The BABOK Guide is an internationally recognized standard for the practice of business analysis. It summarizes the experience of leading business analysts around the world and describes 30 major tasks of business analysis, along with 50 techniques that are commonly used for solving these tasks.
The major challenge with self-studying the BABOK Guide is that, while describing typical tasks of business analysis, it does not explain when and how one should perform these tasks. It assumes that business analysts shall be able to answer these questions on their own, based on their personal experience and specifics of a particular project. Besides that, the BABOK Guide provides very few examples that might help analysts relate the theoretical knowledge to their daily practice.
There is one more challenge in business analysis activities. It is necessary to understand how the customer’s business works, what really prevents the customer from working perfectly, and how these obstacles can be eliminated. To do this, a business analyst should process a lot of information from a variety of sources, separate relevant data, and ultimately convey possible solutions to the customer. If some of these are not performed properly, the customer will not obtain any value, and the project will be a failure. The purpose of this course is to overcome that challenge.
A systematic explanation of tasks related to eliciting business analysis information and collaborating with stakeholders is accompanied by detailed elucidation based on real-life examples from both the instructor’s personal experience and world practice. The students will perform training exercises that help consolidate their understanding. Besides that, within the course we will explore some examples of IIBA certification exam questions.