2019 Conference Agenda

Monday - Friday, Nov. 11-15

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

The importance of formally managing your customer experience has never been greater in today’s ultra-competitive markets. Organizations closest to their customers are growing fast, while their competitors are being left behind.

The solution is to super-charge your customer experience in ways that unlocks customer, financial and employee engagement.  

In our keynote session, you’ll explore:

• The 8 best practices that produce the fastest financial and quantitative customer results.
• How to unleash the untapped power of your workforce
• How technology can both help and trap customer teams and leaders
• How rapid touchpoint re-design can improve experience quickly and produce substantial cost reductions
• How to use clearer customer metrics to stay aligned and productive 

In February 2018, Republic Bank of Chicago launched their Rethink RBank program to crowdsource employee ideas. Administered by the bank’s Innovation Task Force, the program has been highly successful in generating ideas to increase sales, enhance the customer experience, and improve processes. Most importantly, the program has nurtured a culture of change and innovation in a traditional organization. Learn about the steps taken to get this employee ideation program off the ground and how the team used concepts from behavioral science to fuel its success.

Learn how:

• to successfully plan and launch an ideation program
• behavioral science should influence your incentive decisions
• to maintain program momentum
• about common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Business agility doesn’t happen by accident. Tinkering with organizational schemes can be helpful, but will not be sufficient. Rapid software development can’t get you there either. You must engineer for change – and your solutions must be scalable and sustainable.

Challenges abound. Organizations are undergoing rapid digital transformation. Most processes and entire industries are being disrupted. How do you survive and thrive in these challenging times?

The Knowledge Age requires major adjustments. Professionals need a laser focus on the knowledge assets that make the company smart – rules, vocabularies, decisions, and strategy. Business agility can be engineered under digital transformation!

• How you should think about business agility
• Why data quality is more of a problem – and a different problem – than you think
• Policy busting – key to business transformation

While most people think of technology and IT in terms of The Social Network and Silicon Valley, most of us do not work in early stage startups or in Silicon Valley where inspiration, innovation, or dramatic business decisions can accomplished in less than an hour. For us in Product and Business Analyst roles, innovation and inspiration comes from searching and solving customer problems in new or unorthodox ways. This session will discuss some of the techniques and communications needed to spur creativity not only within yourself and peers, but to managers, directors, and ultimately the C-Suite. Additionally this session will also discuss how Business Analyst, Product Owners, and Product Managers can all work together to move organizations forward. 

Learning Objectives:

• How to Innovate within an “old-school” environment
• Leverage Requirements Gathering & BA Skills to Influence Decision Makers
• How to create a Compelling Business Case when the financial implications are not clear
• How to Align BAs, Product, and Marketing within the innovation process

At the heart of Design Thinking is the aim to improve and create products by analyzing and understanding users’ interaction with products and their way of utilization. Compared to the traditional software development lifecycle, Design Thinking approach focuses on the needs, expectations and pain points that are derived by employing customer centric techniques such as ‘Customer Journey Maps’ and ‘Empathy Maps’. In addition to these hidden needs and expectations of customers can be identified by utilizing techniques such as ‘Affinity Diagrams’ and ‘Mind Maps’. The outcomes can be used to generate creative ideas and then prioritized ones are presented in terms of prototypes to be evaluated with customers. In each and every phase of Design Thinking collaboration is the main focus to leverage different perspectives and to reach a better solution iteratively.

This presentation explains the Design Thinking approach for business analysis in Agile organizations by focusing on techniques, the way of working and customer-centric viewpoint.

Learning Objectives:

• Design Thinking Explanation and Five Phases
• Presentation and Examples of Design Thinking Techniques
• Design Driven Business Analysis in Agile World
• Design Thinking Workshops and High Level Prototyping

Responding to the challenges of the 21st century requires people to be creative, innovative and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use creative thinking purposefully. Every great idea seems obvious. But how can you be the genius who comes up with those ideas? Do you wish you could apply creative and design thinking at work to try things that have never been done before – better meet your customers’ needs, or solve problems holding your company back? 

This interactive session packed with creative exercises/challenges will show you how to look at same information as everyone else, but see something different. It expounds on the idea of innovation with design thinking. Oluwabori will share how his organisation has unleashed creativity and innovation by fostering a culture where people are open to failing fast and learning from it, where feedback is desired early as possible, solutions for an important problem are tested repeatedly via experiments before investments are made using data and evidence and not opinion.

