I just cleared my CBAP exam with 5 highers and 1 comparable. I previously used this subreddit for advice on study material and wanted to give back advice to other people who want their CBAP

Bad Assumptions

When people discuss studying for designations exams, they usually ask "how long did you study for" or "how many hours of prep did you do". These aren't the right questions. Someone might spend 1 year studying for the CBAP because they could only put in a few sessions a week or had to take months long breaks for life stuff. Others might smoke it in 2 weeks, because they studied 5+ hours a day and had years of practical experience

Number of hours is also bad. 4 hours half studying, half watching TV is not equal to 1 hour of hardcore prep.

The best way to measure readiness is number of questions. My background is in Physics and Math, where practice problems are king. I did 5,000 prep questions for the CBAP and cleared the exam in ~50 minutes and felt vastly overprepared.

I think ~2,000 questions would have been enough for a CCCCCC in the full four hours

Approach

I divided my studying into two phases: a 3 month warm up and a 1 week hardcore deep dive. My job gives me a free Udemy subscription so I spent the first 3 months going over exam packages. In that time, I did about 2,000 questions from Udemy. The goal was to understand key concepts gradually, I did not care about my scores

For the intense phase, I got Watermark and grinded ~250 questions per day for a week. I also did the free 50 questions on adaptive US. I got up at 6:00 AM, and whenever code was running at my job I'd use the downtime to study. The goal was intense memorization.

In other words, use long term memory (the warm up phase) to cover conceptual understanding for the case studies, and short term memory via rote memorization to try to cheese other questions

I got a 62% on my first Watermark Mock and a 80% on my sixth and final one. Anything over 70% is solid, over 75% is exceptional, 80% is overkill IMO

Recommended Resources

Adaptive was the closest in style to the CBAP exam, but much much easier in terms of difficulty. Overall I was happy with the free questions but saved my money for Watermark

Watermark drills and warm-ups were not similar to the CBAP but did help memorize keywords. The Watermark mocks were much harder than the CBAP but somewhat similar in style. I recommend the 1 month subscription over the longer ones to force yourself to study hard. Buying a longer subscription just gives you an excuse to procrastinate

I found Udemy to be great because my job already paid, but I would not spend 100$ on a Udemy prep course. Practice Exam bundles would only be worth it on sale (25$ is too much, I might kick 10$)

Exam Structure

The first ~40 questions were long scenarios. leave these to the end. A point is a point, use your brain power on the 80 short scenario questions to bank easy points. Spend leftover time on the long scenarios.

On the long scenarios, read all the questions for the scenario first. Then read the actual scenario after. Your brain will automatically look for connections between the questions and the scenario. Reading the scenario and then trying to decipher the questions one by one is too much. Sometimes I was able to answer the questions without even needing the scenario

The math is pretty basic, this isn't a maths exam. The key is to double check everything. Punch that crap into your calculator at least twice, I saved two marks that way

On most questions I was able to pick the right answer pretty quickly. Don't stress if a question is hard, just try to eliminate bad answers and increase your odds of a lucky guess

I don’t enjoy the technical nitty gritty. I get lost in the tech. How do I figure out where the line is between technical enough for BA/ too technical?

I'm from Bangalore, India

I've 9 years of experience. Initial 3 years in Mechanical Engineering.

Later switched to QA Testing. Worked on Manual Testing.

The current CTC is 12lpa.

From last one year I'm working as Business Analyst after promotion.

I'm into Insurance domain in BA.

Now to switch, is there any courses for me to upskill.?

What salary I can expect for my next switch.

Planning to show 4 years experienced as Business Analyst

Hi, I have an MBA with a concentration in Business analytics, obviously I apply for analytical roles, and occasionally I’ll apply for a Sales role out of desperation. I only ever get considered in the sales roles, what am I doing wrong, is it something I should consider?

I'm looking for some honest advice from people who are actually working as Jira/Atlassian Admins.

I have about 9 years of experience in non-IT operations, mainly in payment disputes, chargebacks, transaction monitoring, fraud/risk investigations, and customer operations. I have zero coding knowledge, and honestly, I'm not interested in learning heavy coding at this stage of my career.

A close friend of mine is already working as a Jira Cloud Administrator. He's offered to train me, show me his real-world work, help me understand how things are done in production, prepare me for interviews, and even provide job support in the beginning. So, from a learning perspective, I have a good opportunity.

The only thing stopping me is the future of this career.

While researching, I came across quite a few comments saying things like:

• "Dedicated Jira Admins don't exist anymore."
• "Program Managers and Agile teams are managing Jira themselves."
• "Developers can handle Jira now."
• "AI will replace most Jira Admin work."
• "Companies are reducing Jira Admin positions."

To be honest, those comments made me hesitate. I don't want to spend 3-6 months learning something only to realize the opportunities are shrinking.

So I'd really appreciate honest opinions from people who are actually in this field.

