2019 Tutorials Agenda

Monday & Tuesday, Nov. 11-12

Data is central to virtually every aspect of business, digital or otherwise. Traditional data design techniques have proven inadequate to current challenges. And they are neither business-friendly nor business-analyst-friendly. The issue that nags at many professionals remains how to get at the deep knowledge in business people’s heads, and lay it out for validation and reference.

Business knowledge is more complicated – far richer – than most realize. It requires a blueprint, which must be engineered conceptually. Concept models provide the answer. And they are leading the way in addressing a host of digital-era-problems – all the way from eliminating silos to machine learning.

How do you create a concept model? What techniques do you need to know? This hands-on session will equip you for data design – and to engineer better business capabilities in ways you never knew possible. Come ready to dig in!

Learning Objectives:

• What a concept model is and what it can be used for
• What goes into creating a concept model
• Why ambiguities arise in business communication and how they are resolved
• How business analysts can lead the way in avoiding pitfalls in data design
• How to use a concept model to achieve clarity and precision

Next to the rise of new data science techniques and applications for data-driven decision making, the modeling and automation of the numerous small decisions the business has to take every day is gaining increasing attention. Decision modeling enables this decision transformation in the digital world. And it does so in a way which ensures correctness, consistency and compliance from the start.

With increasing demand for business process automation, the need for the automation of routine business decisions grows: granting a loan, insurance or premium; simple diagnosis; etc. In order to improve and speed up processes, also decisions have to be improved and automated. The business logic of those decisions must be captured effectively by the business. Decision logic can be expressed in many forms of which decision tables are the most important, with unique features such as consistency, completeness, correctness.

This tutorial takes you from the secrets behind knowledge-based decision intelligence to decision table methodology, including best practices, examples and experiences, for modeling decision rules by domain experts in real business situations (insurance, finance, legislation, operating procedures, …).

What you will lean:

• How to organize related decision rules into correct and agile decision tables
• A simple 8 step method to construct decision tables in the DMN standard
• How decision modeling can be used with, without, before or next to business process modeling
• And mainly: lessons from a long experience on how to use decision table models for business analysis in numerous application domains

Top- rated last year, back by popular demand  

This workshop illustrates hands-on, best-of-breed analysis techniques that can work together seamlessly to produce superior business solutions. Watch how a process model transforms when business rules and decisions are added. Work through a case study iteratively to demonstrate how business rules, decisions and vocabulary can dramatically improve your business requirements. 

Do you have data quality problems?  This workshop shows how business concepts and business rules can help you get out of the perpetual problem of creating complex logic to compensate for your data issues.

Make your models come to life. Prepare your designers to develop intelligent screen designs, work out smart usage scenarios, and create test scripts.  Enable your business to achieve true business agility, pinpoint customization, and world-class quality in customer service.

Learn How To …

• Simplify business process models by an order of magnitude or more.
• Be a true partner in business innovation.
• Use a Why Button to put business knowledge at workers’ fingertips.
• Understand how business vocabulary and business rules can fix data quality problems.

Whether simplifying business processes; increasing straight through processing; applying big data, advanced analytics or AI/cognitive technology; or looking for dramatic reductions in time to market, digital transformation opportunities require a focus on decision-making. Design thinking is a proven approach to defining creative solutions to business problems. Decision-centric design thinking uses decision modeling to help teams define how their organization should decide. It defines a ‘to-be’ decision model and uses a graphical representation – a decision requirements model using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard – as a visual analogy in place of technical requirements. This approach enables practical, creative design of solutions to your decision-making problems.

Decision Modeling documents known aspects of the current situation, reveals and resolves ambiguity, and supports definition of multiple alternative solutions. It’s highly iterative and often results in an a-ha moment. Decision models capture how human experts make decisions in a way that makes it clear what should be automated, and how. Decision modeling makes it easy to continually update the way decisions are made by externalizing decision-making from the underlying technology. And decision models make the decision-making approach tangible and allow for shared understanding across business, IT, data science and operations.

This tutorial introduces decision modeling and the DMN notation, shows how to use design thinking to develop creative decision-making approaches, and uses the notation to document these solutions. 

Attendees will get a free copy of “Real-World Decision Modeling with DMN” by James Taylor and Jan Purchase, (Meghan-Kiffer, 2016).

What you will lean:

• How to define decision requirements using the DMN standard
• How to drive decision-centric design thinking sessions
• How to define creative solutions to decision-making problems 
• How to get started using decision requirements modeling on your projects

Business Architecture provides a strong foundation for business-wide transformation, digitization and optimization and is the basis for having an agile business. Given the inherent complexities, making the right choices in what to change is not simple. Avoiding duplication and sub-optimization means that all of the moving parts must be classified, well understood and inter-connected before change can confidently begin. Business Architecture subject areas are numerous. Processes and capabilities and other important domains are complex enough. Being able to find the interconnections among them is even more so. A well-formed Business Architecture can help untangle the confusion and deliver inherently adaptable solutions.

This session will introduce some of the critical elements needed.

• Stakeholder Value Orientation
• Business Concepts / Information models
• Business Processes
• Business Capabilities
• Business Measurement
• Change Prioritization
• Process / Capability Alignment

“Data” provide a unique and powerful lens into an organization.  And data quality, good or bad, provides an excellent window into the health of operations, decision-making, and analytic potential.  But not enough companies give data its due.

This “bootcamp” aims to begin to rectify that.  I’ll introduce the Friday Afternoon Measurement as to simultaneously estimate data quality and the performance of a process.  And I’ll summarize relatively simple steps to make basic improvements that have big impact.  This work provides a “script” for improvements across an business unit or company, and earns its leader the title “provocateur,”  as he or she provokes change.  

