Should the Business Analyst have a broader range of skills?

    What do I mean by broader? Broader than what? The answer: broader than the regular knowledge set, needed to develop your activity at an acceptable level.

    So... Should the Business Analyst have a broader range of skills? Probably the answer to this question totally depends on the knowledge level of the individual/professional who need to answer.

    Here is my answer, at different points of my career so far:

• 30 years ago: What is a Business Analyst?
• 20 years ago: Probably yes, based on my continuous interest of learning things.
• 10 years ago: I think yes, because things in IT are in a massive explosion. You need for sure to know more and more, on different areas of IT. Also, the business area seems to be more and more interesting for me. There is no need to know things at an expert level, but only to have  general knowledge.
• Now: Absolutely yes, for sure. No doubt!

    But somebody can ask me: Why do you think like this? Here is the answer: Due to a massive contact with thousands of people all over the world, different ages, genders, ​professions, religions, nationalities, needs, I came to the idea that best is to:

• be able to be a good listener;
• to have common subjects of conversations with them;
• develop relationships based on communication (see the communication rules);
• to understand their local specifics, personal lives and family specifics;
• to have an idea about their professional lives: Marketer, Salesman, Manager, Developer, Tester, Business Owner, Business Analyst, Psychologist, Physician, HR Professional, Artist, Writer and so on.

    As you can see, I mentioned people from both Biz, IT and other professions, because we, the Business Analysts, are in direct contact with all of them. So, my advice for any Business Analyst is to learn as much as possible, in order to be able to work better and closer with anybody, Biz and IT humans.

​Probably in ten years from now on I will add A.I. entities...