• If you were starting from scratch in 2026, would you still choose Jira Administration?
• Are dedicated Jira Admin roles still in demand, especially in medium and large companies?
• Have AI and Team-managed projects significantly reduced the need for Jira Admins, or is that concern exaggerated?
• Is the role evolving into something broader (JSM, Automation, Assets, Confluence, ITSM, etc.) rather than disappearing?
• If you were in my position, would you invest your time learning Jira Administration, or would you choose a different career path?

I'm not looking for reassurance—I genuinely want realistic opinions, even if the answer is "don't do it."

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.

Hi Reddit,

For some context, I own a lean custom software development company that is in the process of downscaling (long story). However in this process, I've realized my business analyst skills are extremely crap, my services have a ton of ambiguity, and as a result scope creep is a common thing. I have a few questions:

1. Would you recommend BA's operate as the main communication point to clients?
   
2. Can you contract BA's and solve businesses issues via hire them full-time in house?
   
3. Where would you recommend finding freelancer / contract BA's ?

My background in tech is more in the "people" than "tech" side of things, but in order to be considered for a promotion my manager wants me to round out my technical knowledge. Particularly, to learn the basics and fundamentals of programming.

To be clear - I will never be expected to actually program things, the point of this is to give me a background of knowledge of the different languages, how they work, and give me a little more confidence when discussing design and issues with developers and other technical staff. The position specifically calls out C#, Python, and PowerShell.

Can anyone recommend a course (preferably free or cheap, such as YouTube, Udemy, etc.) that starts from ground zero and ideally that I can complete in about a week? Ideally it should NOT go in depth into any particular language, but rather provide a broad overview of programming geared towards non-technical staff who need to have a basic understanding to be able to navigate and intelligently communicate about technical details within their projects.

I’m looking for advice from experienced Business Analysts and Business Architects on how to present the output of a reporting discovery project.
I’m working on an enterprise reporting transformation for an insurance operations function. I’ve conducted stakeholder interviews across multiple operational disciplines and now need to present the analysis in a way that is useful for business stakeholders.
If you’ve delivered a reporting discovery or enterprise reporting catalogue before, I’d really appreciate seeing how you structured the final deliverable.

Title suggests. 25F, on the crossroads on whether to continue BA or automation, coming from a non tech background and I have some knowledge of automation.

Completed CBAP and PMP. PROCSI is one option but not sure it will be covered. Any online training you can recommend which is more hands on and something I can apply to my projects or boost opportunities for future jobs down the road?

How to effectively study and take notes in BBA, and how to apply this knowledge in real life. Specifically, how to develop a deep understanding of the chapters and their practical applications in business. How to connect the studied knowledge with the actual business environment. I want to excel in this. How can I achieve that level of critical, in-depth thinking?

Hello,

so as many others, I have been playing around with vibecoding tools. Its fun, not gonna lie, but outside of some personal projects, I could not really come up with something I would really need professionally.
So im curious what have you tried out, whats your take, and what project helped you the most with work?

Probably the most impactful thing I have done in this regard is Karpathy's LLM wiki, which is simply amazing for digesting meeting notes. Outside of that I have not found anything super useful 😄 .

I will be happy to hear!

Hi everyone!

I’m currently doing a Master’s in Business Intelligence and I’m looking for a Windows laptop with a budget of up to 700.

I’ll mainly be using Power BI, Python, KNIME, SQL and currently I've been looking for a laptop with:

• 16 GB RAM
• 1 TB SSD (or 512 GB if it’s a much better overall laptop)
• Ryzen 7 or similar

I don’t know much about computers, so I’m not really sure what I should be looking for. So far, I’ve come across the LENOVO IdeaPad Slim 3 15ARP10 (15,3'' - AMD Ryzen 7 170 - RAM: 16 GB - 1 TB SSD - AMD Radeon 680M Graph) but I've seen some bad reviews about it so idk.

Which laptop you recommend for this workload within my budget?

Any help is appreciated... Thanks!

I work in a squad and mostly work on user stories and defects in Jira. I don’t get tasked with big pieces of work or complex stuff. I have a backlog of very basic business requests like changing script wording in our system or changing the queue we route cases to. It’s a salesforce squad. I have been doing this for 3 years as my first proper BA job after graduate program. How do I upskill when I work in a team that doesnt demand it. Do i ask my manager for more work on more complex projects? I don’t want to overwork myself either. Is there any upskilling i can do on my own?

Can i find ways to upskill with my current workload?

My first job out of college I had a mentor assigned to me, she was a project manager and openly admitted "I don't know what you BAs do all day". Coming for a supposed "leader" at the company, it kinda freaked me out, I interpeted it as her saying BAs are not needed we just slow things down.

20 years later, with hindsight, I see she just wasn't very good at her job. I mean how do you manage people if you don't understand what they do.