Since introduced by GV (Google Ventures), Design Sprints are a hot technique to accelerate the design of better products and services. But how to use them for enterprise-level innovation and transformation, from incremental progress to disruptive shifts? How to unleash our collective creativity and intelligence for seeing, visioning, strategizing, exploring, probing, prototyping, validating, building, and ultimately designing change at scale?

The Enterprise Design Sprint format makes this proven tool from the agile startup world enterprise-ready. In this workshop you will learn how to rapidly innovate and facilitate changes faster: engage your stakeholders, identify strategic options, and rapidly co-design, test and build innovative solutions. Compress weeks of work into just a few days.

We accomplish this with visual mappings of your Enterprise Design, expressed in the Enterprise Design Modelling Language (EDML). This enables us to go from the big picture, to details and back to the big picture again: making the links visible, bringing in data and insights, tracing performance and decisions, and engaging stakeholders. We’ll show how to run your own Enterprise Design Sprints, and how to integrate them with lean and agile approaches at scale.

What you will learn:

• Introduction to Strategic Enterprise Design
• Planning and running Enterprise Design Sprints for business impact
• Break down silos and build up creative energy as a team muscle using the Design Sprint format
• Using advanced enterprise mapping techniques as you go through the Sprint
• Gain crystal clear alignment between stakeholders, business architects and team backlogs

The implication of Innovation is creating something that has not before existed and it is challenging even to visualize something that has not existed.  Many people are challenged by the “blank sheet of paper” syndrome … so how does one begin?  How do you unleash creativity?  Start with components that can be rearranged into something never before conceived.  Enterprise Architecture is that set of unconstructed components that can be molded into an infinite variety of structured realities, much like the set of elements of the Periodic Table that can be structured into an infinite variety of compounds, the domain of building blocks that can be shaped into implementations never before conceived by anyone.  It is the catalyst for creativity.

But the word “Unleashing” also implies a reality, not only conceived, but realized.  In the case of Enterprises, something always already exists. The very concept of “enterprise” embodies the idea of an undertaking, requiring effort and purpose to generate value either in the sense of revenue, or product, or service.  Enterprise is not something that exists only in someone’s mind or garage.  Enterprise IS.  Therefore ANY innovation not only implies, but demands change, structural change as well as behavioral change.  The risk of any change is failure, abrupt failure, typically due to unintended consequences.  In early computer history, we used to call these “abends.”  Enterprise “abends” can be cataclysmic.

For 7,000 years of known history, Architecture is the only known device for predicting and precluding unintended consequences of change, that is “abends.”

Learning Objectives:

• Experience the “doing” of Enterprise Architecture
• Architecture is not arbitrary and not negotiable
• Architecture elements can be rapidly restructured for simulation and risk mitigation before investing resources
• Diagnosis and prescription” are the domains of Professionals (and the purpose of Architecture) – “application” is labor

These are difficult times for process improvement.

The failure rate for process projects remains around 75% and the impact of process improvement is too often internally focused, with limited benefits for customers. The Operational Excellence explosion has produced a large quantity of incremental “better sameness” with diminishing returns from easy quick wins.

But our functional silos are still here. Their fragmentation causes huge cost and speed problems. Until organizations find the right battering rams to knock down those feudal castles, large-scale process improvement benefits can never be achieved.

But the time has come to embrace big change. 

Big Change can produce Big Benefits, but it can also cause big headaches if done wrong.

This important tutorial will illuminate the path to launching and succeeding at Big Change. Using cases studies, this session will focus on the core tasks needed for success such as: finding the right sponsor, team, target, and and change management approach.

Attendees Will Learn:

• The core tasks for redesigning a process for big performance improvemment 
• How to conduct state of the art change management
• How to ensure process, people, and technology changes are aligned and integrated

What happens when you automate a broken process? What happens when you implement a brand-new system where the old process will no longer work? In a manufacturing environment the result would be the same defects only faster!! In business it is not much different, except the cause of defects can be much harder to spot. Improving business processes is necessary whenever implementing any new technology or seeking to optimize and gain efficiency.

This session is designed primarily for practitioners who are starting their journey in process improvement, or those who are looking for a refresher and some new ideas.

In this session you will learn how to:

• Identify if a business process is in need of improvement 
• Understand and document existing processes
• Develop a prioritized list of issues and potential areas of improvement 
• Determine root causes and potential solutions
• Synthesize the various solutions into a coherent improvement effort
• Plan and implement the improvement effort

In this tutorial, simulation and process mining techniques expose participants to a new level of insight into their process modeling efforts. Participants will learn the difference between simulation and replay of process data through the use of case study and live modeling efforts. Participants will learn about the value of resource loading their process models for simulations that provide actionable insight. Process mining techniques will show participants how they can take the data in their organizations and generate process models and evaluate performance against model processes. A mini case study approach will help to illustrate the use of these techniques. During this tutorial, participants will also learn how to take this information and use it across their enterprise architecture to conduct detailed impact analysis. Participants will receive actionable information, access to teaching slides and how to access the types of tools used in the workshop to include open source options.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the use of simulation and resource loading in process modeling
• Understand the use of process mining and data replay to access process model performance
• Understand how to use simulation and process mining information to conduct enterprise wide impact analysis

Measurement is key to understanding the actual and potential performance of business processes. In addition, measurement provides a critical link between process changes and the effects they have on customer experiences and business outcomes. This workshop introduces measurement as a discipline, then dives into common and unique process measures. Participants will learn how to evaluate and create new measures for their unique situations.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn measures common to all processes
• Learn how to evaluate and develop measures for special circumstances
• Learn about measurement in general to avoid measuring the wrong thing

As Business Analysts, we’re comfortable with mapping our existing processes. These are often a reflection of business needs, and the most efficient and effective way to accomplish a certain task or transaction. 

