Day in the life of a lead Pega analyst

Find out what it’s like to work as a lead Pega analyst in the Australian Public Service.

An APS member shares their thoughts on what it is like to be a lead Pega analyst.

The job of lead Pega analyst is to lead project discovery phases to establish the scope, challenges and opportunities for a proposed Pega solution. I provide expert advice on the application of native Pega capabilities to a wide range of business situations. The systems that I support and develop help to enforce the country's various quarantine, customs, and immigration and finance laws.

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I leverage various analysis and facilitation techniques such as user journey mapping and perform sizing and effort estimation of Pega solutions to meet a given business need. 

I facilitate elaboration sessions with stakeholders to understand the business goals, needs, pain points, expectations and detailed business requirements. 

I often act as the pseudo-product owner, dealing with backlogs, prioritising work efforts, and being a strong advocate for the customer in design discussions where a dedicated product owner cannot be engaged from the business. 

I seek and propose process improvement opportunities that will facilitate use of the Pega technology to solve business problems. 

I work in an agile way to describe the business requirements in the form of user stories, with detailed acceptance criteria. 

I collaborate with technical leads, enterprise architects and business stakeholders to ensure strong alignment of purpose and make sure we efficiently deliver the project goals. 

I participate in senior business forums/working groups relating to and advocating for the use of the Pega platform within the department. 

I also coach, mentor and enable junior business analysts, to ensure they adhere to best practices, and I continually refine and improve those practices to ensure optimal outcomes. 

From prototype to working software 

The Pega platform allows us to quickly turn stakeholder visions into working software that make peoples’ jobs easier. 

The speed at which you can go from an idea to a prototype to a working solution with the Pega platform and supporting methodologies is great. 

I extend myself to learn as much as I can about the platform so that I am well equipped to propose innovative solutions for business problems exploiting the strengths of the Pega platform. 

I derive a great deal of satisfaction in ‘converting the detractors’. For example, those who’ve become cynical of IT ‘delivering the goods’ or have a strong bias towards another solution. I have always found that these types of stakeholders are worth a bit of extra effort as they often become your strongest advocates in the long run. 

Establishing strong credibility with business users through empathy and quick assimilation of unfamiliar and often complex business contexts is important. I have a strong drive to try to become a subject matter expert as quickly as possible and this tends to earn the respect of the business people who quickly see you becoming an ally and an advocate that can better see the day-to-day world through their eyes.

I’m inspired by peers and colleagues that bring diverse and interesting skills to the table and use these as role models for the areas where I can see an opportunity to grow and improve my own skills.

I like solving problems for clients that make a real difference to their daily lives. It’s nice to see users enjoying using new software after having endured years of cumbersome and archaic software or unsophisticated manual tools and processes to do their jobs (e.g. heavy reliance on Excel).

I try to avoid being a passive user of websites and software that I am exposed to. I try to be an active, critical observer reflecting upon about why I like or dislike a particular website, interaction or function. What makes it easy to use? How could I make use of this in Pega?

When we build, the needs and expectations of users are effectively and quickly translated in a way that allows these ideas to be realised in the applications.

The Pega platform allows for quick development of fully functional prototypes which provides a platform for much more effective collaboration and iterative refinement towards a final design. Having users review and critique a tangible working software product can greatly accelerate design discussions when compared to using descriptive words and design diagrams alone.

All views expressed are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily reflect the view of the department or agency.

Interested in becoming a lead Pega analyst?

Learn more about the skills, and how to upskill, to be a lead Pega Analyst on APS Career Pathfinder.