What are some recommended beginner books for someone planning to be a Business Analyst?

Question

My friend is a working as a Technical lead in a telecommunications company. He is very much interested in making a shift to the business side of software and is looking for good books for business analysts, but is clueless. Can you help me help him with this?

Thanks,
Naveen

PS: Someone forwarded this mail for some heads up and he liked it and he wants to know which book this is:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfvbzp68_5dzs743cf

If anybody knows which book this is, that would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Quick Google seems to suggest it's a course summary, rather than a book.

The thing about BA is that you can teach some general guidelines and good practice, but the skills are really created through experience experience and more experience. Most devs I know that have shifted that way have done so after being customer facing developers/architects in a number of market verticals over several years, so their ability to pickup domain information, languages etc is already a lot of the way there.

Answer 2

I'd suggest getting a Master's in Business Administration(MBA) or books recommended for MBAs. One could try to become a BA from the technical side by learning about business processes and how do some big systems, like ERP or CRM, work.