Kate was a Business Analyst for 12 years in an IT company in Greece.
They used to build B2B products. For several years, she had to switch from one project to another to do the same repetitive, boring tasks.
The Frustrations
Last year, she started thinking of changing her situation. So, for the first step, she wrote why she had had that bad feeling. This is the result:
Boring job: Doing the repetitive tasks as a Business Analyst has become boring.
I am always the fault: As I am the bridge between stakeholders and developers, any miscommunication, delay, or ambiguity becomes my fault.
Others don’t respect my work: I spend weeks analyzing requirements, writing acceptance criteria, and business rules. The team either ignores parts, implements them incorrectly, or asks questions that prove they never read my work.
My value is invisible: Developers get credit for the built features. Product Owners get credit for vision. My analysis work is invisible unless something goes wrong, then it's my fault.
No focus: I have to switch between multiple projects, multiple stakeholders, and multiple teams. I can never focus. Every interruption resets my analysis.
Constant chaos: Stakeholders change priorities, give conflicting feedback, or disappear for weeks. Then I’m left alone managing the chaos without any authority to resolve this ugly, repetitive situation.
Becoming replaceable: Tools for requirements generation, user story splitting, and acceptance criteria writing are getting better (including AI). Traditional BA documentation tasks are shrinking. I feel my core skills becoming commoditized, and I’m going to become replaceable.
I don’t feel belonging: I am always apart from the daily work of developers as I need to analyze requirements that will be implemented in the future, not today.
No career growth: It seems I have plateaued, and there is no career growth for me. It is enough to do the same thing for 12 years.
Kate was spending 80% of her time chasing people, fixing communication problems, and documenting things nobody read, and only 20% actually thinking about the business problem. She started thinking of a leadership role where she could guide the team to collaborate better and improve processes.
Making the tough decision
Two years ago, her company started adopting Scrum. Several Scrum Masters have been hired, and she witnessed how they worked. It appealed to her.
Recently, her company posted a job opportunity on LinkedIn to hire a few new Scrum Masters. So, she made a courageous decision and became an internal candidate to take over the new position.
Her company immediately accepted it as she had a competitive advantage. She knew the company culture for a long time.
So, Kate started investing in herself by learning Scrum to better serve her teams. She got two Scrum Teams to work with.
One of the former Scrum Masters guided her to join a PSM (Professional Scrum Master) class to build a strong mindset about the principles and rules of Scrum.
So, Kate joined a PSM class and realized how deep true Scrum is. She successfully passed the PSM I exam and got the certification.
In addition, she realized that there are higher levels of exams, PSM II and PSM III, which gave her a strong motivation to take that challenge and pass those advanced exams as well in the future. It gives meaning to her effort over time.
Kate's feelings after becoming a Scrum Master
She is literally happy now because of these reasons:
She successfully changed her career after 12 years of doing a repetitive job.
Her focus point is working with people to collaborate better as a team and improve processes.
Her work is considered valuable.
She feels she is part of the daily work of the team.
She can work to improve the overall processes where other Business Analysts are not seen as the point of fault anymore.
She has more focus as she is supposed to work with just two teams.
She is now in a position where she can purely focus on improving the team processes, not surrender to them.
She sees that coaching, facilitation, leading, impediment removal, conflict resolution, and process design are much harder to automate. The Scrum Master role feels more future-proof.
She has less stress, more visible impact, and the team loves her. She says:
"I wish I had had this job switch sooner."
In the first couple of months as a Scrum Master, she had a lot of challenges. But other Scrum Masters helped her a lot, and she was in contact with the trainer of the PSM class. She is happy that she had the support of those people helping her to have a confident and smooth job transition.
Are you in the same situation as Kate?!
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