Business Analysis Webinars for September 2023 - Week III

Please scroll down to the date, or name, of the webinar in which you are interested.

Solving Problems Using Critical Thinking and Creativity

Presented by Christa Kirby, Leadership Practice Director, Corporate Education Group

 

The ability to think both creatively and critically is an invaluable skill set at the heart of effective problem-solving. While at first glance creating and critiquing may seem like opposites, they are in fact deeply connected... and part of an ongoing generative cycle. To solve challenging problems, we need to explore them holistically — to unleash our imaginations while also applying structure and discipline to our thought processes.

 

Topics we will cover in this webinar include:

    • The intimate connection between critical thinking and creative thinking

    • The importance of defining the right problem

    • Common cognitive biases that can diminish innovation

    • The difference between brainstorming and “brain swarming”

    • Techniques for generating both convergent and divergent thinking

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, September 19, 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: Corporate Education Group     @CEG

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Visual Modeling to Engage Stakeholders

Presented by Gina Schmidt, Author of “Business Analysis Versatility”

 

Have you ever been in a meeting and wished that someone would get up and draw a picture for you so that you could better understand what the discussion was about? Pictures are worth a thousand words. Get a sense of the different types of drawings you can create to help communicate between the business and the technical stakeholders on your project. In addition, as a communication tool, models help uncover opportunities and missing or vague requirements. Make your meetings more engaging and effective by using these models! We will cover different types of models, identify what models are used for what purpose, and cover the various notations used in the industry today.

As an attendee, you can expect to:

    • See how to convert complex textual information to simpler visuals

    • Be exposed to varying styles, techniques and notations used to create models

    • Know which models to use and when

    • Apply visual modeling to engage and collaborate with stakeholders

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 20, 2023; 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT

Host: Bluegrass IIBA Chapter    @IIBABluegrass

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

I've done my context diagram - what next?!?

Presented by Ryland Leyton, CBAP

 

You’ve got your context diagram done, and now you aren’t sure what to do next. The good news and the bad news are the same news: there are a TON of things you could do next, and you get to figure out which ones by applying BA skills to it!

    • Starting with a context diagram, Identify and prioritize your follow-on work.

    • Be able to design and explain your analysis plan to project team members and stakeholders.

    • Consider and apply optimizations based on your software development framework.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, September 21, 2023; 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT

Host: Bluegrass IIBA Chapter    @IIBABluegrass

[REGISTER HERE]

 

Business Analysis Webinars for September 2023 - Week II

Please scroll down to the date, or name, of the webinar in which you are interested.

Empower Your Next Virtual Workshop With No Additional Technology

Presented by John Chen, CEO, Author, Speaker, Trainer

 

Using techniques from the book Engaging Virtual Meetings: Openers, Games, and Activities for Communication, Morale, and Trust (available free to IIBA Members through the Online Digital Library and available through Amazon), shows you the key secrets to having your attendees say, “I have more energy (rather than less) after 60 minutes meeting with you!”.  (Please note: IIBA Members will be prompted to login with their IIBA ID and password to access books, audio books and videos in the Online Digital Library)

 

When you learn Engaging Virtual Meetings, you will learn: 

•    The 6-step ENGAGE method to solve your virtual meeting and workshop challenges 

•    Fix attendees talking over each other 

•    How to look good virtually 

•    How to engage everyone even if someone else is talking 

•    How to use virtual tools to get work done 

•    Powerfully close your meeting and take steps to make your next meeting even more engaging 

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, September 12, 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: International Institute of Business Analysis     @IIBA

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Best Teams: Introverts, Extroverts, Ambiverts

Presented by Bob Faw, Trainer and Consultant, Corporate Education Group

 

Every workplace today needs to leverage relationships and attitudes that get things done fast. Effective, high-performing teams within organizations generate new ideas and approaches that solve problems and create innovative solutions efficiently, cost-effectively, and with the highest level of quality. Best Teams engage all personalities optimally. In this webinar learn how to maximize the contributions of introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts within project teams and maximize productivity by eliciting and valuing input from all types of people.

Join us and discover:

    • The key differences between the three “verts”

    • The top 5 ways to engage introverts, focus on extroverts, and leverage ambiverts.

    • Maximize the passion of all of the “verts”

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 13, 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: Corporate Education Group    @CEG

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

The AI-Powered Business Analyst: Five Ways to Work Smarter in the Age of Automation

Presented by Marc Balcer, Consultant and Trainer, SoftEd

 

Business analysts play a crucial role in eliciting requirements, analyzing needs, and ensuring solutions deliver value. But increasing complexity and demands on BAs can lead to inefficiency, inconsistent artifacts, strained stakeholder relationships, and underwhelming results. Many aspects of the job are just time-consuming and tedious.

