The Value of Business Analysis: Assessing Organizational Readiness

One of the key roles of Business Analysts in the solution implementation process is to assess the readiness of the organization to take full advantage of the new solution. This is the role in which the Business Analyst acts as a Change Agent in the organization. Whether this is a software enhancement, new system implementation, business architecture, business intelligence, data, business process, product change, or change implemented by a customer, supplier or regulator, effective communication of the upcoming change to all affected by the change is important to preparing the organization to capture the expected benefit of the change.  Read more...

A Key Strategic Role in Delivering Organizational Change

Most business professionals have seen good organizational change and bad organizational change.  Some organizational change can be so bad as to be the cause of the demise of the organization.  In order for organizational change to be good for the organization it must solve a business need of the organization.  One of the strategic roles within the organization to help define that business need is that of the Enterprise Business Analyst.

There are many ways that the business analyst can identify business needs.  It can be a result of market research or an identified new opportunity brought about by actions of a vendor or competitor.   It could be derived from a strategic goal or initiative of the organization.  It could have come from a business user complaint about a current system issue and/or the subsequent Root Cause Analysis.  It could also be derived from an Enterprise Analysis activity that the BA performed, such as Capability Gap Analysis, SWOT Analysis or Product Feasibility Analysis.  Some organizational change may be necessary to be compliant with regulatory constraints.

Once identified, the business need should be documented in the Business Case to initiate a project to develop a solution for this business need.  This solution may, or may not, involve information technology software development; some solutions are completely a business solution. 

Read more about this strategic role of business analysis…Read this article!

How Business Analysis Services Add Business Value

Just as the Agile approach to software development contains a few methodologies, Business Analysis contains a few business services to drive better business outcomes. Notice, I did not use the term “business solutions” as Business Analysis is more than just business solutions, it contains a few services outside of information technology projects that deliver business solutions. Business Analysis is about defining and delivering the outcomes that are best for the organization; strategically, tactically and operationally.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t feel that they are a Business Analyst because their job title is not Business Analyst, or some derivative thereof. There are many job titles that perform business analysis activities, and this is increased by those companies that get creative with their job titles. There are job titles in and outside of IT project work that perform business analysis activities. Remember, whether you are a business analyst is determined by the tasks you perform for the company, not by your job title.

Read more about the many business services under the umbrella of business analysis…Read the whole article

Business Analysis Webinars for June 2014

Complimentary Webinar: Who's Doing What? The Confusion on Roles & Responsibilities
Presented by Rick Clare, PMP, CBAP, CSM, MSPM
                                                                                                                            

Many companies still use different terms and descriptions for Business Analysts and Project Managers, and many other roles can get integrated into both professions. These different terms and the differing corporate interpretations on the job positions can cause a lot of confusion, especially as you move from one company to another. Come and hear our take on this subject! This webinar will be 30 minutes long followed by a live question and answer session with our instructor.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 3, 2014; 12:00 – 12:30 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: Free

Register:   PMCcentersUSA Complimentary Webinar Registration

 

 

Five Easy Steps for Turning Data to Insight in an Hour in the Cloud

Presented by Adam Ronthal, IBM and Michael Lock, Aberdeen

If you are evaluating whether Cloud could be an option for your next data mart or data warehouse project, join us to learn how IBM BLU Acceleration for Cloud, IBM Watson Foundations' data warehouse solution on Cloud, provides everything you need to get started: analytics, R programming language, and the ability to connect your own preferred solution. Go from data to insight in an hour.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 3, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: Ziff Davis, Inc. @ZDB2B

Cost: Free

Register:   Ziff Davis Webcast Registration

 

 

BVUG: Blueprint Tips & Tricks, and Blueprint 5.5 Preview

Presented by Brian Partington, Enterprise Business Consultant at Lexis Nexis

Be sure to join us for our upcoming Blueprint Virtual User Group (BVUG) presentation. In this session Brian Partington, Enterprise Business Consultant at Lexis Nexis, will be demonstrating “Tips & Tricks” with Blueprint. Learned through several years of Blueprint usage, Brian and his team have evolved very efficient ways to work with Blueprint within their process, and will share several of these ‘tips & tricks’ during the session. After the presentation we will then demonstrate capabilities in the upcoming release of Blueprint, Blueprint v5.5.

