Tag: Career

Do you realize that relationships are BAs bread and butter?

Written by Tom Henricksen on March 30, 2022. Posted in Articles.

Working as a developer for over twenty years I have noticed developers lack social skills. Now I know you are shocked! You probably spilled your coffee when you read that.

As a Business Analyst, you may take your social skill prowess for granted. As Epictetus said, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” Let us revisit those skills now.

Re-Focus on Relationships

It can be helpful to review these skills periodically. We can fall into the trap of complacency. Use a few basic questions to evaluate your progress.

Who are my most important business relationships?
How am I investing in these relationships?
What value am I bringing to this relationship?

Similar to the agile retrospective we can have a relationship retrospective. Check-in with your most important people. See how things are.

Occasionally things can seem fine at the surface. Of course, when we dig in we find something different. Perhaps the relationship can be strained. The person may feel you are taking advantage of them.

Overlooked

My mother would often dispense wisdom when I was growing up. She was a teacher for many years. She shared this one once, “Secretaries make things happen.”

As a kid, many people would overlook the school secretary. Using my mother’s advice I made sure to stay on the good side of Mary.

Mary was our high school secretary. She could put in a good word for you in case you got in any trouble. That may have happened to me a few times. Mary was a life-saver!

Are there any professional relationships you are overlooking? Perhaps you need to patch things up with some of the testers. Team harmony is vittle to a smooth project.

Have a plan

A few years ago I was fortunate to work with a transformational leader. He led a technology team. John was his name. He saw the potential to change the way his team worked.

John brought me into his office. He said to me, “Tom technology people can be a bit transactional. They get asked to fix a problem and they do. Similar to the way a bank teller gets a check and deposits the check.”

“Yes, I see that, but how is that an issue?” I said to John.

“Bruce just visited our biggest center. He upgraded the two servers and got on the plane to go back home. A day later the community director called me and asked why he didn’t complete the upcoming maintenance patching. Bruce never spoke to him.”

“Tom I want my team to be more like financial planners. A financial planner builds relationships. Then they can anticipate needs. I want you to help change my team to think like financial planners.”

John then shared with me a plan on how we could transform his team. He outlined how each time his team members traveled they would talk to the community directors.

This would help them build relationships instead of just fixing the problem. John wanted his team to build in time to connect. Have a plan for relationships.

In summary, as Business Analysts we should not overlook the fundamental aspect of relationships. Don’t leave them to chance, have a plan. Keep them in focus as they are your bread and butter!

Tom Henricksen is a Technical Professional and Human Skill Enabler and you can contact him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhenricksen/

10 Sure Shot Ways to Prevent Failure in the ECBA Exam

Written by Ananya Pani on March 10, 2022. Posted in Articles.

With the adoption of digital transformation projects being one of the top goals for the companies, the demand for the business analysis career is booming. As a result, the demand for this profession is growing at a double-digit rate year on year.

Business analysts play a crucial role in facilitating digital transformation projects by designing systems aligned with business goals. They are also pivotal in implementing new business processes, removing inefficiencies from the existing processes, and reducing operational costs.

Due to the strategic nature of this role and the earnings involved, more and more professionals are considering transitioning to this role as their next career move.

A quick way of learning the techniques and skills for becoming a business analyst is to get an internationally recognized certification like ECBA.

ECBA provides a firm understanding and a solid foundation for a business analysis career. It is the entry-level certification from IIBA aimed at professionals stepping into the BA domain.

This certification allows professionals many opportunities for career growth and skill development.

The ECBA course was designed to keep the needs of entry-level BAs in mind. The focus areas are- requirements analysis, modeling, and requirements life cycle management, with a lot of emphasis on modeling concepts tools and is well structured. The certification is based on BABoK version 3.0 of the IIBA.

While getting certified is a rewarding experience, there are many who do not succeed despite investing time, effort, and commitment to prepare.

This blog talks about the top reasons people fail in their ECBA exam and recommends strategies that can help avoid the failure traps.

Memorizing BABoK

Answering questions on the ECBA requires a proper understanding of the concepts in BABoK. In addition, the application of the tasks and techniques needs to be understood clearly. Though retaining concepts from BABoK is helpful, it is not advisable to memorize and write them during the exam.

