Introduction to Business Analysis

The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) Guide is an internationally recognized professional standard that summarizes the experience of leading business analysts working across various domains and projects around the world. It describes 30 major tasks of business analysis, along with 50 techniques that are used for solving these tasks. This book does not provide any “academic” theories; it contains only real practices that have been collected from real BA practitioners all around the world. In fact, BABOK Guide is a professional standard for Business analysts, and it can be used for:

• Business analysts’ assessment and self-assessment,
• Creating BA role description for a company or a project,
• Creating an analytical part of a project plan,
• Improving the professional level of Business analysts, etc.

The major challenge with self-studying the BABOK is that it just describes typical tasks of business analysis but does not explain when and how one should perform these tasks. It assumes that business analysts should be able to answer these questions on their own, based on their personal experience and the specifics of a particular project. Besides that, the BABOK Guide is rather a reference book than a manual, and therefore, it is sometimes difficult for readers to relate the BABOK content to their daily practice.

The purpose of this course is to overcome that gap. Studying key concepts of business analysis and reviewing the content of the BABOK Guide is accompanied by detailed explanations based on real-life examples from both the instructor’s personal experience and global practice. Students will get involved in discussions of the applicability of various aspects of business analysis to real-life situations, and this helps them to improve their understanding of BABOK content and to structure their experience.

Besides, various issues of preparing for IIBA certifications will be briefly discussed within this course:

• Requirements for the applicants,
• Preparation for the exam,
• Examination process, and so on.

This course provides professional development hours (PD hours) for further IIBA certification.

The course's primary objectives are the following:

• Understand the essence of the business analyst profession;
• Learn the terminology used in business analysis;
• Develop the skill of applying correct terms appropriately.

The course will also facilitate the completion of certification through a better understanding of the BABOK Guide 3.0 content, certification requirements, and methods of preparation.

This course covers the following topics: