Micro interview with David Tomov-Strock

1. Introduce yourself

My name is David Tomov-Strock and I am the Global Capability Lead for Business Analysis with Tietoevry Create. I am also a Senior Business Analyst at MentorMate , which is part of Tietoevry Create.

Considering the population decline in Bulgaria, I am somewhat of an anomaly because I’m an American who decided that Bulgaria was the perfect place to live after my first visit here over 10 years ago. My partner and I moved here in 2018 and have had no regrets about it. After spending a year and a half living in Sofia, we moved to a mountain village at the beginning of the COVID lockdowns.

Since moving to our village we have been growing our own food, raising chickens, and rescuing dogs. We now have six rescue dogs who alternately shower us with love and drive us crazy.

2. How did you become a business analyst?

I had a career in higher education administration in the US for 15 years. During that time, each new job I took had a little bit more in the way of business analysis duties, although I didn’t even know that business analyst was a career path for most of that time.

After moving to Bulgaria, I got a job at a software development company as a project manager. Because it was such a small company, I also did the work of BA, QA, and occasionally front end dev. I found that the work I enjoyed the most was business analysis. Combined with my desire to work remotely, I ended up applying for business analysis jobs, including at MentorMate, which ended up interviewing and hiring me.

Throughout my career, I’ve had many people who have influenced and guided me. However, I wouldn’t be in my current position without two people in particular.

Silviya Petrova took a chance on hiring an American (with all the bureaucracy and paperwork that goes with it) and then she nominated me and pushed me to become a Global Capability Lead. Between those two events, she never stopped sharing knowledge, giving advice, and allowing all business analysts the freedom to grow.

Elvis Baburov has been my champion since the day he became my manager. He gives me the freedom to experiment, but he also serves to challenge my decisions to make sure that I’m doing what’s best for me, my team, and the company.

The ability to experiment, grow, and develop are the qualities that keep me as a business analyst at MentorMate. I know that my voice can be heard, and I also know that we can be respectful when disagreeing with each other while still coming to a beneficial resolution. In short, team spirit and supportive culture are two of the best factors in employee retention.

?? The micro interview is part on the IIBA Bulgaria monthly newsletter.

3. Based on your experience so far, what advice would you give to someone entering the field of business analysis?

Be brave. Ask questions. Take action.

When starting out in the world of business analysis, the amount of knowledge and theory thrown at you is overwhelming. So much so that sometimes it seems easier to just run away. And that’s why my first bit of advice is

To be brave - take a deep breath and start ingesting the knowledge bit by bit. It takes time, but it eventually gets organized in your brain and makes sense.

To get to that organization in your brain, though, you have to ask lots of questions. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that the way I understand something is not necessarily the same way that you understand something. Until you start asking questions, you won’t know how others understand a concept or idea.

Finally, take action. You won’t always be right, but you can’t keep gathering knowledge and asking questions forever. At some point, you must decide that you have enough information to decide on a course of action.

4. What qualities should a good business analyst possess?

There are two key qualities that I preach to every BA – adaptability and leadership.

I have yet to find a method or technique that works for every person in every situation (if you have one, please tell me!). Instead of trying to force people into a single way of doing things, I find it more effective to adapt how I accomplish my tasks to the needs of the stakeholders and team members. Doing so means that a business analyst must be attuned to the needs of the people around them.

While keeping in mind the important distinction between leader and manager, I have found that projects succeed when BAs take on a leadership role within the project. As agents of communication, BAs should have good relationships with team members and stakeholders, which gives BAs the leverage to lead. We also have a unique point of view where we can see the big picture while also being able to delve into the small details.

5. If you could describe the perfect stakeholder in 3 words, how would you tell them?

Knowledgeable, communicative, honest.

6. Is there a skill that you successfully apply in your professional practice and personal life?

Not so much a skill, but rather a quality – I'm curious. I always want to know what’s going on around me, how I can do things better, and what I can learn. If I were to translate that into a skill, I suppose it would be research.

Performing high-quality research is critical to success both professionally and personally.

It could be as simple as finding the best dog food to meet dietary requirements, availability, and budget restrictions. Or it could be as complicated as researching the best way to plant my vegetable garden, taking into account the soil content, desired vegetables, climate requirements, irrigation methods, etc.

Professionally, conducting business research is such a foundational part of my job that I developed a research framework for it that I call DISCOVER. I’ve even written a blog post about it because I want others to understand the importance of business research.

7. Recommend a podcast, book, or blog that you follow.

There’s so much good content out there specifically for enhancing our business analysis skills, but I want to make a different type of recommendation. In our work as business analysts, we are so often confronted with different opinions and different ways of thinking or working. I used the word “confronted” on purpose here because, if we’re not prepared, it can really feel like a confrontation.

So, to prepare ourselves, I recommend reading books that challenge our ways of thinking. Doing so in the privacy of our own home and our own mind enables us to face these challenges in our work. To be a bit more specific, I’ll share three of my favorite authors who challenge me in different ways:

• Georgi Gospodinov challenges perceptions of reality and time and place
• Tom Robbins finds ways to turn the mundane into the absurd
• Elif Shafak seeks beauty in ugliness

8. Business Analyst or Product Owner or Product Manager?

If I had to choose from just those three, I would choose Business Analyst. I see the three on a product spectrum where we become more and more focused on product as we move toward product manager. As we get into product marketing, metrics, and so on, I start to lose interest.

I actually prefer a different spectrum – Business Analyst, Business Process Manager, Business Architect. On this spectrum we look toward the business as a whole and its structure. I don’t have the ego to say that I’ve mastered any of these three, but I feel comfortable with both business analysis and business process management. For the past year, I’ve been working on developing my knowledge and skills in business architecture, for which I hope to develop opportunities in my current role.

9. What is your prediction about the BA profession in five years?

Five or six years ago, I found it fairly easy to conduct good business analysis with minimal need for digging into technical details.

Now, I find that technical knowledge is more important for BAs than ever before.

So, in the next five years, especially as widely varied technologies such as AI, spatial computing, and embedded software evolve further, it will become even more important for us, as BAs, to develop our technical knowledge.