Learning Objectives:

• Generate out-of-the box ideas by using proven creative thinking strategies
• Apply Design Thinking to identify and choose opportunities that enable innovation, solving real problems
• Question assumptions and explore alternative solutions that are beyond any preconceived limitations
• Use Design Sprints to help generate and test new ideas quickly
• Minimise debate around investments by using confident data and evidence as basis for decisions
• Understand reasons why teams may lack creativity in organizations and how to overcome them

Over the last six years, companies have increasingly struggled with the upkeep of business decisions and processes. If new opportunities arise and prompt changes to software applications and systems, the IT group comes under renewed pressure to roll out these changes faster than ever before.

Companies have to invest in Business Rules Management Systems to allow for the implementation and management of rules in a consistent, visible and traceable manner, separated from other IT systems.

Great! Problem solved, but not so fast. Are we now placing the management of business rules/decisions in the hands of the IT organization? This is the dilemma that most companies face today.

We have the tools, but who will police and author these rules and processes? This is where the Knowledge Engineer comes to the rescue.

The need for managing knowledge in an organization has become a critical factor for success. Whether organizations want to acknowledge it or not, knowledge has become the center of modern software architectures.

Learning Objectives:

• Who is responsible for managing organizational knowledge
• How an organization can be successful at managing knowledge
• What role a Knowledge Engineer plays and his/her responsibilities
• The skills and capabilities needed to be a Knowledge Engineer

Learn how HSBC is focusing on the importance of customer insight in helping drive successful change, as well as how they are using AI/Machine Learning to help better understand their customers and their experiences to build better customer solutions and deliver more value.

Organizational fitness means being ready, willing, and able to respond quickly, appropriately, creatively, and safely to performance issues and opportunities in an agile manner—indeed, advanced fitness enables prediction of such events. Fit organizations are change ready because they study the fundamentals, develop skills, build systems to search for evidence, and practice for the events.

This presentation explores new directions in coupling process-based management and organizational fitness. Drawing on case study experience, it explores key attributes of organizational fitness and how they are developed and maintained by conscious process management and continuous process improvement.

Action-ready suggestions are provided for developing and maintaining organizational fitness through process-based management.

Creative, continuous attention to process performance is not just about IT, or automation, or modelling, or KPIs—it’s about all of that and much more to ensure that an organization is fit for purpose.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding organizational fitness
• Process impacts on organizational fitness
• Achieving process fitness
• Dealing with barriers to fitness
• The process gym

We all know, by now, that siloed approaches to managing ‘work’ are, at best, suboptimal and at worst a nightmare. With all the changes and pressures organizations face today, getting processes right is more important than ever. Customer experience and value delivery demands it. Information management and data quality is impossible without it. Business performance management and cross-functional business governance needs its aligned framework. Operational risk and compliance programs start with a process structure to establish controls for auditors to assess. Defining SOPs, roles and work instructions for workers are derived from process designs. Software design and development must know the requirements to connect the end to end dots. A digitalized process still follows a business workflow needed to assure data integrity. Agile software development needs a clear process scope and purpose. Culture change requires a framework to enable it to stick.

No matter if you are dealing with enterprise-wide concerns or detailed development of specific business capabilities, a process-oriented approach just delivers better results.

This ‘back to the future’ session will visit the most effective ways to use business processes to deliver better outcomes in all your efforts.

• Enterprise/Business level process practices
• Process design practices for customer value and an agile business
• Process modeling choices for business and software design
• Governance and ownership myths and realities
• The growing usage of processes for concurrently managing performance, risk and compliance

It’s said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, but many organizations, out of fear or inexperience, don’t actively attempt to shape their culture. They know it’s important but don’t know what to do about it.  However,  in today’s turbulent environment, human capital is often the only enduring strategic advantage.  But when employees are too busy to think and their days are filled with endless emails and unproductive meetings, it’s difficult to leverage the staff’s capabilities.  This session will focus on how individual core behaviors such as collaboration, curiosity, and commitment translate into organizational strengths. When organizations make their “soft” stuff hard, they can leverage all of the innate capabilities of their employees. The key to success lies in focusing on behaviors, not culture as the vehicle for change.