Now, I have a dirty little secret about that, that we all know, but will only admit to in secret back room meetings and behind closed doors. The secret? That we often forsake the needs of our customers to advance the needs of the business. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Finding the “gold” along the customer journey is not hard, if you know how and where to look. And in doing so, our organizations can become customer experience juggernauts, that maximizes value, and if done right, minimizes effort and burden; for you and your customers.

In the “Treasure Hunting Along the Customer Journey” workshop, participants will learn practical, how-to approaches to developing empathy, mapping the customer journey, and finding business process improvement opportunities on the parallel path.

Attendees Will Learn:

• What a Customer Journey Map is, and how to build one
• How to identify the needs, wants, and desires of your customers, and how that should impact the projects we work on.
• How to layer your customer’s journey onto your existing business processes, to figure out how to REALLY make your customers happy!

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) is a powerful tool to obtain a shared understanding and agreement for a team on any situation. LSP can be extremely effective when implementing any kind of organizational change that requires the engagement and participation of the impacted teams, especially if you are embarking on a cultural transformation.

In this session, I will share several real life experiences that showcase the benefits of LSP as well as where, when, and how it can be used. The scenarios that I will share are (1) a small company looking to align the work of a team with the overall organizational strategy, (2) an IT department looking to define a roadmap to become a business partner, and (3) a large company going through an agile transformation that is looking to define an action plan for team members as they move into their agile roles. Attendees will also get familiar with the LSP experience by participating in several exercises themselves during the session.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn when to use LSP
• Understand how an LSP session must be conducted in order to get the best results
• Get useful tips for facilitating your own LSP sessions

It’s become a cliche to say ‘data is an asset’. Roles such as VP or Director of Data & Analytics have been elevated to mean more than managing a DW and increasingly organizations hire into the role of Chief Data Officer (CDO), typically expecting it to fix all their data issues.But what does it really mean to say ‘data is an asset’? Is it about cutting edge technologies and implementing data lakes? Why do we even care? And what would it take to actually materialize treating ‘data as an asset’? Especially in seasoned organizations already well-set in their ways, where organizational culture recognizes functions like supply chain, sales, or finance as indisputable business assets, data not so much!This session will address the above questions and share a comprehensive Enterprise Information Management (EIM) framework that depicts all the components to consider when embarking on a journey to treat ‘data as an asset’; emphasis will also be given to the key areas to prioritize on, for increased chances of program success.

Learning Objectives:

• what is ‘data is an asset’ and why it matters?
• EIM framework to start addressing data challenges, regardless the industry you’re in
• key tenets to prioritize and focus on
• exercise to strengthen understanding of some of the concepts/tools presented

Data Modeling, done well, is one of the most effective and precise ways to understand and document how a business manages itself and it is a highly effective way to enable a business rethink its core business. It legitimately can be called “business modeling”. Data Modeling is of the business, for the business, and by the business.”

This interactive session provides the Business Analyst and Manager with the tools and information to be able to understand and explain Business Data Models to business clients as well as be able to build a Business Data Model. 

Topics include:

• What is Business Data Modeling – Why do we do it?
• When do you build a Business Data Model?
• How do you build a Business Data Model?

Attendees will learn:

• How to build a Business Data Model with business clients who have never seen a data model.
• How to use the modeling session to clarify and re-engineer the business.
• How Active Listening affects the model and how to effectively listen to your clients.
• How to harness the collective knowledge of your clients to build a model that they embrace. 
• How to make the model truly their model.

The work we do demands the participation of many stakeholders – executives and managers, individual contributors, and architects and analysts of various stripes. One-on-one interviews are simply not enough to build a shared understanding of the current situation, and a shared vision of the future. Facilitated workshops are essential! But even for an experienced professional, facilitation can be a daunting prospect. “How can I initiate the session without silly inclusion activities?” “How can I keep an active group on track and productive?” “How can I deal with the inevitable disagreements or difficult participants?” Luckily, there are specific ways to deal with these and other situations.

This tutorial, designed expressly for analysts and architects and backed up by 35 years of facilitation experience, will introduce core facilitation techniques.

Key topics include:

• The importance of pre-session interviews – what to ask, what to listen for, and what to ignore;
• How to structure a session plan;
• The surprising value of “venting” early in a session:
• Five essential techniques for the facilitator, and how to deal with five tough situations;
• Proven session agendas, and a review of actual session outcomes.

IIBA®’s BABOK® provides 50 techniques and the Agile Extensions provide another 24 techniques as tools for business analysts to have at their hands to walk the gauntlet of challenges they will face as they lead the charge to provide business value to an organization. Reading how to do something is one thing but learning how to do it, applying it and then building upon your own skill set is a completely other side of the equation of these useful techniques.  Let alone, how do you have fun and not only engage your stakeholders, customers and clients, but get them also collaborating together and enjoying the change work for successful outcomes?

This tutorial session will focus on student participation and hands-on practice of using techniques directly from the the BABOK® Guide and Agile Extensions in new and innovative ways. Thoughts for what to do when your best practices fail to deliver and you need to adjust to delight your customer will be emphasized as core takeaways of the session. And how to have some fun by being innovative!

