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The Journey

From spreadsheets to production AI.

Not a career pivot. A compounding of the same skill, applied to a harder problem.

I was an accountant who couldn't stop asking why the systems didn't talk to each other.

The ERP that didn't sync to the GL. The reconciliation that took 3 days because two teams used different keys for the same entity. The meeting where no one could answer a simple cash-flow question because the data lived in 4 places.

The insight wasn't technical. It was structural. The systems had no shared language. Requirements documents were about giving them one.

Requirements documents were my superpower. I just didn't know it yet.

A BA decomposes ambiguity into structure. Defines what "done" looks like before a line of code is written. Maps data flows, exception paths, edge cases. Translates between what a business needs and what a system can do.

When large language models arrived, the gap they needed filled was exactly this: clear input specification, defined output contracts, structured exception handling. The job title changed. The skill set didn't.

The first time an AI agent deployed code I wrote, I stayed up until 3am watching it.

Not watching it fail. Watching it work. Watching the deploy pipeline complete, the health checks pass, the Telegram notification arrive. A system that I had specified, the same way I would specify a business requirement, running in production without me touching it again.

That was the turn. Not a skill I had to acquire — a context where the skill finally fit.

The BA skillset IS the advantage.

They said you can't build production AI systems without a CS degree. This site is my response.

Not a defense. A demonstration. The ten pages you've just read aren't a portfolio in the traditional sense — they are a working argument. Each one is a system in production. Each one was specified before it was built.

The degree they meant was a proxy for structured thinking. I have that. I got it from five years of requirements documents, process maps, and stakeholder workshops.

Don't take my word for it.

timschuster.dev

Built from scratch. Specified first.

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