BBC 2021 Tutorials Announced

Organizations are increasingly embarking on ‘digital transformation’ programs. Yet the words ‘digital’ and ‘transformation’ often mean very different things to different people and there’s a real danger that changes will be implemented that don’t meet expectations (or perhaps make things worse!). 

Business analysis is a crucial enabler to creating clarity over what is needed, and why change is being pursued in the first place.  It’s easy to imagine that we need a whole new set of BA tools.. But the good news is that our existing toolkit works well in a digital context too! All we need is a shift in analysis focus. 

In this practical, hands-on and interactive session you will hear about a range of analysis tools that are relevant in a digital context.  The session covers:

• Techniques for understanding stakeholder perspectives, engagement and understanding what outcomes stakeholders want. 
• A practical approach to Journey Mapping
• What ‘business events’ are and why they matter
• Approaches to challenging existing constraints and innovating

You will take away a practical, applicable toolkit that you can use on your own projects.

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

All projects have their promoters and their detractors, people that can either make or break your project or your team.  This presentation will give you practical advice on who you need to focus on, show you how to classify where each person sits on the “Interest, Attitude, and Power” axis of your Stakeholder chart and how to improve the attitude and interest of the power players in your world.  

This presentation will cover the basics and then quickly move into advanced topics, using exercises and situational case studies to emphasize key points, to help you achieve the best win-win outcome for you, your team and your project.

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

Very few people fully comprehend written requirements documentation. Agile representations of requirements documentation is in pictures!  In this session we’ll cover different forms of process modeling, from beginner to intermediate, including brainstorming processes, basic process modeling, pivotal process flows, and sequence diagrams. Pivotal Process Flows are an innovative approach to process modeling.  

There is a TED Talk that says if you can model Making Toast, you can model ANY process. Communicating with pictures is a fundamental BA Skill. A picture is worth a thousand words!

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

When you use a Google map, you want to see where your destination is in relation to where you are. But you also want to know what you’ll find along the way; what the traffic conditions are like; which way to go in case of an accident. In contrast, when look at most process maps, all you get is a picture. Sure, it’s helpful to see the path from start to finish, but you also need to identify the key players, what risks you’ll encounter; which alternate paths you might need; and where to get additional information. If your organization’s process maps are little more than pictures, come to this workshop to get hands-on experience creating content-rich maps. The exercises for this workshop were created for Microsoft Visio but many of the ideas could be used with other mapping software. Note: this is a hands-on workshop. You will need a laptop with Microsoft Visio installed, preferably Visio Professional or Visio Plan 2, although you’ll be able to complete most exercises with Visio Standard.

A great Product Owner can help organizations achieve amazing outcomes for their customers.  As more organizations transform to an Agile way of working, many Business Analysts have the opportunity to step up to a Product Owner role.  A Product Owner needs many of the same skills as Business Analysts, but it also requires additional knowledge, skills, and a mindset shift.  Will you be ready for this next step in your career?

Successful Product Ownership is more than backlogs and user stories.  It involves a deep understanding of how to find the right problem/solution fit and the right product/market fit.

In this tutorial, you’ll experience product development from concept to cash and understand how to discover the right customer problems to solve to maximize the value delivered by your team.  You’ll learn the tools of the product management trade and be able to apply those new techniques in your organization.

Join us for this session and take your career to the next level.

In an age of increasing complexity where time is precious, building meaningful connections with stakeholders is becoming more challenging. Business Analysts must find new innovative ways to engage their audience. In recent years the concepts of ‘Visual Thinking’ and ‘Sketchnoting’ have grown in popularity with many companies now starting to recognise the power of visualisation as a means of exploring complex problems, making information easier to retain and recall, generating ideas, creating engagement and so much more…

This hands-on workshop aims to provide BA’s with a practical introduction to Visual Thinking and Sketchnoting. It will explain what visual thinking is and why it is such a powerful tool for BA’s to capture the attention of their teams and stakeholders. Delegates will get a firm grounding in the building blocks of visual thinking with practical exercises that will help to build confidence and overcome ICD (“I can’t draw”) syndrome!

You’re a Business Analyst. You know how to elicit requirements and analyse them. You are objective about your stakeholders’ needs, understand the project scope, can determine the cost benefit and yet you still hit challenges like these:

·       Why aren’t people coming up with new ideas in your workshops?

·       Your problem problem-solving sessions don’t reach the right solution!

·       Estimating is seen as a black art…….

What if you knew what influences people to take one course over another? 

There is so much more to a decision feeling right for somebody than just the facts in front of them.  Join me in this workshop and we will explore these problems and others, draw on the fields of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and apply them to Business Analysis. We’ll investigate ways to overcome cognitive biases and help counter the natural tendencies of our brains.