Learning Objectives:

• Identify new ways to apply techniques for greater outcomes with stakeholders
• Think differently about your own approach to utilizing techniques on business analysis and project management work
• Identify key applications of technique approaches that can be immediately applied to current real-world challenges

Have you ever been on a project where even though you are objective about your stakeholders’ needs, understand the project scope and determine the cost benefit, things still don’t turn out as expected. Could you have been affected by Cognitive Biases?– Why aren’t people coming up with new ideas in your workshops? It’s the status-quo bias, compounded by bandwagon bias.- Are your problem-solving sessions reaching the right solutions? If not, maybe it’s the conjunction fallacy or loss aversion bias – Why is estimating seen as a black art? Blame the planning fallacy and optimism bias.Join me in this workshop and we will explore these problems and others, drawing on the fields of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and applying them to Business Analysis. We’ll also investigate ways to overcome biases and help counter the natural tendencies of our brains.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what Cognitive Biases are
• Understand how biases affect you, as a Business Analyst, and your stakeholders
• How to spot common Cognitive Biases in others and help them see them too.
• Approaches for overcoming them, or using them to your advantage

Business analysis happens everywhere, not just on products and definitely still on agile projects. Without proper analysis projects will fail. As the voice of the customer, the Product Owner is a role in agile projects that is well suited for those with business analysis skills. Come join us for this half day tutorial where we’ll show you how to use your analysis skills as a Product Owner.

Do you currently work in a waterfall shop but desperately desire agile experience? Interested in learning how to transition your traditional business analysis skills to agile? There are a lot of business analysts still making the transition – so it’s not too late! Attend this hands-on workshop where you will learn by doing. Walk away knowing how to adapt your current skills to be a productive member of an agile team as you practice simulating the agile activities you should be leading and the techniques you should be performing.

Attendees Will:

• Recognize the agile principles and significance of adopting an agile mindset
• Walk away being able to compare/contrast traditional business analysis activities to expected agile activities
• Develop a product vision and roadmap
• Obtain first-hand experience transitioning writing business and functional requirements to user stories and acceptance criteria
• Create and refine a product backlog, participating in prioritization and story elaboration exercises

Learn agile business analysis practices through gamification. Attendees will be asked to find a new planet for earths’ inhabitants and will be required to use good analysis in order to save mankind. 

Lessons embedded in the game include:  

• Planning and Monitoring: BA activities must be planned. Teams need time to organize their work to be done during a phase. 
• Elicitation and Collaboration: There is no one way to obtain information from stakeholders. Teams will discover more ways to learn from them.
• Requirements Lifecycle Management: BAs manage a lot of information that is all related to different moments and different detail levels.
•  Strategy Analysis: We should never lose focus on the business need, even when we are in a deep technical layer.
• Requirements Analysis & Design Definition: Understand the information we have learned, give it structure, and decompose it in a way that promotes a common understanding.
• Solution Evaluation: Continuously evaluate the solution to see what more is needed to solve the need.

Learning Objectives:

• Analytical thinking and problem solving: to be straight-forward thinking, creative and focused on global solutions
• Behavioral characteristics: to be a team-player with honesty and ethical behavior
• Business knowledge: to understand the business needs and the solution needed to make successful decisions
• Collaboration: to understand that good communication and interaction are essential

Is there a role for Business Analysts in Agile? What type of mind-set do we need to be successful in Agile projects? This interactive Agile workshop will supercharge your Agile Business Analysis skills and help answer these important questions. We will cover the advanced analysis techniques within the BABOK’s Agile Extension in the space of 3 hours. Pardeep will use his unique teaching style and use of innovative teaching methods to create an impactful learning experience. Attendees will be introduced to an epic story of survival told through a variety of medium including, animation, storytelling, music and presentations. Allow yourselves to step into the shoes of the lead characters and utilise all of your Agile Business Analysis skills to overcome the challenges that face you.Whether you are new to Agile or an experienced practitioner, whether you are performing a Product Owner or a Business Analyst role, we have included something for everyone.

Learning Objectives:

• Psychology and mind-set required to maximise agility
• Core Business Analysis techniques for Agile projects
• Importance of outcome-based thinking for Product Owners
• Role of the Business Analyst in creating an effective Agile culture
• T Shaped Business Analysis skills
• Effective leadership traits for Business Analysts in Agile projects

Are you someone who is agile curious or will soon be working on agile projects? Agile concepts and practices are permeating software development. If you have not been exposed to agile yet, at some point you will. If you need to understand the basics, or simply brush up on the concepts of agile software development, this session is for you! Learn the basics of agile in a low-stress environment through hands-on exercises as we take a step-by-step journey to delivering a creative product. This is NOT a lecture-based workshop, but an interactive session where you will “learn by doing.”

Attendees Will Learn About:

• Scrum Basics
• Visualizing the Product
• Small Batch Sizing
• Story Writing
• Acceptance Test Writing
• Delivering a Product Within a Timebox

Imagine the scene. You’ve been ‘parachuted in’ to a new project assignment, and you’re faced with disagreement everywhere.  Stakeholders are fighting, and there isn’t any kind of consensus of what problem we’re trying to solve here let alone how we’re trying to solve it.  A senior stakeholder has suggested buying a particular IT system, and this is now being portrayed as a silver bullet that will solve all of the organization’s ills.  Yet you fear that if that avenue is pursued without analysis, we’ll get caught in a trap of having delivered exactly what they asked for only to find out it wasn’t what they actually needed.

If this scene resonates with you, then this session is for you!  During this hands-on, interactive and practical session, we’ll cover some strategic business analysis techniques that allow us to quickly navigate our way through, and carry out analysis, in messy problem situations during the early stages of the business change lifecycle.    

You’ll hear:

• Practical techniques for stakeholder analysis and management
• Techniques for getting to the root-causes of problems
• Techniques for ensuring there is a common view on the outcomes being sought by a project

This session will blend a range of traditional business analysis techniques with practical techniques from the world of systems thinking, enabling delegates to add a range of tools to their ‘toolkit’ that they can take away and use straight away.