 

Fortunately, advances in AI are transforming how BAs can approach their role for enhanced productivity and business value.

 

In this practical webinar, we'll explore five ways AI can make you a better BA:

    • Producing artifacts quickly so you can focus on ideas
    • Accelerating research
    • Interviewing stakeholders
    • Rapidly generating prototypes and mockups for design
    • Maintaining consistency and traceability

 

You'll learn AI techniques and tools available today to help you work smarter, gain deeper insights, and deliver better analysis. By leveraging AI for repetitive and labor-intensive tasks, you can focus your time on high-value strategic analysis, gain deeper insights, be more productive, and provide greater business value.

 

We'll discuss real-world applications and provide tips to make AI work for you. If you're a business analyst looking to enhance your skills and contribution in the age of AI, don't miss this webinar!

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 13. 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: SoftEd    @SoftEdHQ

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Social Event to "Build a Community"

Presented by Steph Hawkins, Bluegrass Chapter, Cathy Warren, Southeast Michigan Chapter, and Marci Watts, Chicagoland Chapter

 

Join us for our Agile Tips & Tricks Social event as we continue to "Build our Community".

As we celebrate International Chocolate Day, what chocolate recipes do you have? Chocolate fudge, Boston Cream Pie, Chocolate Bunnies or Chocolate Martini? Since it is also National Peanut Day, add some peanuts to your chocolate. This will give you positive thoughts for Positive Thinking Day! Wear your favorite chocolate outfit and bring a friend to our Peanut Chocolate Positive Thinking Celebration!

Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan, and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters are joining together to celebrate chocolate, and learn about some Agile Tips & Tricks from our resident experts. Bring your favorite chocolate recipes to share as well as we continue to "Build our Community".

The Agile Tips & Tricks, recipes and what we build together as our BA technique will be shared with all participants following the event.

This promises to be a fun and interactive event. Don't miss it!

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 13, 2023; 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EDT

Host: Bluegrass IIBA Chapter, Southeast Michigan IIBA Chapter, Chicagoland IIBA Chapter   

                 @IIBABluegrass                         @IIBASEM2                               @IIBAChicagoland

[REGISTER HERE]   

 

 

 

 

Essential Requirements Practices

Presented by Karl Wiegers, Principal Consultant, Process Impact

 

Many big books on software requirements and business analysis recommend dozens and dozens of practices. They’re all useful in appropriate situations, but it’s daunting to try to remember—let alone implement—the whole set consistently. However, every project should perform 20 core requirements activities. These lay a solid foundation for success and help teams efficiently and effectively elicit, analyze, specify, validate, and manage their requirements. These practices are valuable for both traditional and agile projects, regardless of the kind of product you’re building. This presentation identifies those 20 core practices and drills down into several of them. They can help project and product teams understand the business problem, engage the right participants, articulate effective solutions, communicate information among stakeholders, implement the right functionality in the right sequence, and adapt to change. Do you have to perform all 20 of these on your project? Maybe not, but you’ll feel less pain and get better results if you do.

 

Learning Objectives

    • Identify the 20 practices that contribute most heavily to business analysis success

    • Understand how to apply certain of those practices on both agile and traditional projects

    • Enable you to begin a self-assessment of how to improve your team’s requirements practices

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, September 14, 2023; 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT

Host: BA Times    @BATimes

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Tina & Adrian’s Business Bookshelf: Begin with You…

Presented by Christina Lovelock and Adrian Reed

 

Tina and Adrian read a lot of books, and often find themselves discussing books that they particularly like. Recently, an idea emerged: why not have those conversations *online* so anyone interested in the book (or the topic) can listen in?

 

In this session, you can tune in as Tina and Adrian discuss their perspectives and key takeaways from the following book:

 

Begin with You: Invest in your mental well-being and satisfaction at work by Petra Velzeboer.

 

This is a LinkedIn Live Event. Not only can you listen, but since the event is live, you’ll be able to type your comments, live, into LinkedIn.

 

The event is unscripted, live and anything could happen…

So why not take 30 minutes out of your busy day, grab a coffee, tune in and chill out for some relaxed professional development.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, September 15, 2023; 8:00 am – 8:30 am EDT

Host: Blackmetric Business Solutions    @Blackmetric

[REGISTER HERE]

 

Business Analysis Webinars for September 2023

Please scroll down to the date, or name, of the webinar in which you are interested.