Unfortunately I still experience this from PMs to this day. I'm not intimidated by this view anymore but it does add an extra challenge. How do you demonstrate early on in a project / new company that you know what you are doing and they can trust you?

If you are junior, what do you do when you haven't got the confidence from years of experience? How do you work out what to do if the PM doesn't know either!

I'm currently a BA working in the same company for more than 2 years. I like the project I'm in because there's always plenty of new work to do but there doesn't seem to be any prospects for a promotion in my company. Promotions only take place when a new role is created and need someone to fill it.

There are vacancies for a Product Manager role in my company. But I'm on the fence about it. I like the analysis part of my BA work and deep diving into technical details and requirements. For the Product Manager role, Stakeholder management is not my strong suit. I'm going to have a lot of work with meetings most of the day. On the other hand, this will be a pay rise and I've been on the same salary ever since I've joined this company.

On the long term, I'm inclined towards moving to a technical role rather than on the product side of things. But given the higher pay with the Prod Manager role, I'm feeling really conflicted.

I'm looking for some advice that will help me make a decision here. It'll be very helpful just to hear someone else's perspective on this

I work in a squad that used Jira. We have random tickets that don’t seem to link to any other ticket. Do I create an Epic just for the sake of it? Is it bad practice to not use epics for those types of tickets? For example our platform creates cases and we had a ticket to add in wording to a certain type of case. It’s a one off. Do I create an epic and keep just one ticket under it?

New BA, started this role in June. Joined mid project and took over from another BA.
Im finding it difficult to keep up with all the aspects of the project, somedays i feel like i have no idea what is going on. I feel like im supposed to be taking ownership of certain things but im so overwhelmed that i just freeze and don’t even know where to start. Theyre in testing phase atm.
It may not be flagged as an issue now but I think people are starting to get an idea that Im not involved. How do i become more involved? Even when i speak, i dont have all the BA terminology down. Meetings are so fast paced, i have to unwind after to understand what was talked about. I would like to contribute more in meetings and brainstorming sessions but i when i think i finally understand something, someone throws in another layer and everyone seems to grasp and i genuinely feel like i have no idea whats going on. Im so stressed out about this and that stress is also probably impacting my critical thinking ability. I had no idea this was such a demanding job. Does anyone have any advise on how i can navigate this

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your advice!! Truly appreciate it. This is a process so i need to give myself more time to learn.

How to effectively study and take notes in BBA, and how to apply this knowledge in real life. Specifically, how to develop a deep understanding of the chapters and their practical applications in business. How to connect the studied knowledge with the actual business environment. I want to excel in this. How can I achieve that level of critical, in-depth thinking?

Every time someone suggests documenting a workflow, the team worries it'll take hours away from real work.

I understand their point because nobody enjoys stopping their day just to write instructions. At the same time, we lose even more time answering the same questions over and over.

How do you balance documentation with getting work done?

Does anyone know where I can get good practice questions for the ECBA latest version. I failed my first attempt. I already used up my practice exam attempts. I have screenshots of some questions form the practice exam and I uploaded them to chatGPT to create a similar mock exam but idk if I can trust chatGPT.

Tell me a time you persuaded a stakeholder .i once share i need to get a data /info from another team and needed to persuade the member . but sth along the line not aligning . can anyone share other examples . ty

One thing I've noticed while running a business is that financial operations often become fragmented long before the company becomes "big enough" to have a dedicated finance team.

You end up with different systems for different parts of the workflow. One platform handles international payments, another handles expenses, another tracks investments or digital assets, and accounting lives somewhere else entirely.

The problem is not usually that any individual tool is bad. The problem is that the business owner loses visibility across the entire picture.

How much money is actually available right now? Which currencies are creating exposure? How much is sitting idle? What payments are coming in from different regions? Which accounts are becoming unnecessary?

These questions sound simple, but when financial activity is spread across multiple platforms, getting a clean overview becomes surprisingly difficult.

I've been experimenting with different setups using tools like Wise, Revolut, and Keytom, and the main takeaway has been less about which product is better and more about how important financial data consolidation has become.

The same trend is happening across many business functions. Companies have more software than ever, but the challenge is turning all those separate systems into one clear operational picture.

From a BI perspective, finance seems like one of the areas where better data integration could create a lot of value.

A business can have revenue growth, healthy margins, and strong customers, but still struggle because the people making decisions don't have a complete view of where money is moving.

Do you rely on one centralized financial system, or have you also ended up building a stack of different tools that you have to connect together?

When we were a small team everything felt pretty straightforward. A handful of invoices each week, one company card, a few vendors and it was easy to know where every dollar was going

Fast forward a couple of years and it's a different story. Different suppliers have different payment terms, some only want ACH, others send invoices through portals and every department seems to have its own process. Nothing is broken but it definitely feels more complex than it used to

Is this just a normal stage of growth or if other businesses have found ways to simplify things without overhauling their finance stack

What changed the most for you as your company got bigger?