The BABOK v2 and What It Means To Us (and You)

The New World of RSG

Sorry I have not been actively sending out Noiseletters lately. It is not, as many could easily assume based on the current economic reality, that we have gone out of business. Au contraire, mes amis (just to throw something in a foreign language to liven things up a bit). We are actually quite busy right now, as is proper for those whose primary responsibility is to help organizations save money by increasing the effective use of information technology. As a result, I have been taxed to keep up and the Noiseletter has unfortunately been neglected. As a result, I have decided to dedicate this first-of-2009-and-much-overdue issue of the not-quite-monthly Noiseletter to catch our readers up with a smorgasbord of items that might facilitate the achievement of your professional goals.

New, Revised Courses

We have just completed a major update of all of our courses. One of the factors driving this update was the release of version 2.0 of the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis)’s Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK). As an endorsed education provider with the IIBA, we feel it incumbent upon ourselves to structure our training topics with the guidelines provided by a dedicated body whose stated mission is "to develop and advance standards for the practice of business analysis and for the certification of its practitioners". As a result, we have restructured our courseware to align it very closely to the "Knowledge Areas" as defined by the IIBA. In particular, we have associated each of the topics we present in our training offers with the appropriate tasks and techniques in the BABOK. We feel that this alignment will help you find the appropriate topics for training based on the level of experience that you and your group have.

The IIBA and the BABOK

As a review (and for those of you who have never checked out the BABOK), the body of knowledge is grouped into six primary knowledge areas, beginning with 2 (1 is the introduction to the BABOK), to wit:

    2. Requirements Planning and Monitoring
    3. Requirements Management and Communication
    4. Enterprise Analysis
    5. Requirements Elicitation
    6. Requirements Analysis
    7. Solution Validation

Each knowledge area is supported by a set of tasks (what to do) and techniques (how you could do it). As you might suspect, some techniques are useful for more than one task, which implies that you should master those techniques in the earliest knowledge area in which you will be involved.

Knowledge Areas vs Skills Acquisition

It is interesting to point out that the knowledge areas are numbered roughly in the order in which they are applied to a project. In the process of becoming a business analyst, however, the sequence is sort of reversed. We would maintain that, as a general rule, the first activity the "apprentice" business analyst is assigned fits best into Knowledge Area 5 — Requirements Elicitation. That logic actually follows a time-honored — and therefore irrefutable — tradition in the world in which skills are acquired by doing. First off, you as an initiate have to learn how to do the "grunt work" (figuratively speaking, of course) associated with your chosen profession. Only when you have demonstrated that you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals of the profession can you be expected to be able to learn how to select the appropriate approach for a given situation. You have to build up a repertoire of different skills before you can appreciate that there are choices to be made. This process of extending your skills through training, reading, and doing continues until you yourself have achieved the exalted status of "gurudom" at which time you are expected to contribute your vast wisdom to expanding the body of knowledge — or until the profession determines that your brain has become too full to be useful and you should best be put down (figuratively speaking, of course).

Ergo, beginners have to first master topics that are closely related to Knowledge Areas 5, 6, and 7 while advanced practitioners can focus more on Knowledge Areas 2, 3, and 4. Some techniques are not as mainstream for each level but useful for certain situations nonetheless.

The Revised, BABOK-Based RSG Curriculum

Consequently, we have grouped our courses into 3 categories (Foundation, Advanced, and Extensions) based on the individual’s level of experience and how commonly the presented techniques are used. We trust this will help you determine which training experience will best meet your needs.

We have also created a self evaluation instrument to allow you to create a personal Roadmap to your CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional).  Since we recognize that your situation may require a customized exposure to topics, we have also made it easier than ever to pick and choose the hot topics for you or your group. You can select any set of topics from our curriculum and we will structure them along with any prerequisite topics to create a training experience tailored to your specific situation and needs. (ADVERTISEMENT: Call us and talk to Dan or Tom for more information on this exciting offer). A recommended curriculum for becoming the best business analyst you can be looks like this:

  Foundation
     CIL100   The Art and Science of Business System Analysis &mdash an Overview of the State-of-the-Practice (1 day — optional)
     CIL510   How to Elicit (Gather), Write, and Analyze Business Requirements (3 — 3.5 days)
     CIL520   How to Prepare and Facilitate Requirements Workshops (2 days)
     CIL610   How to Model, Analyze, and Improve Business Processes (2 — 2.5 days)
     CIL620   How to Model, Analyze, and Improve Business Data (2 — 2.5 days)
     CIL710   How to Test an Application using Business Requirements ( 2 — 3 days)

  Advanced
     CIL210   How to Plan and Monitor Business Analysis Project Activities (2 days)
     CIL310   How to Manage and Communicate Business Requirements (under construction) (2 days)

  Extensions (topics that you only need if your job description calls for them):
     CIL220   How to Estimate Early in a Project (1 day)
     CIL530   How to Initiate Requirements Gathering with User Stories (1 day)
     CIL540   How to Prepare and Facilitate Productive JAD(R) Sessions (3 days)
     CIL630   How to Define and Document Use Cases (1 day)

Because we realize that you learn best by doing, we also strongly recommend that you intersperse our world-class training classes with as much world-class execution of the techniques as you need to get comfortable in applying them in whatever situation they fit (implying that you will attempt to apply them to situations in which they do not fit, an equally valuable element of the learning process).

On Virtual Reality

For those of you for whom classroom training is impractical — whether because of your location, the size of your organization, or your time constraints — we also offer our classes in a virtual curriculum. We offer virtually (pun on purpose) all of the topics covered in our live instructor–led, classroom training also in virtual instructor–led, web-based workshops.

We do, however, also recognize that some skills cannot be effectively transferred without the face-to-face involvement of a qualified instructor. Based on our rather extensive experience in delivering training via the web, we have distilled every major topic that is suitable for that medium into sessions. To make it possible for folks to get the full benefit from our program, we are scheduling virtual workshops such that you can complete the equivalent of each of our live training offers within a 6–week timeframe.

Each suitable class that we offer for live instructor–led delivery is broken down into 1, 2, or 3 virtual workshops consisting of 1 or 2 sessions lasting 3.5 hours each. Check out our posted schedule on the left panel of this Noiseletter or visit our website at http://requirementssolutions.com/Business_Analysis_Training_Seminars.html for a complete schedule and to register for the workshops.

Tom Hathaway
Managing Partner
Requirements Solutions Group, LLC

Coming Soon to Your Inbox

Finally, rest assured that future issues of the Noiseletter will target topics as near and dear to your hearts as today’s topic is near and dear to ours. Now that we have our act back together, we can continue our stated mission to inform, to improve and to inspire all of the hard-working business and system analysts of the world. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your analysis!

Requirements Solutions Group, LLC.