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Professional success for any business analyst fully depends on his or her soft skills. This fact is hard to dispute about, because the whole activity is built on communications and negotiations in particular.

A business-analyst is a facilitator between the two worlds – technologies and business. He helps the business to outline problems and suggests solutions, ensuring their efficient integration.  In addition, a business analyst at the product company suggests the information system for business solutions.

Here are the TOP 5 Soft Skills for successful business analysis professional by Olesia Ulianova and IT GROW Center

Self-management

A Business-analysis specialist must be self-organized. Hundreds of time estimates, deadlines and meetings fill the planner so that it is important to be able to prioritize tasks, plan your time evaluate results. You also have to be able to manage risks, so that all of the estimated agreements be fulfilled.

Public speaking skills

As a business analysis, you will have to speak a lot. Public speaking while presenting your ideas to a group of unknown people must become a usual thing. It is always stressful, but you have to get used to it. You will have to master your argumentation skills, facial expressions, gestures so that your speech will have a positive impact on people.

Active listening

It mostly comes together with speaking, because the common truth is that the best speakers are good listeners as well. It is about your ability to catch the implicit meaning of a person’s words, and understanding not only what is said, but also what was meant.  The client cannot usually clearly express his or her wishes. A business analyst namely translates a common human language into a technical one, usually spoken by IT professionals. That is why active listening techniques will be a valuable skill. 

Business correspondence

You will have to write a lot, letters, reports, other types of texts. No matter that it will happen in the language, that it is not your native one. Master your writing skills in English, learn standard phrases, as well as train your ability to structuralize sentences and letters.

Thus, try to be clear, precise, accurate, and polite.

Finally, Management skills

As a business analyst, you will have to manage people. It will not be the same thing, as a team leader of business director does, for example. Anyway, organizing meetings, managing different information channels, organizing the client’s demands and ensuring that they are going to be fulfilled, these are key management skills for a business analyst.

All of these skills can be acquired or upgraded at the IT GROW training center. Stay with us, and you will become a highly demanded professional.

No, this is not another HBO movie. Our founder of the IT Grow Center, Olesia Ulianova,  has participated in the event “The Future of IT Outsourcing: what has changed and what needs to be prepared.” In the framework of which the participants were presented the educational programs of IT Business School in Kharkiv.

The atmosphere was unforgettable. Olesia Ulianova together with her colleagues-speakers discussed
• how important it is to master soft skills competencies;
• what skills and qualities need to be developed in order to successfully start their own business;
• why communication with the client should come first, etc.

After all, the deep knowledge of the industry is not a guarantee of professional success. First of all, you should pump up your soft skills in order to get a boost, to promote your business, to beat the competitors like an expert. And even if you are like a fish in water in your business, but you don’t know how to present yourself, find contact with people or conduct negotiations, then it’s unlikely that you will be able to keep afloat for a long time. These are the facts of life.

People with good communication skills have an impressive personality. Communication is a key to success. The IT Grow Center helps IT-people to master their ability to communicate with different personalities, present themselves, freely express the intentions, conduct negotiations and, of course, come to aimed agreements. So, if you want to master the communication skills, stay with the IT Grow Center.

It started from the workshop “Persuasion techniques and why do you fail?” 

We prepared the theoretical basis for the guys. Discussed such themes like:

• rules of persuasion
• communication in a dispute
• magical words which helps us to focus an attention of the interlocutor
• SCARF model

We were talking about methods and argument building techniques; their features and cases when we can use it. And then honed skills in a team play 😎. 

As a result participants found and adapted the plan of argumentation which they will use further. 

Persuasiveness it’s not the knowledge that is available only to the elite. This skill can be easily upgraded, and our workshops are the first step to this 👌

Every business is built on communications. The idea will be buried on paper forever unless you communicate it.  C-level managers and startup founders have to communicate every single day, with their teams, employees, current or potential partners. 

Especially startups have a lot on the plate, their key asset is enthusiasm, readiness to work hard, and ability to persuade people that their idea is worthy and promising.  

The ability to communicate efficiently is a key component of a person’s emotional intellect.  The Olesia Ulianova, founder of the IT Grow Center outlines the main reasons for every entrepreneur to improve his or her skill to communicate with people in different situations: negotiations, business conversation with a customer, or an informal talk with an employee.

3 reasons to improve your negotiation skills if you want to be a startup founder or a C-level manager.

You should learn to be a scanner

Scan yourself and the potential environment. Before the active stage of the negotiation, you have to analyze your own emotions and visualize expectancies. Do my emotions help me or hinder from being clear, accurate and courteous while talking? What can distract you from the chosen point, an how are you going to manage it?

Thinking about the negotiation strategy is the first key to success.  What would you do, if something goes wrong? Do you have a Plan B, if the A one fails? Set several goals, and what is important, define the minimum to be agreed during the conversation, so that the negotiation can be considered as successful. 

You should learn to be a  scout

After you understand your own expectations from the negotiation, it is time to analyze your potential counterpart. Internet is full of information about people, moreover, they upload many facts about themselves just spontaneously. Learn more about the person you are going to talk to, try to figure out his or her values, temperament. Once you know more, it would be easier to build a corresponding negotiation strategy beforehand.

At the active part of the negotiations do not hesitate to ask questions. 

Finally, you should be a driver

The key asset of a startup founder is his or her idea, dedication to it and desire to go the whole way. You should demonstrate these positive emotions to get the mirror effect and persuade the potential investor, that it is your rising business worth the support you are seeking.

Steer the negotiations, do not be steered. Take advantage, be proactive, try to be a person who suggests the solutions. Ask more than expected, and your further drawback will make the opponent more compliant.

Finally, it is important to remember that negotiation is a conversation with a potential partner, not a rival. You should try to find a common solution so that both counterparts can win from it.

Such a background will ensure your further cooperation, no matter at what stage, this one or sometime later.

Communication proficiency is one of the key aspects of personal development. The IT Grow Center helps IT-people to master their ability to communicate with different personalities, freely express their intentions, and come to aimed agreements.  So, if you want to master communication skills, stay with the IT Grow Center.

On September 12, Olesia Ulianova, the founder of IT Grow Center, will speak at the presentation of MBA programs from the business school “International Institute of Business”.

At the event you will learn about:

• portfolio of programs that the IIB implements;
• differences between the MBA programs and the courses included in their composition;
• the level of instructors’ expertise and the principles of the training group formation;
• how the application process goes.

And Olesia Ulianova will complete the presentation. From her own experience she will show how the completing an MBA program changes life and business, what difficulties you will encounter during the training, and what profit it will bring to you.

Get ready to spend time usefully and to choose a development path for the future 👨‍🎓.

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The new school year is already close, but we didn’t stop looking for new knowledge and experience. You don’t think that in summer our team rests, do you?

On August 21, we visited “Soft Skills in IT. Benefits or Harms?” from Data Art.

Speaker: Maxim Bastion, Head of DataArt’s R&D Center, Odessa and Chief Coordinator, Talent Management Program.

On a summer morning, we came up in the world for a reason, and we listened about skills from different specialists, exchanged opinions and insights.

Main thoughts:

• We remind you that soft skills provide you more than 80% success;
• Hard skills – the reason why you will be taken to a position, but you won’t get fast development without soft skills;
• Soft skills improve the ability to learn and grow quickly, which modern companies appreciate;
• Soft skills will help you achieve a result when you don’t understand or don’t see the entire volume of the task, or it is too much for you.

The relevance of developing soft skills lies on the surface. Do you want to become successful as soon as possible? Then don’t put off and come to our IT Grow Center. We’ll give you new skills and lots of cool practice, and you’ll give us passion and fighting spirit 🙂 See you soon!

Olesia Ulianova’s workshop series completed for the future Intetics mentors from IT GROW Center.

Training of Juniors is a difficult process and requires personal dedication and acquired mentoring skills.

Olesia assured, “In mentoring, it doesn’t matter at all who your new employee is, what his personal and professional qualities are. The only important thing is who you are in relation to him, and how you can build relationships with him and transfer knowledge to him.”

A mentor has responsibilities for a number of important tasks.

To build the training process for newcomers to the company, you need to go through the following steps:

– determine for yourself to what type of mentor you refer and what mentoring style suits you best;

– identify the personality type of Junior you will be working with.

– “listen” to a beginner using active listening skills, as well as determine how you will give a constructive feedback to a beginner;

– build task-setting algorithms and determine methods of dealing with resistance;

– based on the basic concepts of Conflict Management, develop an optimal line of behavior in case of conflict, but even better is to learn how to prevent it;

– finally, draw up a Career Development Plan and develop a learning strategy for Junior.

Training is built on trust and motivation to go towards your goals.

Mentoring workshops from IT GROW Center is an opportunity for new mentors to master the necessary skills, develop knowledge in real situations and become a real mentor for newcomers of the profession.

The success of any company depends not only on the knowledge and skills of employees, but also on their desire to carry out the assigned work.

An ideally thought out business development strategy is not an indicator of success. In order for the car to start and arrive at the destination, we need, first of all, the coordinated work of internal mechanisms. That is, a powerful tool for any leader should be an understanding of how to encourage employees to increase their contribution to achieving the goals of the enterprise.

But how to understand what encourages your subordinates to work for the result, what is the most effective incentive method? And what profits does the company receive from motivated employees?

It was these issues that the People Management training from IT Grow Center was dedicated to.

Olesia Ulianova, a founder of the IT GROW Center, talked about:

• tools and methods of classical motivational theories. Why some of them are already in the past and why it is necessary to master a new era of management 3.0;
• what is the difference between KPI vs OKR. Which of the methods for evaluating work efficiency is applicable in IT, how to use it, and, most importantly, why?
• bonus payments to employees and teams: when, to whom, for what and how to determine the criteria for a successful bonus system.

At the event, the myth that wage increase is a cure for all diseases was dispelled. After all, there is no universal method of motivation. People are different and their goals are also different. Yes, a material bonus can be effective only at the first stage, but after a while such earnings become common. And this is not enough to increase the efficiency of an employee.

Besides, as part of the training, the participants learned to dose praise and criticism towards an employee, depending on his personality type. And they also learned to build motivational cards that helped them consider the certain situation and understand what motivates each of them and what does not. But that is not all! After all, there is never much practice. The role-playing game “Creating Future Me”, facilitation and the tastiest one at last – the communication duel “Leader Behavior Strategy for Bonus Payment in the Team” awaited the participants.

Ukrainian IT business is growing right before your eyes. Every 10th company thinks about the transition from an outsourcing model to a productive model. More and more enthusiasts are slaving away at projects in coworking and garages, hoping to call their brainchild a startup someday. With the development of business, the competence level of its managers increases. They think more and more about managing not only personnel, but also individual business units, and managers, in their turn, are increasingly deciding on an MBA program. The theme is inspired by discussions at the MBA Road Show.

MBA is an education for adults, even rather mature ones. And it’s not about age. It is important to understand why you came for an MBA. There may be several reasons: someone wants to gain new competencies or deepen existing knowledge, someone feels that he/she has frozen and wants to break out of his comfort zone by starting something radically new.

So, 5 Reasons to Obtain an MBA

MBA is a way to deeply understand business processes.

Economic sciences are taught poorly in the technical specialties of universities, management are taught even worse.

You can catch up on MBA. When intuitive management no longer helps, and even participating in the company’s business processes does not give a complete picture of the business functioning, a person reaches his/her “glass ceiling”.

MBA is a quantum leap in the level of your overall professionalism.

Studying is not easy, only the motivated will come to the end. But the result is definitely worth the effort. This is the transformation of your expertise into a qualitatively new level. This is the formation of the desired level of abstraction when you see farther and deeper the processes that lie on the surface. You will become undeniably better and wiser than you were in the past.

MBA will help you climb the career ladder.

If a person comfortable writes code, undertakes a project architecture or analytics, and he does not see himself in managing a business, much less his own, he should do what he likes.

If he seriously thinks of going into management, or already manages teams, but he wants more, if on a next Friday evening he catches himself on the thought that it is high time to grow up, business management can become his trigger for change.

We will give you some statistics from open sources at the top 5 business schools that are based in Ukraine or have branches here.

71% of C-level graduates after receiving an MBA change their place of work.

36% of 71% of top managers realize successful transformations in their current or already new companies. So owners should be creative and flexible in order to motivate these people to stay with them as a team.

28% of top managers leave the position and open their own business.

MBA opens the door to the management of foreign companies.

Who is eager to work at Google, Apple, Microsoft? No, do not leave the country forever, but gain experience in the global giant, and then return and bring your experience to Ukraine. In such serious companies, first of all, engineers are hired. But if you are a manager with an engineering background, your chances of heading a large division of the company increase.

Finally, MBA is new contacts and communities.

Among those who reached the finals of a business administration course, there are no completely random people. Each of them has specific development goals. It is likely that soon they can become your business partners, especially now you speak the same language and use common terms. Business is built on professionalism and partly on relationships.

It is worth recalling that an MBA diploma in itself does not give anything. Unless you can decorate the wall. However, if you are ready to invest time and effort into study, to take everything that is given to you, to use the acquired knowledge in your work, if not all, but most of them, after the end of the MBA program you won´t recognize yourself.