Not understanding BABoK terminologies

ECBA exam is knowledge-based. For answering correctly, you’ll need to be familiar with the terminologies. IIBA exams use terms from BABoK that your organization may not commonly use. Familiarize yourself with the terms and how they relate to the terms used by your organization. Your performance in the exam can be hampered if you cannot correlate the knowledge from BABoK. The exam is based on content from BABoK and not specific organizational practices.

A BABoK glossary can help explain the different terms.

Not understanding the purpose of each task and the roles of various stakeholders
Not understanding the tasks’ purpose and stakeholder roles could make it hard to clear the ECBA exam questions. Therefore, focus on understanding BABoK terminologies and concepts and understanding stakeholder roles and responsibilities rather than memorizing them.
Unsure of the strength, limitations, and application of techniques

Since ECBA is aimed at freshers and newbies, their knowledge of the BA terms and techniques is at times limited. Being unsure about the strengths and application of the techniques can be a limiting factor while writing the exam.

So, while preparing for the exam, it is imperative to understand the purpose and application of the techniques.

Also, remember advanced techniques like diagrams or those with extensive financial calculations are unlikely to come for the ECBA exam.

Giving equal priority to each Knowledge Area

To prepare effectively, one needs to be aware of the ECBA exam pattern and the weightage given to each knowledge area as per the exam blueprint.

Therefore, it is best to prepare by giving weightage to areas by looking at the exam blueprint.

Most questions are expected to be single-sentence questions. The best areas to focus on would be understanding the purpose of tasks and techniques, definitions of role and requirements characteristics, etc. Any other questions like diagrams and calculations, advanced modeling concepts, advanced techniques are unlikely to appear.

Not knowing clever ways of answering the questions

The ECBA exam has many questions that can confuse the exam taker due to the words used in the questions. Care should be taken while answering questions that typically include words like not, never, certainly, always, only, etc. There can also be trick questions asking for ‘missing items’ or ‘the least likely option.’

There might be answers containing words that sound like BABoK terms but are not from BABoK.

Read the questions and options clearly. Then, choose the option that has BABOK terminology. These are made-up terms to confuse the exam taker; beware of those.

Deal with questions smartly and carefully. Don’t rush through them distracted by time constraints.

Not having proper infrastructure for the exam

Just like any other exam, it can be stressful to write the ECBA certification exam, especially for those professionals who might not have appeared for an exam for years.

The easiest part is to have the infrastructure ready to avoid stress building up due to its lack.

It is important to go through the infrastructure checklist and ensure that the mandated documents and resources like ID card, camera, clean room and table, computer (having admin access), uninterrupted power supply, an empty room without unnecessary items like headphones, etc., to name a few, are all available at the time of the exam

In an already tense situation, unwanted stress due to infrastructural issues should be avoided. For example, last-minute delays in starting the exam can cause unnecessary stress and lead to the exam going beyond one’s control.

Here is a must-follow e-book for tips on Dos and Don’ts of the IIBA online exam.

Do’s & Don’ts of IIBA Online Exam

Poor time management

Another mistake first-timers make is spending too much time per question. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cases where people are unable to complete the exam due to a lack of time. The exam requires 50 multiple-choice questions need to be answered in one hour. So, one doesn’t have the luxury of time in completing the exam.

Time management is an absolute key parameter in acing the ECBA exam. Avoid taking breaks during the 1-hour exam as the clock does not stop for you.

Spending more time on one question

Some questions are more time-consuming than others. Be conscious of the time spent on each question. Divide your allotted time in such a way that you have about 10 minutes towards the end to review the answers. If a question takes more time, it’s wise to mark it for review, move on and get back to it later. Devise a time management strategy that best suits you and helps maximize your time during the exam.

Not having the right resources for preparation
ECBA exams, like other competitive exams, have a blueprint or pattern. Not doing enough actual exams like simulators and model questions will make it challenging to face the exam confidently. Proper preparation resources, practice tests, and ECBA exam simulators are needed to pass the exam.

The ECBA Certification Training Course will give you the resources necessary to prepare for certification. In addition, this will help you to determine the best study method for you. Grab a copy of our best-selling eBook- 200 IIBA Exam Mock Questions with IIBA Exam Info utilized by 1000s of BA professionals to ace their IIBA exam.

6 Tips to improve your professional worth and advance your BA career

Written by Ananya Pani on March 2, 2022. Posted in Articles.

The job of a business analyst is possibly one of the most diversified and can barely fit into a fixed set of tasks and responsibilities. While most business analysts have been turning around initiatives and solutions in their organization, many work with the sales and marketing team to make the products and solutions a winner in the market by bringing out features based on market needs.