Audience: Blueprint Customers and Partners

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 4, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @BlueprintSys

Cost: Free

Register:   Blueprint Systems Webinar Registration

 

 

 

IIBA Webinar Sponsor Series: Organizational Survival: The Double Meaning of Sustainability

Presented by Greg Balestrero, Strategic Advisor – Corporate Consciousness, Leadership, and Sustainability, International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL)

This webinar provides the motivation for organizations to look beyond a pure profit motive and take on social, economic, environmental, and ethical responsibilities to have a positive influence on global prosperity. Gregory Balestrero (IIL Strategic Advisor on Leadership, Sustainability & Corporate Consciousness and co-author of Organizational Survival: Profitable Strategies for a Sustainable Future) will discuss the results of nearly three years of research and share insight on how to increase value, enhance reputation, and improve image and brand through an integrated approach to strategic change.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 5, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Public Webinar Registration

 

 

Taming the Testing Beast

Presented by Marc Balcer

How do you know what to test?

There seems to never be enough time (or money or people) to adequately test systems. Rapid cycle times brought on by the adoption of agile approaches only seem to make things worse. Even with automated systems for running tests, you’re still left with the time-consuming problem of designing many test cases.

This webinar will introduce you to a simple yet powerful technique for modeling functional requirements and a tool that uses those models to generate effective test cases. This approach can be used for unit testing, user testing, and more. Tests can be developed from early specifications (use cases and user stories) and in response to bug reports.

You’ll see how to easily produce a good set of test cases – exhaustive enough to give your software a good workout, but intelligent enough not to waste time and effort.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 5, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free

Register:   ASPE Webinar Registration

 

 

 

How to Conduct a Successful Requirements Workshop that Helps Ensure Project Success

Presented by Rick Clare, PMP, CBAP, CSM, MSPM
                                                                                                                          

At the beginning of a large project it is necessary to quickly get a solid understanding of the high level requirements.  This is needed for a number of reasons: to put some context around the true scope of the project, to bring the team into sync, and especially to form a solid basis for the balance of the requirements work.  The best way to achieve this is to conduct a Requirements Workshop.  Come and learn what this elicitation technique consists of, what its goals are, and how best to make it successful.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 5, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: $14.95                                        June Webinar Special: 4 Webinars for $39.95

Register:   PMCentersUSA Webinar Registration

 

 

IIBA Certification Chat

Presented by Vicki James, PMP, CBAP

This is a free chat session featuring questions and live answers by an experienced CBAP from Watermark Learning.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, June 6, 2014; 12:00 – 12:30 pm EDT

Host: @WatermarkLearn

Cost: Free

Register:   Watermark Learning IIBA Certification Chat Registration

 

 

 

Agile and ITIL

Presented by John Parker, CEO of Enfocus Solutions

At first Agile and ITIL seem at odds because of the rigid release and change management process of ITIL and the rapid delivery of software in agile.  However, the two frameworks are actually quite complimentary.

In this webinar, John Parker will describe how the design of End-to-End business services works in an agile development environment and how agile can easily be integrated into ITIL change and release management processes.

He will address the following topics:

·         Managing Services instead of Products

·         Defining Agile Services

·         Service Portfolio Management

·         Economic Benefit of Small Batch Sizes

·         Design Coordination Management

·         Creating a Service Design Package

·         Service Transition Management

·         Creating RFCs

·         Dealing with Release and Change Management

·         Continuous Delivery

·         Achieving Agility and Operational Excellence

·         Requirements: The Old way and the new way

·         Using ITIL for Scaling Agile

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 10, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @EnfocusSolution

Cost: Free

Register:   Enfocus Webinar Registration

 

 

 

IIBA Webinar: Meet the Candidates

Presented by Michele Maritato, Board of Director, IIBA

Join us on Tuesday, June 10, 2014, for the IIBA^® Board of Directors Election 2014 “Meet the Candidates” webinar. This is your opportunity to hear from the candidates who want to lead IIBA into the future.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 10, 2014; 3:00 – 4:30 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Public Webinar Registration

 

 

 

The Impact of Decision Modeling for Business and IT

Presented by Knowledge Partners International @PKIUSA

With the introduction of Decision Model & Notation as a new standard, the Object Management Group (OMG)  ushered in new era for decision modeling. Initially pursued by a small group of early adopters and thought leaders who evolved from the Business Process and Business Rules Management space, decision modeling joined the mainstream in early 2014.

 

This panel discussion, moderated by Larry Goldberg, Managing Partner at Knowledge Partners International, includes strategic leaders working with Business and IT in the financial services, semi-conductor and software development sectors.