You will take away from this session

· What a Cognitive Bias is

· How they affect both you, and your stakeholders

· How to spot common Cognitive Biases in others and help them see them too.

· How to spot them in yourself

· Approaches for overcoming them, or using them to your advantage

How do you go from an initial idea or brief, through step-by-step preparation, to an engaging, well-run, effective session resulting in agreed actions and clear follow up?  Join Penny Pullan as she shows you how to feel competent and confident as you deliver great results, with everyone committed to their actions afterwards, whether meeting virtually or face-to-face. With a timely focus on the challenge of hybrid environments.

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.

What Attendees Will Learn

• What is ‘data is an asset’ and why it matters?
• Enterprise Information Management (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

Throughout history, people we now count as great innovators and creative minds faced challenges and roadblocks. When we encounter impediments, should we abandon our ideas, should we back off, should we play it safe? Nah! Let’s challenge the norm, identify a new outlandish goal, and abandon old paradigms. When the path to successful innovation is clear, are you ready for the Innovator’s journey? In this workshop, we’ll explore the vast, complicated universe of creativity and innovation. We’ll discover a framework for innovation and creativity that will help us fan the spark within our organizations and projects, to find those curious risk takers and ground breakers. We’ll learn to identify where we are within the framework and how to leap to the next level.

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

A golden rule: “Understand the real need before proposing a solution”. Although everyone recognizes this rule, a lot of enterprises still start with a specific defined solution for an unknow need. There is a misunderstanding of the value of the BA, seen as a contract generator who must define all the OUTPUTS to be delivered by a development team. At the end, dissatisfied customers complain: “This solution does not solve my need”. The development team is unhappy: “Need? What need? We did exactly what was asked.” Result: dissatisfied customers and developers. This situation must change. An executive view of any enterprise must make the current situation clear and describe the OUTCOMES expected. Detailed scope, budgets and plans are only made later, incrementally and with the collaboration and creativity of the development team who must take responsibility for reaching OUTCOMEs instead of OUTPUTs. 

Learning objectives – What you will learn:

• How to represent requirements in the form of OUTCOMEs instead of OUTPUTs 
• Techniques to understand and represent the current situation and the desired situation in a collaborative way 
• How to sell a change to the executive team Presentation Level Foundational

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!

Cybersecurity is no longer an IT problem to solve. Today, it’s a top priority for most business leaders, while customers expect companies to keep their information secure, and regulatory mandates increasingly add pressure to tighten controls. And with a massive shortage of cybersecurity talent, organizations need everyone to take responsibility for cybersecurity – to think and act securely. And to ensure that cybersecurity solutions are value-driven, performing accurate risk assessments are foundational. In this workshop the presenters who are also the co-authors of the IIBA Cybersecurity Business Analysis Certification and exam writers will share strategies and methodologies to address the mammoth Cyber-world issues through tutorials, group discussions, and risk assessment exercises on real-life security incidents. You will learn to implement key security components and take away approaches to implement today and onward in the ever-expanding new cyber-landscape.

The practice of architecture (enterprise, business, data, etc.) needs a services-based approach to providing business-outcome focused results. An architecture playbook captures the essential elements of architecture services providing the architecture practice team with a means of building, maturing, and even reinventing the architecture practice. Individual plays identify the type of service, the target stakeholders (i.e., customers), as well as recommend team composition, work approach, deliverables, tools, and more.  Individual architecture plays provide a descriptive foundation to grow the architecture practice team’s skills, toolsets, and adapt as organizational customer needs evolve. Participants will receive access to a sample playbook containing a range of plays addressing architectural services as well as orientation on the different parts and how tailor them for individual team use.

Participants in this innovative and creative tutorial walk away with a pragmatic approach to analysis, discovery, and use of effective process KPIs – a necessary tool for sustained business agility.

Why is process performance measurement both an obvious requirement and commonly absent management tool? If we aren’t measuring process performance, we aren’t managing processes, and we can’t know if we are improving them. We need practical process performance measurement so, firstly, we can decide which processes need improving and, secondly, know if improvements are being realized.

Drawing on many real-life examples this interactive tutorial provides a simplified and effective method for discovery of process KPIs. Participants get plenty of practical experience through group exercises. Bring your own process KPI challenges to the KPI Klinik part of the tutorial and we’ll help you to solve them.

What Attendees Will Learn:

• The vital role of process performance measurement
• How to discover process KPIs
• The characteristics of a good process KPI
• The importance of the KPI measurement method
• Sorting the critical few from the important many
• Pitfalls in setting performance targets