The core skills of a BA — eliciting, analysing, documenting, communicating, validating — stay the same everywhere. But the context changes enormously from one industry to another, and a BA who understands their domain deeply is far more valuable than one who knows only generic technique.
What "domain" means
A domain is the area of business knowledge your work sits in. Two BAs might both write requirements, but one works in banking (and must understand interest, compliance, KYC) while the other works in healthcare (and must understand patient records, clinical workflows, privacy law). The technique is shared; the knowledge is not.
Common industries where BAs work
- Banking & financial services — heavy on regulation, compliance, risk, and precision. Requirements must be exact because errors have legal and financial consequences.
- Healthcare — clinical systems, patient safety, strict privacy rules. The cost of getting it wrong can be measured in patient harm, so validation is rigorous.
- Insurance — complex rules, policies, claims processing, actuarial logic. BAs spend a lot of time on decision rules and edge cases.
- Retail & e-commerce — fast-moving, customer-experience focused, high transaction volumes. Emphasis on user journeys and conversion.
- Telecom — large-scale systems, billing complexity, service provisioning.
- Manufacturing & supply chain — process-heavy, inventory, logistics, and integration between physical and digital systems.
- Government & public sector — policy-driven, accountability-heavy, with many stakeholders and strict documentation needs.
Why domain knowledge matters: a stakeholder in banking might say "we need to handle a charge-back." A BA with no domain knowledge has to stop and ask what that means, slowing everything down. A BA who knows the domain already understands the concept and can ask sharper questions — "within what window? Who initiates it? What evidence is required?"
BA specialisations by focus
Beyond industry, BAs also specialise by the kind of work they emphasise:
- Requirements-focused BA — deep on elicitation and documentation, producing BRDs and specifications.
- Process-focused BA — specialises in mapping and improving how work flows through an organisation.
- Data-focused BA — works with data models, reporting, and analytics requirements.
- Systems / technical BA — bridges closer to the technical team, comfortable with system design and integration.
- Agile BA / Product Owner-leaning — works inside delivery teams, writing user stories and managing a backlog.
If you are starting out: you do not need to pick a domain immediately. Build the core skills first. But as you gain experience, deepening your knowledge in one industry makes you noticeably more effective — and more employable — than staying a generalist forever.