, probably is best handled with a formal training session by an expert in the field, or one of those online on-demand training sessions.

If the business analysts requiring coaching need the coaching in elicitation techniques and how to ask the right questions, and you break out in hives whenever you are forced into a situation where you must ask questions and get answers, your coaching might not be effective.

But it certainly is good to know that up front. So you don't waste your time coaching them on writing user stories when they don't know how to gather the information to write these stories the first place.

Bring us back to the original question if you were to be given this assignment, along with a general instruction to coach them on "everything business analysis". What would be the first area of business analysis that you would provide coaching in?

Think about it it's a good thought exercise to put the tasks and activities of a business analyst into perspective.