IT Analysts and Analyst-Programmers

As an IT analyst or analyst-programmer, you solve real problems for businesses by designing and building software or computer systems. First, you talk to different people in the business - managers, team leaders, and the people who will actually use the system - to understand what they need. Then you plan a solution, whether that is new software, a change to existing systems, or a completely different approach.

If you are a programmer, you then write the code to build the solution, testing it carefully as you go. If you are an analyst, you work closely with programmers and other specialists to make sure the system is being built the way you planned. Either way, you keep talking to the people who will use it, making sure it will actually do what they need. You document your work so other people can understand it, and you fix any problems that come up. The job involves learning new programming languages and tools as technology changes.