Congratulation to us, RSG is now an IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysts) Endorsed Education Provider. What does that mean for you? It is great news for anybody that is interested in becoming a CBAP™ (Certified Business Analyst Professional) because.it means that our courseware was submitted to the IIBA for review and recognized by them as compliant with the current release of their BABOK™ (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge - more on that later). In plain English, our courses provide foundation knowledge needed to be able to pass the CBAP™ exam.

We do need to emphasize that we at RSG consider training to be a process, not an event, and that just taking our courses in the recommended sequence will not automatically qualify anyone to pass the IIBA CBAP™ exam. Amongst other things, that exam requires that you have a minimum of 5 years experience as a practicing business analyst, and that’s not something any training can give you.

What's in a Name

So what is this BABOK™ and who needs it, anyway? According to the IIBA website, "The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge is the sum of knowledge within the profession of Business Analysis and reflects what is considered currently accepted practice.". If you are interested (and who wouldn't be?), the entire document is available for download, all 329 pages of it, at http://download.theiiba.org/default.asp?fileid=26&categoryid=3. It is certainly a great basis for a field that has until now been lacking any unifying sense of direction and purpose.

The current BABOK™ release (1.6) is scheduled for update in March 2007 to Release 2.0. In line with the upcoming release, the IIBA is planning several modifications to their BABOK™ that are very much in sync with our thinking at RSG. The following snippet from the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) on their website www.theiiba.org will help clarify what we mean.

“Version 1.6 of the BABOK™ can be construed as describing, or even requiring, a highly complex waterfall approach to business analysis. It needs to be adjusted to make it clearer how the tasks it describes apply in iterative, agile, and maintenance efforts.
“The BABOK™, in its current form, frequently implicitly or explicitly assumes that the business analyst is involved in developing a software solution. We need to ensure that it is equally applicable to business process development.
“The current draft contains a lot of material that properly falls into the project management role–while a senior business analyst may perform project management tasks, the BABOK™ doesn’t need to describe them. “

Not to say we told you so, but…

At RSG, we have always maintained that:

the roles of business analyst and project manager/leader, although commonly performed by a single individual, require very different skill sets;
the skills we teach to business analysts and requirements managers can be used to define what you want to do regardless of what that is, from buying a new home to planning for retirement to developing an information technology solution;
the majority of business analysis techniques are “methodology neutral”, meaning they are necessary regardless of the methods used on the project. Since every project is unique and every organization is unique, the challenge that faces the business analyst is to figure out very early which approach is most likely to succeed on a given project and then apply the appropriate techniques.

Somehow, I get the feeling that we have all been drinking from the same well.

Our Courseware and the BABOK™.

So let's get down to the brass tacks. The table below will help you relate our courses to the BABOK™. You can find the referenced chapters in the BABOK™. Table of Contents. This might help you better understand what we cover in our curriculum. The course names are linked, so if you click on them, they will take you to the printable course descriptions on our website which you can either print or view on-line. The sub-courses that are listed in italics in the table are optional but provide additional levels of detail and alternative techniques. You will note in the table that we cover chapters 4 – 6 of the BABOK™ in great detail. This is because those chapters are the “heart” of a business analyst’s work in most organizations. Chapters 2 and 3 are more project management focused, which, as IIBA states in the passage we quoted above, is being deemphasized in the next release (but we do have a strategic partner who specializes in that area – ProjectExperts.com). Chapter 7 gets into design, which is likewise being revised.

Seq.	Course Name	BABOK™ Chapters	Rationale
1	4-10 Business Analysis and Requirements Gathering	1	We recommend this course as a start because it gives you a very wide range of the tools and techniques of business analysis in today’s organizations. This is not a prerequisite for the following courses, but it helps by creating frame work for all the different techniques.
2	1-10 How to Gather and Define Business System Requirements *1-11 How to Help Business SMEs Discover Requirements* *1-12 How to Write Business Requirements for IT Projects* *2-20 How to Jumpstart Requirements with User Stories*	4 - 6	This course is a more in-depth presentation of interviewing, stakeholder identification, requirements analysis techniques and requirements writing skills.
3	1-13 How to Prepare and Facilitate a Requirements Gathering Meeting *3-30 How to Prepare and Facilitate a Successful JAR Session*	4 - 6	Facilitating meetings to get business requirements is a basic skill needed by all business analysts.
3	1-20 How to Model, Analyze and Improve Business Processes	4 – 6	Creating Swimlane diagrams and process models are the basis for any significant improvements to business processes, with or without automation.
4	2-30 How to Develop Business Use Cases	4 – 6	Use cases document how the ultimate end-users and other applications will interact with your proposed solution and are an ideal container for “functional” requirements.
5	2-05 How to Model and Analyze Business Data	4 – 6	Data models and Class diagrams are just two tools that business analysts have to be able to read (at a minimum), understand (a plus) and create (a bonus). By this time, you are getting fairly deep into the business analyst universe.
6	1-40 How to Manage Changing Business Requirements *2-40 How to Manage Small Projects* *2-50 How to Estimate Early in a Project*	2 – 3	Managing requirements is another one of those core skills that business analysts need to survive. This set of courses moves you as far into the IT project management dimension as is needed by the majority of practicing business analysts.
7	3-40 How to Test Business Information Systems	Out of BABOK™ Scope	Testing is often not a business analyst activity, but it often falls to you to plan and execute. This seminar also covers quality reviews and walkthroughs, two more skills you will need.

We hope that this short missive helps you better understand RSG and our relationship to the IIBA BABOK™.

We Build Business Analysts™

p.s..BABOK™ and CBAP™ are trademarks of the International Institute of Business Analysts. All other trademarks used belong to RSG.

Tom Hathaway and Dan Myers
Managing Partners

Future Feature: "Requirements Decomposition for the Sake of Clarity"