The 30-day business analyst challenge (free Notion template)
Business analysis is the most accessible way into data work, and the easiest to prove with artifacts: requirements docs, KPI dashboards, business cases. This 30-day challenge builds three of them, with a free Notion template to keep you on track.
Business analyst is the data role people overlook because it does not sound technical enough, and then discover it is the one hiring everywhere. It is also uniquely provable: unlike "communication skills", a requirements doc, a KPI dashboard and a costed business case are artifacts you can put in a portfolio. This challenge builds three of them in 30 days.
This is the Business Analyst track of our free 30 Days of Data Notion template: one focused session a day, and a published portfolio by day 29. If you want to know what the job actually feels like first, read a day in the life of a business analyst.
Why BA is the smartest 30-day bet
The BA path has the gentlest technical ramp of the four data careers, which makes it the most realistic 30-day challenge if you are starting from a business, operations or project background. You are not learning to engineer systems; you are learning to speak data fluently enough to bridge business and technical teams.
The 30-day plan
- Days 1-3
Free SQL intro course
About an hour of SQL fundamentals with exercises, built for reporting rather than engineering. Free on D8A, or use SQLBolt if you prefer fully solo.
- Days 4-10
SQL for business reporting
Write the KPI queries a business actually asks for: revenue by segment, trends, top performers, and turn them into a short business report. Solo alternative: Kaggle's Superstore sales dataset.
- Days 11-18
Excel and Power Query data modeling
The daily tools of most BA jobs, used properly: Power Query transformations and a clean data model instead of copy-paste spreadsheets. Solo alternative: Microsoft's Financial Sample workbook.
- Day 19
Portfolio v1 goes live
Both projects online with their stories: what the business needed, what you did, what it showed.
- Days 22-26
Requirements and process modeling
The core BA craft: a BRD and BPMN process diagrams for a real product. Solo alternative: pick an app you use daily and document it in draw.io. This is the artifact that makes interviewers lean in, because almost no junior candidate has one. If the discipline is new to you, start with what is a data requirement.
- Days 27-30
Polish, publish, share
Recruiter test, publish on day 29, share with #30DaysOfData, retro on day 30.
Guided or solo
Each project in the template offers two routes. Guided on D8A Academy: dataset and brief provided, GitHub validation, a portfolio page that assembles itself. Solo: the free alternatives above, scoped by you. The guided route mainly buys you one thing that matters enormously at the start: a clear definition of done. Interviewing soon and short on talking points? The stakeholder interview questions piece pairs well with project 3.
Day 0 takes ten minutes: pick BA, pick your mode, filter the library, block your slot. Make today day 0.