Agile. Scrum. Lean. SAFe.Buzzwords to be certain, and also powerful ideas that have changed the landscape in which you and most other business analysts find yourselves today. How can you position yourself to be effective and ultimately successful in this environment?Join Kent McDonald to find out seven things business analysts need to know about agile and how you can use that knowledge to thrive as a business analyst.You’ll learn what an agile mindset is and how you can adopt one. You’ll find out how you can apply analysis practices you already use in a way that will make you the business analyst that all your teams will want to work with. You’ll find out about the roles that business analysts can play in agile environment and select the one that is the best fit for you.Whether you are an agile advocate in your organization or you’ve had agile “done to you,” come to this presentation to find out how to be the most agile business analyst you can be.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to adopt an agile mindset
• Apply the analysis skills you already know to be the business analyst that teams want to work with
• Assess the roles that business analysts can fill in an agile environment and select the one that best fits your interests and experience

As companies move towards increasingly digital business models, the basis of competition is shifting to drive a new focus on the needs of customers. The result is an increasing need for skilled product managers, a role that experienced business analysts are well suited to fill. To fill that role, BAs need to expand their skill set to include the ability to understand a market, define a unique and compelling value proposition, and define how to deliver on that. 

This workshop will enable you to:

• Describe the product management role, and how it differs from a business analyst or agile product owner.
• Identify market opportunities and define a value proposition for a product.
• Build a product roadmap that delivers increasing value over time.

Let’s get serious about User Stories!  Learn what good ones and bad ones look like and correct poor user story habits. Learn how to slice and split stories into increments of value, and learn how to handle technical stories.  We will look at common user story mistakes and strategies to correct them.  Come get serious about User Stories!

Come take a ride in the fast lane with this highly interactive workshop, to help Agile BAs understand the BA Role on agile teams, and focuses on high-quality user stories and related techniques.

Learning Objectives

• Discover what high-quality user stories look like
• Dig deep into mistakes many teams make with user stories, and how to correct them
• Experiment with innovative techniques that support great user stories

Bio:

John A. Zachman is the originator of the “Framework for Enterprise Architecture” (The Zachman Framework™) which has received broad acceptance around the world as an integrative framework, an ontology for descriptive representations for Enterprises.

Mr. Zachman is not only known for this work on Enterprise Architecture, but is also known for his early contributions to IBM’s Information Strategy methodology (Business Systems Planning) as well as to their Executive team planning techniques (Intensive Planning). He served IBM for 26 years, retiring in 1990 to devote his life to the science of Enterprise Architecture.

Mr. Zachman is the Founder and Chairman of his own education and consulting business, Zachman International®. He is also Founder of the Zachman Institute™, a nonprofit organization devoted to leveraging Zachman International’s vast network of professionals and resources to offer services to small businesses and nonprofit organizations as they prepare for and experience growth.

Mr. Zachman serves on the Executive Council for Information Management and Technology (ECIMT) of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) and on the Advisory Board of the Data Administration Management Association International (DAMAI) from whom he was awarded the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award. He was awarded the 2009 Enterprise Architecture Professional Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Advancement of the Enterprise Architecture Profession as well as the 2004 Oakland University, Applied Technology in Business (ATIB), Award for IS Excellence and Innovation.

Mr. Zachman has been focusing on Enterprise Architecture since 1970 and has written extensively on the subject. He has facilitated innumerable executive team planning sessions. He travels nationally and internationally, teaching and consulting, and is a popular conference speaker, known for his motivating messages on Enterprise Architecture issues. He has spoken to many thousands of enterprise managers and information professionals on every continent.

In addition to his professional activities, Mr. Zachman serves on the Elder Council of the Church on the Way (First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, California), the Board of Directors of Living Way Ministries, a radio and television ministry of the Church on the Way, the President’s Cabinet of The King’s University, the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Citywide Children’s Christian Choir, the Board of Directors of Heavenworks, an international ministry to the French speaking world and on the Board of Directors of Native Hope International, a Los Angeles based ministry to the Native American people.

Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Zachman served as a line officer in the United States Navy and is a retired Commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve. He chaired a panel on “Planning, Development and Maintenance Tools and Methods Integration” for the U. S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. He holds a degree in Chemistry from Northwestern University, has taught at Tufts University, has served on the Board of Councilors for the School of Library and Information Management at the University of Southern California, as a Special Advisor to the School of Library and Information Management at Emporia State University, on the Advisory Council to the School of Library and Information Management at Dominican University and on the Advisory Board for the Data Resource Management Program at the University of Washington. He has been a Fellow for the College of Business Administration of the University of North Texas and currently is listed in Cambridge Who’s Who.

Bio:

Matt has 15 years’ experience within the Financial Services sector and has held roles across Operations, Software Delivery, Change Management and Customer Strategy. 

After several years as a Senior BA working on large transformation programmes, Matt moved to lead the UK Business Analysis practice of 200 BA’s dedicated to Transformation initiatives.  

From here Matt took up a  Global role leading the Group’s Transformation Frameworks and methodology, which included an organisational pivot to adopt more agile ways of working.
More recently Matt has moved to the Customer Strategy and Insight function leading the Group’s social listening activity with a focus on driving customer insight into the business to drive customer-focused change.

Bio:

Angela Wick is the Founder & CEO of BA-Squared, LLC a training and consulting company that helps modernize requirements practices. With over 20 years’ experience she helps BAs, Product Owners, PMs, and teams develop the skills they need to inspire collaboration, creativity and innovation. Angela is passionate about helping traditional and agile teams build great products with great product and solution requirements practices.

Find out how Angela can help you at www.BA-Squared.com and get free requirements tips and trends by following Angela on [email protected]

Bio:

Scott Whitmire has nearly 40 years as a software engineer, business architect, and enterprise architect. Scott has experience in retail, manufacturing, defense, healthcare, banking, and professional practice. Scott’s background in accounting and engineering led to an expertise in all things related to measurement. As an enterprise-level architect, Scott has study, practiced, and implemented business architectures that center on processes and customer experiences, and the measures to link them together. As part of that, he has counseled business leaders at all levels, as well as providing continuing education to practicing professionals.