Communication, Engagement & Influence: Honing Three Key BA Skills

Presented by Adrian Reed, Principal Consultant, Blackmetric Business Solutions

 

BAs tend to be natural communicators, but we’ve probably all experienced situations where stakeholders just don’t seem to listen.  Meetings are held, decisions are made, but a week later the same issues are raised yet again.  Why is this? Is it possible that sometimes we don’t make enough of an impact?

Communication, engagement and influence are key antidotes to this problem. In this practical presentation you’ll hear:

    - How the trio of communication, engagement and influence are crucial
    - How communicating facts alone isn’t enough: It’s all about the story…
    - How engagement starts by being engaging

 

Audience: IIBA Member

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 6, 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: International Institute of Business Analysis    @IIBA

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

What Does It Mean To Be a Senior BA?

Presented by Yulia Kosarenko, Principal Consultant, Why Change Consulting

 

Webinar with Yulia Kosarenko, the author of "Business Analyst: A Profession and a Mindset", business analysis coach and content creator.

Virtual webinar: September 6, 2023, @12-1 pm EDT (4-5 pm GMT | 9-10 am PST).

This webinar will answer your questions about growing in your business analysis career:

    • What is the difference between a senior and a junior role?

    • Do you need special skills to become a Senior BA?

    • What are the additional responsibilities?

    • How to prepare for a senior role?

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 6, 2023; 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: Why Change Consulting and Bluegrass IIBA Chapter    @why__change    @IIBABluegrass

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

The Data Analysis Process

Presented by Educate 360, Watermark Learning

 

It is essential for organizations to understand and employ a data analytics framework that supports the logical progression of the data analysis process. This framework is a vital roadmap, especially for those new to data analytics. By 2024, organizations that lack a sustainable data and analytics operationalization framework will have their initiatives set back by up to two years. Let's breakdown the Data Analysis Process and how you can apply it within your organization.

Register today to learn:

    • Understand the importance of a data analytics framework.

    • Learn the components of a data analysis process.

    • How to apply the data analysis process within their organizations.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 6 ,2023; 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT

Host: Educate 360 and Watermark Learning    @WatermarkLearn

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

  

Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer - Ciprian Banica - Switzerland

Presented by Ciprian Banica, Professional Scrum Master

 

Scrum has been in existence for more than 25 years as a simple framework for effective team collaboration on complex products. While it is lightweight and simple to understand, it can be difficult to apply effectively. The Scrum.org Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer series features Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) in a live session, answering your most pressing questions regarding the challenges and situations your Scrum Teams are facing. In this live session of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Ciprian Banica based in Switzerland will be available to answer your burning questions about Scrum and the challenges you or your teams have.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, September 7, 2023; 10:00 am – 11:00 am EDT

Host: Scrum.org

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Back to the Feature – A Practical Guide to Iterative Analysis

Presented by Stuart Mann, Agile Coach

 

The agile manifesto tells us to value “working software over comprehensive documentation” but how can we practically apply this value without sacrificing quality and rigour? How can we ensure that our requirement providers and analysts connect with our coders and testers to deliver fast, reliable value? How do you solve the analysis conundrum and eliminate the “documentation handoff” that plagues many teams?

 

In this presentation, we’ll cover how teams can use feature hypotheses to write just the right amount of documentation, methods to split features into the smallest possible chunk of value for iterative analysis, how to get fast feedback on outcomes and how an innovation day can change the paradigm and move you to documentation-less development.

 

The talk is jam-packed with practical examples from the presenter’s experience managing agile transformations and uses storytelling throughout to illustrate key points

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, September 7, 2023; 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT

Host: Blackmetric Business Solutions    @Blackmetric

[REGISTER HERE]

 

 

 

 

Webinar: IIBA® Certification Screen-side Chat

Presented by Meredith Neuman, Team Lead, Bastian Solutions

 

This is a free online chat session with some of our CBAP® recipients. The CBAP mentors will tell you of their journey to become IIBA® Certified, provide tips & tricks on anything related to IIBA Certification from the application process to re-certification. Anyone interested in ECBA™, CCBA® or CBAP® certification is welcome to come and ask questions of our CBAP mentors.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, September 8, 2023; 12:00 pm – 12:30 pm EDT

Host: Bluegrass IIBA Chapter    @IIBABluegrass

[REGISTER HERE]