 

Panelists:

 

Alan Holsztynski, Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, Cole Taylor Mortgage

Dr. Nick Illingworth, Strategic Architect, SAP FSI Consulting EMEA

Cheryl Mascaro, Enterprise Architect, Strategy, Architecture & Innovation, Intel

Todd Schmitter, Executive Director CBB Architecture, JP Morgan Chase

 

Among the questions we will explore are:

• How did decision modeling change the information exchange between Business and IT?

• What impact has decision modeling had on the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)?

• How is decision modeling supported from an IT infrastructure perspective?

• What is the outlook for the coming years?

These are just a few of the questions on which our panel will elaborate during the 1 hour long panel discussion.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 12, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @KPIUSA

Cost: Free

Register:   KPI Webinar Registration

 

 

 

Taming the Testing Beast

Presented by Chris Knotts and Darrel Raynor

The amount of data available to software teams and the tools available to utilize it can easily become mind-numbing if you don’t know how to ask the right questions. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a data guru or a technical specialist to understand this fundamental truth: your data is only as valuable as the questions you ask. This is good news for project teams and business analysis professionals because it means you can quickly and realistically begin harnessing insights offered by data that’s readily available, as long as you understand how to frame the questions that yield those insights.

In this one-hour web seminar, data guru and veteran enterprise consultant Darrel Raynor will take your questions on how you can immediately begin framing the useful questions that will yield useful insights for your organization, using data analysis resources you probably already have in place. Darrel is the founder and Managing Director of www.dataanalysis.com and has decades of experience consulting with Fortune companies on uncovering useful business insights and turning around troubled projects using data-driven resources. Join us for this open Q&A in which we take as many of your questions as possible.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, June 12, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free

Register:   ASPE Webinar Registration

 

 

 

 

Everything You Need to Know About the New BABOK® Guide - v3

Presented by Phil Vincent, CBAP, PMP, Corporate Education Group

A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) from International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®) is the leading global standard for the business analysis profession. Regularly reviewed and updated since its first publication in 2005, the BABOK® Guide - v3 is open for international public review until mid-July, 2014.

This webinar will provide a comprehensive review of the new content and structure of the BABOK® Guide - v3, including a spotlight on:

·         The realignment of the knowledge areas

·         The introduction of the five formal perspectives on business analysis

·         The changing definitions of business analysis and requirements

·         When the CBAP® and CCBA® Exams will change and how to determine whether you should wait or sit for the exam before it changes

This is an ideal webinar for both new and advanced business analysts.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, June 13, 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @ModernAnalyst

Cost: Free

Register:   Modern Analyst Webinar Registration

 

 



Business Analysis Webinars for May 2014 - Part 1

Drawing New Insights from Traditional Sources
Presented by Eliot H. Sherman, CPA Senior Lecturer, in Finance at Northeastern University

Traditional ratio analysis provides traditional assessments. Re-examining a few of these key measurements may yield some different but extremely valuable management opportunities. We will look at a few basic financial statement ratios and extend their interpretation beyond the norms, traditionally developed in the discussion of financial analysis.

Specifically, we will focus on three areas:

·   Inventory Turnover – traditionally measures how well a company manages its inventory. How can inventory turnover be expanded to apply to all industries and to a range of perceptions of inventory?

·   Average Collection Period – traditionally measures the management of accounts receivable. How can average collection period provide an expanded view of company management?

·   The DuPont Approach – traditional helps to explain the generation of Return on Equity.  How does the DuPont Analysis give license to creative analysis?

Audience: IIBA Members

Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2014; 11:00 – 12:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Members Webinar Registration

 

 

 

The Next Horizon: The Event Model

Presented by Barbara von Halle, Knowledge Partners International

Decades ago, the relational model drastically changed the way we perceive and leverage data.  Today, The Decision Model (TDM) is doing the same for the logic behind business decisions.  Both are pre-defined abstract models that are technology-independent.  Both existed before there was technology to fully support them.  This is important.  Each was a vision first and technology second.

