Greg – I’m surprised too that nobody else has jumped in to trumpet the path towards the dark side. I’m still keeping my options open on that side and might be interviewing for a regional Technical Acct Mgr job (the description is essentially for an SE). And from what I can tell, SE jobs seem to pay more.

The weird thing right now is that I’m approaching each of these “filler” jobs like I’m registering for MBA classes. E.g. I’m only going to be doing this for a limited time (I HOPE), so what experiences will be the most useful for me when I return to the world of Product Management? I’m split over which would look better on my resume – that I took a year-long detour into an SE or a BA role. Something to think about.

Tyner Blain is much better than or as a name. Longer story, will tell you in person some time. Thanks for the Vonnegut props – much better mental image :).

Key skills for a good BA consultant?
I’ll start by saying “BA” is too broad – much like asking what the key skills are to be an engineer. You have to specify (mechanical, electrical, etc).

For a “real answer” I’ll defer to the IIBA and Kevin Brennan – they are putting in some standardization around role definition and required skills, ala PMI – and there is now a certification.

For a “what I’ve seen” answer, I’ll say that you’re spot on. Surprisingly, most of the (employee) BA’s I’ve worked with (as a consultant) are people who were immersed in the domain and “write well.” Most of them had very little training in requirements, etc, and relied on subject matter expertise and horsepower to be effective.

As a consultant, there are a bunch of “table stakes” skills that you have to have to succeed. I always refer to them as consulting 101 in aggregate. From the trivial (be early to meetings, always remember names, return calls quickly, meet the dress code (plus one level)) to the more significant – identify and navigate political waters on accounts, find champions/sponsors and support their biggest initiatives, be able to osmotically absorb a domain at warp speed, etc. Those are key to being a successful consultant, regardless of role (and I did about 5 years of ‘technical consulting’ – basically a developer who is on-site and focused on the customization part of COTS software).

The BA skills that have served me best fall into two buckets, strategic and tactical.

On the strategic front, it is making sure that the team is focusing on the right problems, and that the solutions have the desired ROI. That involves research, “math”, communication and expectation setting, stakeholder interviews, etc. A lot of IT projects are executed “inside out” and refocusing a team to be “outside in” has dramatically improved the value of projects I’ve been on.

On the tactical front, it comes down to choosing the right form to document things, choosing the right things to document, and writing / modeling really well. Finding the salient elements of a complicated domain and expressing them clearly usually involves a mix of spatial (diagrams) and linear (prose) documentation. Knowing the UML models (as tools) and understanding learning models (for selection of the right tool), learning data-visualization techniques (and why they work or not given a context), and the rules of writing requirements. I wrote those 3 years ago as part of doing this stuff, and while the writing might be a little dated, the concepts really hold true.

Scott – How the hell did you cook up the name “Tyner Blain”? It’s unusual – not like a porn star name, more like a character from a Vonnegut short story.

On a more topical note, give me your 2-cents about the key skills for a good BA consultant. I think some people might second-guess their qualifications because, as a PM, they didn’t use some of the formal methodologies that some BAs do – like Lean, Six Sigma, RUP, etc. My take is that just having common sense, good people-skills, and broad business experience (two things most PMs should have) are much more important. So, in honor of Saeed who hasn’t commented yet, please either violently agree or violently disagree with my assertion ;)

Lead gen used to = e-mail blasts and cold calls and may be frowned upon as one step above telemarketers and robocalls.

However, in the past year I have learned about and used
- Marketing / buyer personnas,
- How to mine contacts for THE guy who gives you the best chance at a deal,
- How to write and generate content (white papers, webinars etc.) that seem genuine (i.e. tech features alone don’t sell and the marketing BS radar is excellent on tech buyers these days).
- Search engine optimization (paid and organic) for your web site and content
- Creating and editing presentations, demos, and videos in Flash and other formats
- How to try to leverage Twitter, online communities etc. for B2B (still learning)

The best thing is, to be in Product Marketing for tech, you have to love to play with…technology!!!!

I was a Product Manager and really had to sell myself into my current Product Marketing position… but if any of the above sounds appealing, definitely add Product Marketing to your list (for tech companies – the techier the better)

Also don’t be discouraged in the switch. I was turned down for one Marketing position only to be called by a recruiter for the SAME position after I had found a job. Persistence pays.

But then again, if I had been more involved on the marketing/channel side of those partnerships, it might have been a higher-impact activity. In my heart of hearts, I doubt that too, though.

Again, your mileage may vary, but my experience with partnerships of like-sized companies in the same market is that both sides eagerly want to get each others’ leads. But after you compare notes, you find out that you already have the same resellers and maybe a few big customers who would be targets for cross-selling.

If you’re managing partnerships with companies in adjacent markets with lots of opportunities to cross-sell – awesome. Keep it up. People love you.

Why didn’t I have any of those types of partnerships? Because I was in a market where the major vendors offer product lines that cover comparable customer needs, however customers would often buy best-of-breed solutions instead of sticking with a single vendor. In that situation, you spend a lot of time in awkward meetings with your fiercest competitors as you share product tech with each other in order to meet customer needs.

That brings us to lead gen. Personally, I was never very involved with lead gen – I was always happy to leave that up to my marketing counterparts. But if I had done more lead gen work, I’m sure that would look really sweet to a lot of companies. After all, who doesn’t need more leads right now? Yet another role that’s directly in the revenue stream.

In summary:

a) leads convert to money
b) partners may provide leads that convert to money

I would choose the shorter path to the cash,.