Bio:

Brian is an Agile Coach/Trainer at Brain Train, LLC with more than 20 years of experience in software development and 14+ years practicing agile. Brian has supported enterprise clients across multiple industries including: government, insurance, utilities, consulting services, financial services and manufacturing. Previously Brian was a PMO and Director of Project Delivery for a regional consulting company and VP of Professional Services at VersionOne. He has spoken at a number of conferences including: Better Software West, Cincinnati Day of Agile, Path to Agility, Agile Day Atlanta, Keep Austin Agile and Central Ohio PMI Professional Development Day. Brian is a President of the Columbus Chapter of the IIBA. He has a Masters of Education from Purdue University. When not coaching, Brian enjoys golfing and drinking craft beer.

Bio:

Jan Vanthienen is professor of information management at the Business Information Systems Group of KU Leuven (Belgium), where he is teaching and researching on business rules, processes and decisions. The area of business rules modeling, validation and verification, and decision modeling in the context of business process modeling has been his major area of research and expertise for many years. He is a regular speaker at BBC, where his nickname seems to be: not (just) the decision table guy.

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James Taylor is the CEO of Decision Management Solutions and is a leading expert in how to use business rules and analytic technology to build decision management systems. He is passionate about using decision management systems to help companies improve decision-making and develop an agile, analytic and adaptive business. He provides strategic consulting to companies of all sizes, working with clients in all sectors to adopt decision-making technology. James is an expert member of the International Institute for Analytics and is the author of multiple books and articles on decision management, decision modeling, predictive analytics and business rules, and writes a regular blog at JT on EDM. James also delivers webinars, workshops and training. He is a regular keynote speaker at conferences around the world.

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Steven Stanton is one of the pioneers of process innovation. His work is focused on improving the connections between processes, strategy, and governance and facilitating successful business transformation. In doing so, he has consistently assisted his clients in achieving significantly improved business performance.

Through his consulting, writing, and teaching, Mr. Stanton has participated in the development of many of the most innovative and valuable business ideas of the past ten years such as Reengineering and Process Management.
Mr. Stanton is the co-author, with Dr. Hammer, of the “Reengineering Revolution” (HarperBusiness) and the Harvard Business Review article “How Process Organizations Really Work”. In addition, he has published many articles on business transformation, and is a leading management thinker frequently cited by national publications.

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With over 35 years of consulting experience, Alec Sharp has provided business analysis and business change expertise around the world. He has also delivered hundreds of top-rated presentations at international conferences, always based on real-life experience. These include “Analyst or Stenographer?,” “Days not Weeks or Months – Process Change in Agile Timeframes,” “The Human Side of Data Modelling,” and “Agile and Modelling – What Works, What Doesn’t.” His book “Workflow Modelling” is a consistent best seller in the Business Process Change field, and is widely used as an MBA text and consulting guide. He was awarded DAMA’s Professional Achievement Award, a global award given to one professional a year for contributions to the Data Management profession.

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Nic is passionate about helping Cisco create something new (big or small) that adds value to its customers. He is currently the head of Cisco Design Thinking at Cisco Systems. His prior roles include that of Chief Innovation Officer at Milani design and consulting in Zurich, Switzerland and Head of Strategic Innovation Engagements at Cisco Systems. His extensive experience in both front and back end of innovation coupled with a foundation on culture building from his HR background, brings a unique blend to supporting Cisco’s customer’s toughest challenges. In a additional to his client side work, he spent 7 years at an innovation software company consulting with many blue chip clients like: General Electric, Chevron, HP, Proctor & Gamble, Humana, American Express. Nic graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a double major in International Business & Marketing. He currently lives in Charleston, SC with his wife Sophie. When he’s not working, he enjoys playing golf and drinking brown water.

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Gary Rush, IAF Certified™ Professional Facilitator (CPF), is Founder & CEO of MGR Consulting. Over the past 30+ years he has been a leading Group Facilitator and Facilitator Trainer. He is the only person, still working, to create his own facilitation techniques – FAST revolutionizing it with FoCuSeD™ – a unique approach to structured facilitation transforming the facilitation industry. He has trained thousands of people from more than 18 countries, and has delivered his structured facilitation class in 8 countries within North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. His students have gone on to become CEOs and CIOs, crediting their success to the people and process skills gained in his facilitator training classes. He has written “how to” books covering facilitation, data modeling, etc.

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Ronald G. Ross serves as Executive Editor of www.BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences world-wide. He gives popular public seminars through AttainingEdge (www.AttainingEdge.com) and IRM-UK (www.IRMUK.co.uk).
Mr. Ross is recognized internationally as the “father of business rules.” He has served as Co-Chair of the annual Business Rules Forum Conference since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group in the 1980s, and an editor of the two landmark BRG papers, The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance in a Volatile World and the Business Rules Manifesto. He is active in OMG standards development, with core involvement in SBVR.
Mr. Ross is Co-Founder of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (www.BRSolutions.com). At BRS, Mr. Ross co-develops Proteus®, its landmark business requirements methodology, including the popular RuleSpeak®. Mr. Ross is the author of eight professional books. His newest are: Business Rule Concepts (2009), a just-released 3rd edition of his popular, easy-to-read 1998 handbook, and Principles of the Business Rule Approach, Addison-Wesley (2003).

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Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. He is Immediate Past President of the UK chapter of the IIBA® and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change.

You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.ukand follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed

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Dr. Thomas C. Redman, “the Data Doc,” President of Data Quality Solutions, helps start-ups and multinationals; senior executives, Chief Data Officers, and leaders buried deep in their organizations, chart their courses to data-driven futures, with special emphasis on quality and analytics.  Tom’s most important article is “Data’s Credibility Problem” (Harvard Business Review, December 2013)   He has a Ph.D. in Statistics and two patents. 

