Re: Business Analyst vs. Tech Writer

[Nauman <naumansohail -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I have been doing technical writing for almost two years professionaly for
two companies. Now that my role kept moving from technical writing to
information devleopment to business analysis. As stone of time kept rolling
on and on, I felt life being a business analyst is more interesting rather
just documenting user manuals etc etc... Communicating with clients,
eliciting requirements and its management seems more of a brain storming
than following stupid conventions where one can't freely be creative to
write for user assistance documentation.

So I also use the keywords of analys & design, OOAD, UML, RUP, etc for my
perspective position.

I have an honors degree in CS with total of 2.5 yrs experience and want to
being my career as a BA, how should i proceed?

*Nauman. *

On 3/13/07, Karen <ekarenski-techwrl -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> A lot of the positions on Dice fall under "Technical Writer".
>
> One thing I noticed when applying for Business Analyst positions is that a
> lot of them expected finance majors and didn't think that non-finance majors
> could do the job.
>
> I think it's more important to stress your past accomplishments in the job
> than the job title. I use the "Technical Writer/Business Analyst" title on
> my resume.
>
> James Barrow <vrfour -at- verizon -dot- net> wrote:
> Having been with my current employer as a tech writer for a few months I
> decided to update my resume so that I capture what I'm working on as I go.
> Unfortunately, I found that 6am is not the time to write cohesive
> sentences,
> so I checked Dice to get some ideas on how to phrase my job duties.
>
> I entered the following in separate keyword searches:
>
> Business process management
> Business rules
> Process analysis
> Process models
> Business activities
> UML process modeling
> Requirements gathering
> Documenting use cases
> RUP
>
> Each of these searches generated hundreds of hits...all for Analyst
> positions. 'Hmmm,' I mumbled with a mouthful of Pop-Tart, 'time to recheck
> my job description'. Sure enough, the keywords above are couched in
> sentences that appear to describe tech writer responsibilities. When I
> went
> back to my resume, I noticed that these same keywords appear in my job
> duties for my past six contracts. D'oh! Those companies got a tech writer
> *and* and analyst for the price of a tech writer!
>
> I've seen some list members describe these same roles and
> responsibilities,
> but...
>
> How often are tech writers responsible for driving the requirements
> gathering *and* documentation? How often are we tasked with designing
> formal
> software systems analysis and design methodologies? How often must we
> understand underlying business drivers and organization imperatives so
> that
> we ask the right questions to ensure the complete discovery of product
> features and requirements?
>
> I'm tempted to contact previous supervisors to see if I can add 'Analyst'
> to
> my job titles.
>
> - Jim
>
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