This webinar proposes that the age of abstract pre-defined models need not end here.  If history is a guide, we have only just begun.  There is, at least one more important dimension to conquer.  It is one that deserves its own model, technology independent and business-focused.  It is a model for detecting complex events (called Situations) of business interest that require a course of action.  Sample Situations are suspicious account activity, luggage lost at carousel, and child not arriving home within expected time.   Similar to its predecessors, The Event Model (TEM) is defined by a set of well-defined principles and normalized sets of logic.  However, it also includes a full concepts model and  executes  against the “Internet of Things.”  TEM principles allow it to translate into program code, yet remain understandable by non-IT people.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @KPIUSA

Cost: Free

Register:  KPI Webinar Registration

 

 

 

How to Defend Against Common Negotiating Tactics

Presented by Joe Lukas PMP, PE, CSM, CCP

Collaborative negotiations (win-win) are always nice, but what do you do when the other side starts using tactics to gain advantage? This webinar will cover the most common tactics used in negotiations along with suggestions on how to defend and counter when these maneuvers are used. You will also learn helpful methods to get the negotiation back on track. This webinar will be 30 minutes long with a live question and answer session afterward.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6, 2014; 12:00 – 12:30 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: Free

Register:   PM CentersUSA Complimentary Webinar Registration

 

 

Overcome Risk Using Process Management and Improvement

Presented by Mark Barnett, PhD, Senior Executive Consultant, Robbins-Gioia, LLC

Process management helps to provide a line of sight from strategy through execution of organizational initiatives. Akin to the business analysis (BA) requirements discipline, this traceability enables performance maturity, better communication, clearer roles and responsibilities, and good governance. Clarification of problems or opportunities for improvement is integral to business analysis and process management.  In each, you must elicit and clearly state a specific problem that quantifiably affects business/operation and that ultimately matters to your customers. Process management is

·      An integral part of business analysis, implementation, improvement, and sustainability,

·      Solves problems, and

·      Expedites risk identification, mitigation, and impact. 

In this webinar I will explain how to:

·      Tie process management to organizational strategy,

·      Use process management as a foundation of good decision making, change management, and governance, and

 ·      Increase efficiency and value optimization throughout the organization.

 

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 8, 2014; 11:00 – 12:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Public Webinar Registration

 

Sapiens DECISION - Powered by The Decision Model -  Enterprise Scale Decision Management

You know Barbara von Halle’s and Larry Goldberg’s, The Decision Model, and the results it can deliver to your organization. But do you know how to take The Decision Model to the next level and enable adoption across your organization?

Sapiens DECISION is the first Decision Management Solution designed upon the principles of The Decision Model.  Developed as an enterprise-scale solution, Sapiens DECISION capitalizes upon the company’s decades of experience as a trusted solution provider in the financial services sector. Sapiens DECISION has been implemented by a number of the world’s largest and most successful institutions to enable more effective management of complex business logic.  As a result, these firms are significantly decreasing costs by improving operational efficiency, minimizing operational and regulatory risk by providing greater visibility to decision logic, and rapidly growing their business through their ability to adapt quickly to changing business conditions.

Audience: Financial Institution Professionals

Date/Time: Thursday, May 8, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @KPIUSA

Cost: Free

Register:   KPI Webinar Registration

 

 

Top Down Estimating Techniques for Early Project Estimates

Presented by Rick Clare PMP, CBAP, CSM, MSPM

Management wants accurate early estimates to make decisions on which projects to pursue. The problem is a lack of scope definition needed for preparation of a detailed estimate. This webinar will discuss best practices for preparing and communicating early project estimates. Techniques for making early estimates will be reviewed along typical accuracy ranges.  This webinar will run 45 minutes long followed by a Q & A Session.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 8, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: $14.95     Special Deal: 4 webinars for $39.95

Register:   PM CentersUSA Webinar Registration

 

 

IIBA Chapter Leadership: Meet IIBA's New Leaders

Join us on May 14, 2014 at 1 p.m. EDT to meet IIBA's new leaders. This is your opportunity to learn about the vision for IIBA and for Chapters, and to ask your questions. The panel will include:

·      Stephen Ashworth, President and CEO

·      Lori Gotlieb, Head of Chapters and Volunteers

·      Kevin Brennan, CBAP, Chief Business Analyst and EVP

·      Heather Mylan-Mains, Vice President, Chapters

·      Brenda Cziraki, Chapter Operations Manager

We hope you will encourage all the leaders of your Chapter to attend – it promises to be a lively and informative discussion.

Audience: IIBA Members

Date/Time: Wednesday, May 14 2014; 1:00 – 2:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Members Webinar Registration

 

Vendor Showcase Webinar Series: Data Modeling - BABOK^® Guide Technique

Presented by TechnoSolutions Corp., Sandhill Consultants, Polarion Software

Join us on Thursday May 15, 2014 at 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC/GMT -4 hours, Toronto, Canada) for our next Vendor Showcase on Data Modeling - BABOK^® Guide Technique

The purpose of a data model is to describe the concepts relevant to a domain, the relationship between those concepts, and information associated with them.

·      Learn how these tools provide the ability to document and maintain the concepts, attributes, relationships, and metadata for a domain.