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Jas Phul, CBAP, PMP, Cert. Agile PM is a seasoned professional whose career has spanned over 25 years of helping project teams and organizations reach their potential. As a Certified Business Analysis Professional® (CBAP®), a Project Management Professional® (PMP®), a Certified Agile Project Manager (Cert. APM®), and a Certified Change Management Expert (Prosci®), Jas leverages a unique combination of knowledge, skills and experience for each challenge. During his career, Jas has experienced a wide variety of industries as a Business Analyst, Project Manager, IT Software Development Manager, and Senior Management Consultant. 

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Laura is a business analyst practitioner, trainer, coach and consultant who has acquired her business analysis experience and skills across a 30-year career. She is an industry leader who has led the development efforts for some of the most widely recognized business analysis standards in use today. She served as Chair and contributing author for:• The PMI Guide to Business Analysis (PMI 2018)• A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide) v3 (IIBA 2015)• Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide (PMI 2015) Project Manager for:• BABOK® Guide v2 (2009)Laura served as the Head of Product Development for IIBA (2011-2014). Today she runs BA Academy, Inc. a training/consultant company based in Orlando, FL.

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Vincent Mirabelli is a leader in the fields of Business Process Improvement, Business Analysis and Lean Six Sigma, is a frequent speaker and workshop facilitator, and host of the podcast, “In Process”. A highly sought after speaker and instructor, Vince’s primary focus has been to share his knowledge and experience, helping businesses achieve optimal project and process outcomes. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®), Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®), Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

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Curtis is a business architect and creative consultant with expertise in publishing, media and higher education. For over 15 years, he has served both enterprises and startups with digital, agile and strategic business change and transformation. In 2012, he launched Minds Alert, a design agency based in Orlando, FL serving clients globally. He co-created the Discovery Leadership framework in 2017 and today offers product management and business model innovation workshops for organizations of all sizes.

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Kent writes about and practices software product development. He has IT and product development experience in a variety of industries including financial services, health insurance, nonprofit, and automotive. Kent practices his craft as Content Curator at Agile Alliance and provides just in time resources for product owners and business analysts at KBP.media. When not writing or product managing, Kent is his family’s #ubersherpa, listens to jazz and podcasts (but not necessarily podcasts about jazz), and collects national parks.

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Alfred has over 15 years’ experience in leading IT projects and IT services for a variety of different organizations and public administration. He is passionate about learning, disseminating knowledge and firmly believes in the Agile Manifesto value of individuals and interactions over processes and tools. As a business analysis, change management, IT management and project management instructor and mentor for Netmind, Alfred is able to combine his love for learning with management responsibilities in IT consulting.Alfred holds a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and is certified as a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP), Project Management Professional (PMP), PRINCE2, MSP, MoP and ITIL Approved Trainer.

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Gladys S.W. Lam is a world-renowned authority on applied business rule techniques. She is Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (BRSolutions.com), the most recognized company world-wide for business rules and decision analysis. BRS provides methodology, publications, consulting services, and training. Ms. Lam is Co-Creator of Proteus®, the BRS methodology. She is Co-Founder of BRCommunity.com, a vertical community for professionals and home of Business Rules Journal. She co-authored Building Business Solutions, an IIBA® sponsored handbook on business analysis with business rules
Ms. Lam is widely known for her lively, pragmatic style. She speaks internationally at conferences and other professional events. She co-presents public seminars through AttainingEdge. She is also Executive Director of Building Business Capability (BBC) Conference, which includes the Business Rules Forum and the Business Analysis Forum.
Ms. Lam is most recognized for her ability to identify the source of business issues, and for her effectiveness in developing pragmatic approaches to resolve them. She has gained a world-class reputation for fostering positive professional relationships with principals and support staff in projects.

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Milan is founding partner at Enterprise Design Associates, a global network of strategic designers working with enterprise ecosystems. He is the author of Intersection, a book introducing the Enterprise Design Framework for doing holistic design at scale. He’s worked with SAP, Boeing, Toyota, the OECD and the UN, as well as smaller organisations and scaling startups, and with Google for Startups helping successful companies to tackle key issues at scale using Enterprise Design Sprints. Milan is also one of the organizers of the Intersection Conference series. He has a mixed background in design, tech and business, and is teaching Enterprise Design at SciencesPo Paris.

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Jared loves being a Business Analyst and has done so in title for over 15 years with over 25 years of business and leadership experience in both the retail and energy sectors. He is a strong advocate for IIBA, having served in various capacities with the Calgary IIBA Chapter as well as chairing the Volunteer Chapter Network. He brings his passion for business analysis and experience as a Chapter Leader to the role of Director of Regions and Chapters of IIBA.

He holds his Bachelor of Arts degree in French from the University of Calgary and the Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) designation. He will take any chance possible to evangelize business analysis and will talk your ear off about the role and the profession should you allow him to do so.

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Joanna Goodrick (BA Hons, MSc, MBA) has led, shaped and influenced business architecture, strategy and business analysis in a wide variety of contexts for over a decade. Currently she heads up and leads Business Architecture at Cambridge Assessment, UK, the world’s largest provider of examinations to learners of all ages. Previously Joanna has worked in commercial, for-profit and international (Europe-based) industry sectors. She has led and formed business analysis, relationship management, project and portfolio management and is experienced in both enterprise and digital aspects of enterprise architecture and business change. Most recently, Joanna been working with aspects of agile product development and lifecycle management approaches and developing ways to establish these within complex, project-focused architectures and operating models.

