How many BA's and SA's, stripped of a core function called UX/UI and now new people called UX Designers. How many BAs/SA's see the good and the problematic in doing this?

Careers & Mentoring
#1

It kind of annoys me people calling themselves UX Designers, but that comes from 20 years of Dev work and knowing where the UX and UI design process is done in various project methodologies.

The other half of me thinks, well its often the easiest and its the most rewarding part of System Design done by BAs and SAs.

I see about 1/3 of BA roles are now being advertised as UX Design roles, I just hope the person has enough corporate navigation to be able to do roles that are not the UX Design job description :slight_smile:

My last role was a $30m .net based application in the utilities sector. I was hired as business analyst. But I ended up being Project manager, Business Analyst (which includes UX and UI design), Database Analyst (am use to this one, so I wrote business case to get $3m for an Oracle databse as the current database didnt meet my expectation from a human interaction perspective, and there is a lot of UX you can do with Oracle now, so that involved also creating a more UX focussed Database model/map), Technical support, UAT manager, Implementation Reviewer. So pretty much end to end.

Now I can see UX designers throwing their hands up saying “That wasnt in the job description”. The problem is you will get a reputation of a cant do rather than a can do person.

It will be interesting to see how UX “Designers” start to work with various parts of large scale builds, and even small ones. Especially BA’s as they are stepping on their toes. I have no issue if I was a BA working with a UX designer who came from a Dev background like Hawk, or a BA background or even Systems Analyst background, because I would feel comfortable they have the complete system in mind when making user based decisions. There are often reasons why you cant do what the BA wants and thats usually in UX design that push back will come from various technical stake holders.

#2

Hmmmm. I don’t think you meant that quite how it’s come across. If you did, this might not be the best place to raise it. :wink:

IMO it doesn’t matter what title you put on something. One person might call themselves a BA, another a UX designer. I’m not sure we should need rules around it.

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#3

I came to know about title ‘BA’ last night and I told my friend same that it doesn’t matter either title is ‘BA’ or ‘UX’. Their work is almost same but he wanted me to prove that in biggest companies. They hire those people who have title of ‘BA’ rather than ‘UX’. :man_facepalming:

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#4

Yes not quite what I meant Hawk lol.

The truth is though UX design is a function within the Business Analysts job in tradtional SDLC. My main worry is there is so much more that if a UX designer ends there the project is set up for for failure.

All UX people should have a grasp of the SDLC, whether its Waterfall, Rad, Agile or a mongrel of any.

I think the ideal in enterprise software is to advertise jobs like; BA with a UX focus and a complete working experience of the entire SDLC.

Of course if we are talking simply Web Pages, I dont see a BA being involved and this being able to be handled by a UX Designer.

#5

I didn’t know what a BA was until recently when someone described some of the work in my portfolio as BA. I had to smile politely and look it up later.

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#6

Well put it this way, a BA does 90% of a projects work, and they work within a software meothodology, waterfall, rapid, mutated agile (my fav). So there might be say 50 parts to builsding an application whether its web based or hard coded. of those 50 parts UX and UX design is 1 part.

So no you cant call yourself a BA and interlace UX with a BA. You have to have experience as a BA and understand software development and where that very small component call UX design fits in.

#7

Pretty much, you wont get hired just because you understand UX, because its such a little component.

You cant take pieces of any career and understand that piece and then all yourself the same name as the career. Slightly frustrating if you had to work with a BA who only new UX design, in fact Id report them to the CIO as an imposter.