Certifications for IT Business Analyst

New2ITinCali

My IT career has evolved from an IT help desk support role to now an IT Business Analyst role over the span of 6 years. I really enjoy working as an IT Business Analyst, and now I am looking to get certified. I work alongside a Project Manager (PMP), I work with SQL databases, I obtain requirements for I.T. projects from users, and determine what items will be needed to complete projects. What certification(s) would be most useful/beneficial for me?

DatabaseHead

Professional BA's generally go for this certification if they so choose so, but normally let them expire from what I have seen.  Not sure what that tells you about the certification, but it's the only one I am aware of worth anything.  

Generally learning the industry you'll be working in is far greater.  Energy, Healthcare, Telecom, etc....

This will generally lead to elevated position, rather than technical certs.  As long as you can deliver that is all that matters.  With that said keep learning technical pieces of your trade, database, APIs etc...   

https://www.iiba.org/certification/iiba-certifications/cbap/

yoba222

I was once a BA and often work with them now. From what I've seen, the cert requirement for a BA is bachelor's degree. Then as a BA, I've seen mostly the person stays working as a BA (maybe getting promoted to senior BA or whatever the role name is). Or, after 5 - 10 years pursues either a project manager or management role internally. There's that IIBA cert, but nobody will really care all that much whether or not you obtain it.

Most clients in my area aren't big on certs, at least in health care, education, and banking.

DatabaseHead

I can agree with what @yoba222 stated.  Here is what I have seen, I'll try to keep it brief.... Lifecycle starting from a BA.

BA to different position, role.  Such as finance, operations, supply chain etc....   This is mostly what I have seen their progression.  These folks generally are on the business side with business admin degrees with MBA's, but not much on the technical side.  Makes for a logical transition into finance etc...

BA to Developer.  Rare but happens from time to time, generally someone who has had previous experience and for whatever reason couldn't find a dev job.  Maybe their experience is in an older language etc....  Or maybe a bachelors in a computer science degree where they really learned a lot in software development.  

BA to Product Owner, this happens quite a bit from my perspective also known as a product manager.  This is heavily contingent on industry experience.  This super common, you have an employee who you love, but doesn't really fall into any speciality, why not give them more responsibility since you trust them?  

BA to Enterprise Architect.  I actually made this leap, and it wasn't for me.  I actually went BA - Business Intelligence, Data Architecture, Enterprise Architecture and trying like hell to get back in Business Intelligence or Data Architecture.....
It was so strategic I just couldn't work in that space.  Creating powerpoint presentations and trying to get them adopted into executive managements slide deck.  It's literally 50,000 ft in the area.  Always talking in concepts etc...   Pushing corporate culture, customer alignment etc....

BA to technical role which IMO sounds like you may like to swing into.  Generally I have seen these folks once again gain industry experience and forge relationships.  They get sick and tired of the requirements piece and performing luke warm database scripting....   Sometimes you see these folks get into report development, database programming such as ETL but this is a slippery slope with the transition of big data and real time analytics with IOT if you don't know Python or Java you are toast.  Everything is coming in on off the Kafka interface which manages all business events and while data warehouses aren't going away, budgets are being allocated more so to data lakes for data scientist and like I mentioned the real time architecture.  

All I can say is do what you like eventually it will pay off, I do believe that 100%.....  One way or another.

LordQarlyn

DatabaseHead said:

Professional BA's generally go for this certification if they so choose so, but normally let them expire from what I have seen.  Not sure what that tells you about the certification, but it's the only one I am aware of worth anything.  

Generally learning the industry you'll be working in is far greater.  Energy, Healthcare, Telecom, etc....

This will generally lead to elevated position, rather than technical certs.  As long as you can deliver that is all that matters.  With that said keep learning technical pieces of your trade, database, APIs etc...   

https://www.iiba.org/certification/iiba-certifications/cbap/

I agree with DatabaseHead, I've seen this requirement in many BA positions. Become an expert in your particular industry, know the trends, know the markets, know the players, know the tools. Be able to take all that and provide actionable reports to senior leadership. That will take you much further than certs.