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Pardeep is the Head of the Business Analysis Community of Practice and Agile Learning at Deutsche Bank. He is responsible for defining and rolling out the global Agile learning strategy for the organisation of approximately 100,000+ employees. He has over 19 years of experience in various technology delivery roles, and worked within regulated environments, including Financial Services, Telecommunications and Consultancy. Pardeep is the Communities Director for IIBA UK and specializes in multiple Agile frameworks, holding various certifications; CSPO (Scrum), CSM (Scrum), A-CSM (Scrum), SPC (Scaled Agile Framework), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum). He is also passionate about making Agile and Business Analysis education accessible to everyone.

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Alison (Ali) Cox has experience since the mid-1980s in various areas, including business analysis, project methodology development and training, systems development (mainframe, client-server, and web), and telecommunications management. Alison began her career in the financial services area, and then moved into systems development for accounting systems. She has provided consulting and training in agile, business analysis and project management for small companies to Fortune 500 corporations worldwide and speaks Spanish fluently.

Alison is also a partner of TEMSS (Telecommunications Efficiency Management Strategies and Services), which provides telecommunications efficiency auditing and billing analysis services to clients in all areas of business across the United States. She completed her Master of Business Administration in MIS and Accounting from the University of Georgia.

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Dr. Cort Coghill is the director for education operations at the FEAC Institute. In this role, he works with hundreds of enterprise architects every year helping them to help solve a broad variety of problems facing their enterprises. He speaks at different conferences and classrooms around the world every year. His experience includes prior service in the United States Navy, United States Civil Service and as Senior Researcher and Program Manager for the Battelle Memorial Institute. He is passionate about education and research in the field of enterprise architecture and systems engineering. His dynamic speaking style and engagement with audiences helps to make material and the learning experience accessible to his audience.

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Jamie is beyond her “passionate BA” title and truly embodies business analysis and adding value to those around her everyday. An accomplished speaker and trainer, she enjoys sharing with others ways to improve their analysis skill sets, unique ways to look at the world and how to be more accomplished with measurable results. Her company Champagne Collaborations allows her to partner with growing organizations and amazing entrepreneurs to collaborate and bring powerful insight to allow teams to be wildly successful. A strong background that has leveraged her past work experience in information technology, business analysis, project management, process improvement and knowledge management has allowed her to work across industries with organizations around the world. When she’s not collaborating with her business partners, you can find her collaborating with her friends and family on the Hawaiian waters on a surfboard.

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Dr Liz Calder’s 20 year Business Analysis experience ranges from leading cross-functional and global teams in large organisations to being part of a small digital agency team, with clients from the science, life-science and education sectors. Whatever the environment she knows that what makes a project a success is the combination of good project practice and getting the best from the people in your project. She thrives on making sure that all stakeholders get the most out of a new system or website and uses insights from the fields of psychology & behavioural economics to push for the best outcomes for all involved. Liz is Director of Blue Raccoon Ltd, a Business Analysis consultancy, and blogs at her site blueraccoon.co.uk/articles. She is also IIBAUK Communities Director for the North and Scotland.

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Roger T Burlton is the co-founder of BPTrends Associates, founder of Process Renewal Group and the author of ‘Business Process Management: Profiting from Process’. He is considered an industry leader in the introduction of innovative approaches for organizational change. He is recognized internationally for his contributions in Business Process Management, Stakeholder Analysis, Strategic Architecture Alignment, Prototyping and people based Project Management Methodologies. He is regarded as a realistic practitioner, who delivers pragmatic solutions for his clients.

An exceptional speaker, he has chaired several high profile conferences on Advanced Business and Information Management around the world. To date, he has conducted over six hundred seminars and has presented to over forty thousand professionals. His seminars have been translated for diverse audiences around the globe.

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Kevin Brennan is an executive and business analysis consultant who helps companies getting off the ground or undergoing major change create new business models, develop new products and services, and improve their business processes. After two decades of leadership in the business analysis profession, he knows how to define and execute clear strategies that deliver important changes with limited resources, and that the key to success in strategy is engaging the people who will have to execute it in its formation. Kevin helped to launch IIBA and the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA-FCAB), led the creation and development of the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide), and has written and spoken about business analysis on every continent (except Antarctica).

Kevin holds the CBAP, PMP, and Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) certifications. He is a cancer survivor and in his “spare time” chauffeurs his children to their after-school and weekend activities.

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Dora Boussias is a strategic thought leader, passionate about organizational transformation towards data-driven/data-informed culture, with extensive implementation expertise in Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and Enterprise/Solution Architecture (EA). She brings high energy and enthusiasm for her work; leading with business context, leverages technology and architecture best practices to drive actionable insights fueled by high quality, relevant and timely data, on solutions that balance strategic direction with pragmatic needs.

Currently and throughout most her career in leadership roles of enterprise-wide reach, Dora has had the opportunity to make an impact with her work at global organizations such as Stryker, GE Capital, and Prudential. Her 20+ year career includes exposure to Financial Services, Healthcare/Medical Technology, and Retail.

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Roy Barnes is CEO of Blue Space Consulting, an Orlando-based firm focusing on helping for- and not-for-profit companies build competencies in leadership, execution strategy, customer engagement, team empowerment, and change management.

Roy brings twenty years of management at Marriott International with him to the podium. He connects with people because he speaks from passionate, in-the-trenches experience. His industry-leading work has been noted in several Harvard case studies as well as in best-selling books from Kaplan and Norton, and Peppers and Rogers among others. His performance excellence work resulted in Marriott being inducted into the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame.

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Sasha Aganova brings breakthrough results to the Business Process Management arena by integrating cultural development into the methodology. She is an expert in BPM and Continuous Improvement with over 15 years’ experience in leading large scale process improvement initiatives, establishing Business Process Management best practices and developing the overall process Architecture in various business environments and industries. Sasha has helped some of the largest Canadian and international companies to evaluate and implement BPM.