Business Analysis in Practice Course (Level 2 – CCBA® Certification Preparation Course)

Don’t get left behind…

Business Analysis is a world recognised profession. Increasingly projects are coming under more and more scrutiny to ensure that quality requirements satisfy overall value, to both the customer and the business regardless of project methods.

What you gain from the course

Enrol for Business Analysis in Practice and you’ll gain:

• Hands-on, business ready expertise that you can immediately apply
• Comprehensive Business Analysis program materials and case studies

Overview

The spotlight is well and truly on designing solutions that deliver the most value to an organisation. Not only does a solution need to satisfy project objectives and stakeholder requirements, but it also needs to contribute to the realisation of business goals and organisational strategy.

The Business Analyst (BA) role is therefore critical as organisations rely on BAs to ensure delivered solutions are aligned with organisational strategy, and that implemented solutions realise their full value through the removal of any limiting factors related to organisational or technical factors.

Our Business Analysis in Practice course, provides practitioners with an in-depth opportunity to

develop and evaluate solution requirements that encompass organisational and environment factors such as business processes, systems and organisational culture.

Aligned with A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) V3, this course builds upon participants’ existing skills and knowledge by way of a guided tour through a series of real-life scenarios, problems and issues faced by Business Analysts today.

Course Objective

This course provides participants with a standardised and systematic approach for eliciting, analysing and managing business requirements that form the basis for successful solutions delivered to the organisation.

It uses a real-life case study approach to plan, manage and execute a detailed requirements development process, to successfully manage stakeholders, and to reduce organisational risk by understanding the impact of change across the business.

This course builds on information covered in our BA Fundamentals course. In BA Fundamentals, the focus is on understanding the role of the Business Analysts, key business analysis concepts and which common techniques can assist the BA in specific situations. The focus of BA in Practice is  to practically apply a range of techniques to common analysis activities.

Course Summary

Session 1: Setting the Scene

• Course objectives.
• Alignment of the course with IIBA® and the BABOK®
• The 4 levels of certification offered by the IIBA®.

Session 2: Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

• Overview of the Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring knowledge area
• Planning your approach – predictive (e.g. waterfall) versus adaptive (e.g. agile)
• Identifying and analysis stakeholders
• Planning for BA governance
• Planning BA information management
• Identifying BA performance improvements
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
  • Select the appropriate planning approach (predictive / adaptive) for a project
  • Create a context diagram to aid in stakeholder identification
  • Create personas to aid in stakeholder analysis
  • Document a change control process using a flowchart
  • Identifying appropriate BA performance measure and use item tracking to

regularly review performance

Session 3: Strategy Analysis

• Overview of the Strategy Analysis knowledge area
• Techniques used in Strategy Analysis:
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
• Create a business capability map
• Develop KPIs
• Use a mind map to identify key features for inclusion in the project
• Conduct a SWOT analysis
• Create and maintain a risk register

Session 4: Elicitation and Collaboration

• Overview of the Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge area
• Preparing for elicitation
• Conducting elicitation
• Confirming and communicating elicitation results
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
  • Use a functional decomposition diagram to help plan for an elicitation

workshop

• Select appropriate elicitation techniques

Session 5: Requirements Analysis and Design Definition

• Overview of the Requirements Analysis and Design Definition knowledge area
• Specifying requirements using boilerplates and user stories
• Verifying requirements using pre-defined quality characteristics and acceptance criteria
• Modelling requirements using a range of techniques such as process models (including value

stream maps and SIPOC analysis), data models and business rules analysis

• Defining design options, including consideration of improvement opportunities and

requirements allocation

• Recommending a solution based on potential value (based on financial analysis)
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
  • Write requirements (business, stakeholder, functional, non-functional)

aligned to the original business need / opportunity and features identified

• Create acceptance criteria for requirements

Verify requirements through a peer review session

• Develop a use case diagram and scenario to model requirements
• Create a flowchart to model a use case scenario
• Create a level 1 data flow diagram to model the flow of information
• Use a data model (entity relationship diagram) to define relationships

between entities identified in developed process models

• Use a data dictionary to define identified data objects
• Create a state model for a data object
• Document business rules to support a modelled process

Identify additional capabilities for inclusion in a design option

• Allocate requirements across solution components / releases

Session 6: Requirements Lifecycle Management

• Overview of the Requirements Lifecycle Management knowledge area
• Tracing requirements
• Maintaining and reusing requirements
• Prioritising requirements using a range of techniques including decision analysis, MoSCoW and kano analysis
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
  • Complete a traceability matrix
  • Use a decision table to help prioritise requirements
  • Conduct a MoSCoW prioritisation session
  • Conduct a kano analysis session

Session 7: Solution Evaluation

• Overview of the Solution Evaluation knowledge area
• Measuring solution performance using value attributes, qualitative and quantitative measures
• Analysing performance measures

Assessing solution and enterprise limitations (that limit the value an implemented solution

brings to an organisation) through root cause analysis

• Recommending actions to increase the value of an implemented solution
• Case study – Participants will have the opportunity to:
  • Conduct a root cause analysis session to identify potential solution limitations
  • Recommend actions to increase solution value based on identified limitations
  • Communicate your analysis results to stakeholders

Professional Certification

International Institute of Business Analysis^™ (IIBA^®) offers four formal certifications for professional Business Analysts:

This course is aligned to the BABOK^® Guide v3.0 knowledge areas and can assist in preparation for the CCBA^® Certification.

International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) is a non-profit organisation whose vision is to be the leading world-wide professional association that develops and maintains standards for the practice of Business Analysis, and for the certification of practitioners.

PM-Partners group is an Endorsed Education Provider of IIBA™.

Successful completion of this course will enable participants to:

• Define, recommend and apply knowledge for the purposes of guiding business analysis activities, managing output delivered by said activities, and managing stakeholder engagement. (Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring)
• Apply and recommend a means by which an organisation can effectively obtain goals and objectives though the identification of current state practices and defining future state practices, considering risk and overall change strategy. (Strategy Analysis)
• Define, recommend, apply and pragmatically prepare for, conduct, confirm, communicate and collaborate with stakeholders for the purposes of defining and designing requirements to meet a business need. (Elicitation and Collaboration)
• Apply and recommend a means by which requirements are to be modelled, verified, validated and supported in a pragmatic architecture that fosters design options and ultimately value in recommended solution options. (Requirements Analysis and Design Definition)
• Apply and recommend a course of action using appropriate tasks and techniques necessary to manage requirements from inception through to retirement. (Requirements Lifecycle Management)
• Recommend options to ensure that solutions delivered adhere to standards and realise the full potential – as dictated by the solution options recommended and deployed. (Solution Evaluation)
• Review and measure the effectiveness of deployed solutions to understand solution and enterprise limitations, which can then be used to recommend opportunities for increased efficiencies. (Solution Evaluation)

Prerequisites

• Minimum 1-2 years’ experience
  working in a Business Analysis
  environment- OR –
• Practicing Business Analysts who have attended the PM-Partners Business Analysis Fundamentals course or equivalent