Most business analysts play a key role in facilitating digital transformation projects in their organization by designing systems that align with business goals. They also play a pivotal role in implementing new business processes, removing inefficiencies from the existing processes, and reducing operational costs.

Due to the strategic nature of this role and the earnings involved, more and more professionals are considering joining this profession as well as transitioning to this role as their next career move.

As professionals, most of us aspire to grow in our careers and achieve higher success. As a BA, one is always at an added advantage to move up the career ladder to a leadership role since a BA is already working on strategic initiatives aligned to the business goals.

You can take your business analyst career path as far as you would like, progressing through management levels to a leadership position, inhibited only by your ambition to go up and belief in yourself.

Here are some tips to help you progress in your BA career and nurture some leadership skills that transform the way you work.

Stay ahead in your domain/industry
Develop your own goal and plan to make it a reality
Enhance your credentials and skills
Welcome new ideas and initiatives
Challenge assumptions
Make the goal a collective team mission

Leadership comes from the ability to lead and guide and the vision to stay ahead in the industry. One needs to be well aware of the trends in their industry and things that may be the trend of the future. This helps a leader spot opportunity and thereby get in there early to have an early mover advantage.

Stay ahead in your domain/industry

Apart from opportunities being well aware of the industry trends and norms lets one foresee the risks and challenges coming their way, and they can plan for the mitigation accordingly.

Develop your own goal and plan to make it a reality

As the saying goes, passion and dream can move mountains, the same way your dream and goal drive you to greater heights.

Having a dream alone is never enough until you make plans to make it a reality and start taking steps towards it.

You may be just starting your career or in the mid-career stage, but that shouldn’t stop you from having the dreams of reaching a top echelon in your career.

James Clear quotes in his famous book Atomic Habits:

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

And he clearly describes how all of us are made of our systems, which are made of our habits.

The purpose of setting goals is to win the game, and the purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.

A leader in making is the one who keeps playing the game instead of winning the game once.

So, it’s essential to keep making small progress towards your goal every day.

Enhance your credentials and skills

As the quote goes, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

The more you are skilled and aware of your domain, the more sought after you are and the quicker you ascend to the top.

An international certification not only gives you the credibility to establish yourself in the global market,

The paper doesn’t make you wiser, but studying the industry practices and techniques makes one more skilled and capable. That enhances confidence dramatically, helping professionals handle complex projects and initiatives. In addition, adding new skills to yourself allows you to transform yourself into a more capable and efficient leader who can assist the team in getting past any roadblocks they face.

If getting ahead in your career and staying ahead of the curve is your goal, you must keep upskilling and making learning a habit.

For a business analyst, gaining expertise in BA skills and techniques with an IIBA certification is undoubtedly a great value add. However, one must also consider skills and certifications applicable to their domain to stay updated in their domain.

IIBA has three levels of certifications depending on the years of BA experience the professional has.

ECBA Certification – For freshers/new grads or people starting their career in the business analysis field
CCBA Certification – Business Analysts or professionals with 2-3 years of BA experience.
CBAP Certification – Senior business analysts or professionals with 5+ years of BA experience.

Grab a copy of our best-selling eBook- 200 IIBA Exam Mock Questions with IIBA Exam Info utilized by 1000s of BA professionals to ace their IIBA exam.

Welcome new ideas and initiatives

To be a sought-after business leader, one needs to develop a growth mindset that welcomes and fosters new ideas. They actively encourage and seek out new ideas, opinions, feedback and analyze them with an open mind and without any bias. Seeking and exploring new ideas make one a creative problem solver and adept out-of-box thinker. That also makes one a popular leader because of the open-mindedness and ability to embrace different thinking and opinions.

Challenge assumptions

Assumptions are usually formed from our past experiences and due to the lack of an open mind.

Effective leadership embraces agility and openness to new thoughts and ideas. Whatever assumption one holds may not always be accurate for various reasons, and assumptions might also be due to the person’s prejudices and biases. Hence, questioning assumptions and hidden biases makes one open to new ways of thinking and, hence, innovative solutions.

Due to assumptions made in the discovery/ideation phase, projects/initiatives run into various roadblocks and undesired outcomes. Hence to avoid such situations, it is better to question each assumption and verify facts before diving into the build phase.