This webinar series is open to everyone in the BA community and we strongly encourage you to invite the senior leaders and key decision makers in your organization to attend.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 15 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @IIBA

Cost: Free

Register:   IIBA Public Webinar Registration

Agile Business Transformation

Presented by John Parker, CEO of Enfocus Solutions

Agile has become mainstream for developing software. Organizations that have adopted agile have seen improvements in quality, cycle time, and customer satisfaction. Standish Group research shows that agile projects are three times more successful than traditional plan driven projects.

However using Agile Development practices does not make an agile organization. Frequent delivery of software provides little value if the software cannot be deployed because of rigid release and change management processes. Another significant challenge facing enterprises is how to coordinate agile teams across multiple projects in multi-disciplined environments.  Companies are appointing agile coaches to individual projects, but there is little or no company-wide coordination. In addition, little has been done to help transform the business to be able to respond more rapidly to change.

Agile transformation requires focus on four key areas:

1.       Agile Discovery

       2.       Agile Delivery
       3.       DevOps
       4.       Agile Business Change

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 15 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @EnfocusSolution

Cost: Free

Register:   Enfocus Webinar Registration

 

 

How to Make Change Management Successful on Your Project

Presented by Joe Lukas PMP, PE, CSM, CCP

Collaborative negotiations (win-win) are always nice, but what do you do when the other side starts using tactics to gain advantage? This webinar will cover the most common tactics used in negotiations along with suggestions on how to defend and counter when these maneuvers are used. You will also learn helpful methods to get the negotiation back on track. This webinar will be 30 minutes long with a live question and answer session afterward.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 15, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @PMCentersUSA

Cost: $14.95                        Special Deal: 4 webinars for $39.95

Register:   PM CentersUSA Webinar Registration

 

 

 

Business Book Reports: "Dealing with People You Can't Stand" by Dr. Rick Brinkman & Dr. Rick Kirschner

Each month we pick a valuable, substantive business book we think will benefit the professionals we serve. Some are new; some are classics. Either way, we do the reading, then use one of our free web seminars to deliver a one-hour "book report."

This month's book pick is "Dealing with People You Can't Stand" by Dr. Rick Brinkman & Dr. Rick Kirschner.

Dealing with difficult people and getting things done in spite of interpersonal conflicts are some of the hottest human resource topics our customers talk about. In this fun yet comprehensive instruction manual, Drs. Brinkman and Kirschner skillfully illustrate how effective collaboration with difficult people essentially boils down to a set of communication challenges. Rather than trying to change someone's personality or get frustrated by their behavior, they argue the focus should really be on understanding why difficult people behave as they do and outsmarting it, adopting a practical set of tools for maintaining productive interaction despite unappealing personalities and habits.

Join us as we discuss how the authors break down annoying behaviors and personalities, including:

·         The know-it-all
·         The "no" person
·         The sniper
·         The meddler
·         The judge
·         Annoying behaviors regarding email, phone habits, and other communication challenges

We'll take a look at each, and learn a little about "bringing out the best in people at their worst."

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Thursday, May 15, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free

Register:   ASPE Webinar Registration

 

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) Primer

Presented by Razvan Radulian CBAP, OCEB, PMP

In the last couple of years, more and more organizations have switched to Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) as their preferred (often, the standard) way to capture, model, and analyze business processes.

There are several reasons for this trend:

Simple Notation
Easy to learn and communicate with all stakeholders, on both the business and the technical sides.

Flexibility
3 levels of abstraction that allow modeling simple high-level processes (Descriptive level), analysis and optimization (Analytic level), and specifying complex processes for IT implementation and/or execution (Execution level).

Showing the Whole Picture + Hierarchal Structure Allows abstraction at high-levels and elaboration into further details, without losing the relationships between different process components.

Efficiency/Reusability
Projects and analysts reuse/elaborate same models as more details are added throughout the Solution/System Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

Widely Adopted Standard
Common set of conventions and symbols, with no need to (re)invent the wheel.

Wide Adoption by Tool Providers
Virtually all major vendors, commercial or open-source, have adopted BPMN.

In this seminar we will introduce core concepts and principles of Business Process Management (BPM) and BPMN and demonstrate how this knowledge will significantly improve Business Analysts' ability to elicit/capture, analyze, manage, and communicate business and solution requirements.

Audience: Public

Date/Time: Friday, May 16, 2014; 12:00 – 1:00 pm EDT

Host: @ASPE-SDLC

Cost: Free

Register:   ASPE Webinar Registration