I've been a business analyst in one form or another for over 20 years and truthfully find that each company I have worked in views this role differently. Some companies see this role as a number crunching role to prove or disproved statistics. Others see it as a type of project manager/customer support role. I have even seen this role become the replacement of the middle manager role in some companies. As others have said, the industry does matter but I'm happy to fill you in on what I have experienced. Before I go on, let me say that most of my experience has been centered in Information Technology focused in manufacturing and software development. I like to say that I translate human speak to geek speak to get users what they need to get the job done. To be good at my jobs over the years, I have found that a person must be inquisitive and be willing to undertake a lifetime of learning. Tools that have helped me over the years are as follows: 1. Because of my IT bent, I took the same class, Intro to programming, at the Junior college multiple times. I wanted to know about programming languages but I didn't want to be a programmer. This gave me the same class but in several different languages and taught me beginning web development, SQL, even Basic back in the day. This was important because programmers want to talk in their language and my ability to speak, even a little, in their language helped immensely. It also taught me more of what could and could not be done so that in meetings, I could guestimate what was feasible and not feasible. 2. Excel classes - My most recent example of this was two reports from two different departments and my bosses question - why were the reports not tying out. Source data from one report showed 7K records and the other had 5K. The users who brought this to my manager were panicked as they didn't want to spend days' doing the analysis. Instead they gave it to me. Using Excel, I was able to compare the raw data in less than 15 minutes to determine what data was missing from both and that led to the answer. Then came the hard part - explaining the why! Anything you can read on Sales and human behavior. Understanding what everyone is doing and why does you no good if you can't communicate. I often help programmers understand why something needs to be done while simultaneously explaining to users that the idea is great but that programming for one customer is fiscally irresponsible for the company UNLESS that customer is a major one. You have to be able to communicate and often SELL your ideas to those at every level of the organization. Curiosity - While this can't be taught in a class, always remember that knowing the why will help you. Never be afraid to push a button or ask a question. That said - always use a test environment if you can! There is an Institute of Business Analysis (https://www.iiba.org/business-analysis-certifications/iiba-certifications/) - something I have looked at but never explored. Good Luck in your quest!