Make the goal a collective team mission

A dream/goal is better accomplished with collective efforts, and it takes a leader to bring together a team with varied skills and expertise to come and work towards one mission. A goal seems a much harder one with the thought of being taken up alone but a fun thing to do and achieve with a motivated team. A team comes with varied skills and ideas, which makes the goal achievable and a significant milestone towards pulling in a great team.

If you desire to ascend to the top-tier of your organization, prepare a road map and follow it meticulously. If you can master the required BA skills by following and honing them and having the business expertise to reach the top, the steps mentioned above will help you climb the corporate ladder and become an invaluable asset to your organization.

5 Characteristics of Effective Business Analysts

Written by Giorgos Sioutzos on December 2, 2021. Posted in Articles.

“Business Analyst” is not just a title. Is not a job. It is a mindset, a concept and a structured process executed by people in different positions inside an organization. It’s more like, an approach of making the things happen from the realization of business need towards the final implementation.

It’s easy to call yourself business analyst but difficult to be a good and effective business analyst. The field can be great fun, and very rewarding, but you need to be prepared. People who take on business analysis roles typically believe they need three things: skills and experience, a bit of marketing, and an interest in working in a variety of environments. However successful business analysts know they need much more than a technical expertise and specific skills. They need a mindset and a specific attitude in order to serve with the best possible and feasibly way their clients business needs.

What is expected from business analysts can vary widely. And what they actually need you to do can be completely different from what they expect. Business analysis is an exciting, dynamic form of work. You can have a positive impact on your clients and be well paid for your effort. But you have to be appropriately equipped.

To be an effective and successful business analysis you need to continuously develop some specific characteristics.

The first is technical depth. It’s critical that you have the technical background to satisfy your clients’ needs. This means you have experience in a variety of environments. The more breadth of experience you have in your technical area, the easier it will be to apply your skill as a business analyst.

Second, effective business analysts need to understand quickly and accurately what’s happening in their client’s environment. Your power of observation needs to be well tuned. Being able to listen carefully and patiently, observe the behavior of your clients, and make sense of what is happening is very important.

Third, effective business analyst care about the welfare of their client’s business and the clients themselves. You need to be able to put yourself in your client’s shoes and appreciate the difficulties they may be facing or have faced. While what you do may seem routine to you, it probably isn’t routine for your client. You need to appreciate that fact and behave accordingly.

Another important characteristic is emotional intelligence. Often clients will engage you because they’ve had substantial difficulties. They may have a skill shortage, or they may not be sure how to manage what you’ve been asked to deliver. All these conditions create stress. On top of that, you’ll be striving to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can, so you’ll be under stress as well. Dealing with all that requires personal emotional maturity and the ability to assess and deal with the emotional state of your client.

Also, you have to develop the observation and effective listening as a personal characteristic, make recommendations based on sound business judgment, and be patient. As trust builds, the direction your client provides will likely become more reasonable. Work out your contract. Understand your client’s needs and desires, and establish a good relationship with your contract manager, and you could put on your superhero costume to celebrate your success. Observation helps towards a really robust problem definition statement. So as you look at your problem-solving, and you’re getting ready to start pursuing that initial set of ideas, you need to go through that prioritization and pick the highest value one that’s going to have the biggest impact on your overall solution.

Business analysis is performed on a variety of initiatives within an enterprise. Initiatives may be strategic, tactical, or operational. Business analysis may be performed within the boundaries of a project or throughout enterprise evolution and continuous improvement. No matter their job title or organizational role business analysts are responsible for discovering, synthesizing, and analyzing information in order the best solutions to be derived and the clients’ needs to be accommodated in the best possible way.

Being strategic in your non-strategic business analysis role

Written by Paul Benn on November 17, 2021. Posted in Articles.

We typically see business analysts as a tactical resource – eliciting requirements, analysing solution alternatives, determining the best approach for testing, and implementing a solution, defining non-functional requirements, etc.

This largely comes down to how we as a profession have marketed our ourselves.

The more valuable business analyst operates strategically and thinks strategically.

I am not talking about strategic business analysis; I am talking about being strategic. Even if you are a junior business analyst.

Benefit to strategic thinking in a business analyst role:

You can add a lot more value to an employer when you think strategically.

For instance, working through a problem by viewing multiple elements of and making meaningful comparisons allows the business analyst to come up with various options, and solution approaches to the problem.

If you want to take your career and leadership to the next level, you need to develop strategic thinking.

You need to be great at solving problems. You need to influence and lead your stakeholders through your strategic ability to solve these complex problems. The world is changing fast and you need to lead that change while leading people with you.

What does it mean to be a strategic thinker in business analysis?

We have kind of answered it in the introduction above, but let’s look at it in more detail.

We can define strategy as “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim,” – Oxford Dictionary

We define thinking as “the process of considering or reasoning about something….. using thought or rational judgement; intelligent,” – Oxford Dictionary

We define Business Analysis as “Business Analysis is a disciplined approach for introducing and managing change to organisations, whether they are for-profit businesses, governments, or non-profits.” – IIBA

At the intersection of these three, I believe we find the purpose of strategic thinking in business analysis. Above, I have highlighted the keywords that I believe help us understand strategic thinking in business analysis.

A strategic business analyst “introduces change to an organisation through consideration of organisational problems and opportunities identified, apply intelligent reasoning and rational judgement to the information available, analysing different factors or variables, to help the organisation not only identify the change but also manage the change, through a plan of action to achieve a future aim.”

Having this holistic view of what makes up strategic thinking in a business analysis role also helps us have a strategic thinking framework in our work.

This graphic I developed, using the three definitions above, help us define some framework for strategic thinking.

Element 1: We apply reasoning to business analysis work to determine the current and future state. Identify the gaps between the two and determine the change strategy and how it needs to be managed.

This is represented by the Business Analyst and Thinking circles intersection.

How do we do this?

There are three things we can do here to apply reasoning and judgement

We use what we know about the organisation’s capabilities, resources, objectives, the environment within which the organisation operates, identify change and the impact of the change.
We use the knowledge we have, the understanding of the organisational capabilities, the environment and other relevant information to guide stakeholders with expert reasoning and judgement.
As business analysts, we can apply our judgement and reasoning to determine what that value is and maximise the value an organisation can get out of a change initiative. We help the business rationalise the reason for change, and that if it is worth the value to be gained.

Element 2: We apply reasoning to the strategy objectives (the intersection of the bottom circles)

If you think about the BABOK describes as defining the future state

“defines goals and objectives that will demonstrate that the business need has been satisfied and defines what parts of the enterprise need to change in order to meet those goals and objectives”

Thinking strategically is in your role is about applying your reasoning and judgement to the desired change and to identify what areas of the organisation are affected and how. Having a systems thinking that looks across all the following areas:

Business processes,
Functions within departments and systems,
Functional areas and the interdependencies between them,
Changes to the organisation structure,
Staff competencies and the training/reskilling required,
Knowledge and skills required in the organisation,
Resources needed,
Tools used within the organisation,
The current and future locations of the organisation,
Data and information – what data is required and what the flow is,
Application systems needed, or enhancements to current ones,
Technology infrastructure to host the systems.

Element 3: The last element that is found at the intersection of Business Analyst and the Strategy circles in the diagram.

The BABOK refers to identifying the transition states that address or ensure the change progresses. As a business analyst, we manage that change. This is not project management, but we certainly have a lot to do with helping to identify the things to manage the change in an orderly manner that adds value to the organisation.

The BABOK says that as business analysts we:

“enable the enterprise to address that need, and align the resulting strategy for the change with higher- and lower-level strategies,”

Managing the change, for me, is about ensuring that we have done all that is possible to not only identify the change, but how that change is going to happen and that we have thought through how this all works together to achieve a common aim. This means I apply my capabilities and thinking to ensure that:

I help the organisation have outside in view of what is happening. This helps us, and stakeholders, to make rational decisions based on facts and not on assumptions.
Provide an objective view of what is happening based on sound research and data. So, for instance, I might look at market movement, other industries, competitors, the economy etc and use data to predict future trends.
Help stakeholders decide which route is best for the organisation and which changes will have most favourable outcomes in terms of value.
To ensure the change strategy remains on track, a business analyst would have identified the major decision makers needed. Maybe even predict where each stakeholder is needed along each of the transition states.
A business analyst defines and communicates the desired future state. Ensuring everyone is aligned with the desired change strategy.
Sometimes organisations don’t know what they want. A good business analyst can work in extreme cases of uncertainty to steer their organisation to more certainty about what their needs are.
A business analyst also needs to know how the change is going to happen, know each moving part, and how they will contribute to implementing the new future state. They create a clear, actionable plan that makes sense to everyone.

The original article, Using Strategic Thinking in a Business Analyst Role, goes on to explore the 7 habits to develop to aid your strategic thinking capability.