Learning Objectives:

• While being too busy inhibits “thinking”
• what are the most important behaviors for success
• What can attendees do about culture

Building business capability is about the future. It’s about mapping the trajectory of development in our complex, exciting, unknowable business ecosystem based on our experiences, insights, and aspirations. It’s a tough gig!  Future View is the BBC panel that accepts the challenge.

Taking up the theme of this year’s conference, the panel will explore what it might mean to unleash genuine creativity in our future organizations. We’ll thread a path between the ‘obvious’ short term changes and the radical changes that perhaps seem, for now at least, more sci-fi than reality. What might it be like to experience a-day-in-the-life of a truly creative organization of the future? 

Comparing apples and oranges has its challenges, in the same way that business leaders very often struggle to prioritise and fund one enterprise transformational objective over another. Enterprise Business Architecture can significantly improve strategic decision making, by creating a more holistic and egalitarian view of the enterprise. In this presentation, Philip will outline how the use of business architecture can help to link an enterprise strategy with program delivery and support rapid decision making.

Learning Objectives:

• Capability-based planning
• Customer-centric business transformation
• Strategic decision-making

We are in the age of paradigm shift whereby business models are rapidly evolving in response to greatly altered customer needs: goodbye landline phones, telephone directories, and staffed checkouts. If we look closely, consumer needs have not changed. The way in which value is delivered has changed as the wider business environment changes.

This session will challenge the way you think about business. You will learn how to unpack disruptive innovations, like uber-to-taxi, and crypt-to-currency; so they can be applied in your own organisation using a series of case-studies and interactive activities. Trends and changes, current and impending, are highlighted at the societal, industry and consumer level; and how they relate to industry competitiveness.  The concepts taught are an alternative to traditional performance improvement methods; capable of inducing transformational changes which will set you apart from those competing on traditional methods. 

Key concepts include problem-value-solution dynamic, push based economics, value-based competition & value-change drivers.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the concept of problem-value-solution dynamic and how it creates paradigm shifts
• Understand the drivers of value changes at the societal, industry and consumer level
• Learn how to anticipate, create and respond to paradigm shifts

Answer sincerely:

1. Has your company adopted the most state-of-the-art agile frameworks for software development, but the expected agility has not yet become a business reality?

2. You’ve changed the way you specify requirements and now all you do are user stories and epics in backlogs or in release plans … but you still struggle to understand what is business value?

3. Your company’s IT department says it is agile, but in each new request from the business areas you need to start the analysis from scratch, mapping AS-IS state or reverse-engineering source code to find out the current business rules?

If you answered YES to any of the above questions, you need to know that the key to real business agility is not in software requirements, but in how you articulate, understand, and manage business knowledge.

Based on years of experience helping several companies to organize their requirements management methodologies, Fabrício Laguna shows how to organize and maintain the knowledge bases necessary to increase business agility.

Learning Objectives:

• How to manage requirements in business knowledge bases.
• The key techniques to map business knowledge.
• How you can increase business agility by configuring processes and rules.

Millions of income tax returns are calculated with BRM software that is generated from business rules: the Dutch Tax and Custom Authority (DTCA) uses BRM technology for critical applications.

At the DTCA business rules (based on tax law and regulations) are specified in RegelSpraak (the Dutch version of RuleSpeak). A set of best practices is available for business analysts to transform relevant tax law and tax regulation into RegelSpraak. This is supported by software that facilitates traceability. RegelSpraak rules are put into our language workbench (ALEF) together with test cases. These test cases can be evaluated in ALEF even before working software is available. ALEF is capable of generating software that can be directly used in production environments.

We will show how this is implemented at the DTCA and the lessons learned. We will also pay attention to our pitfalls and further improvements.

Learning Objectives:

• Get an idea of how BRM is implemented at the DTCA.
• An understanding of the best practices that are used to specify rules in RegelSpraak
• An understanding how software is generated on the basis of RegelSpraak
• A clear understanding how specifying rules and test cases improve the development process.
• Understand how BRM benefits from new technologies (dsl’s, model driven software engineering)

Capabilities are the buzzword in business architecture.  There is plenty of talk about the business capability map and other high-level models of business capabilities.  What is missing is the business reasoning behind thinking in terms of capabilities.  Capabilities, once understood, can lead to disruptive innovation from the largest of companies and can be a stifling influence in the market from smaller companies.

Learning Objectives:

• A precise understanding of the concept of a capability.
• Leveraging capabilities for innovation and growth.
• The uniqueness of business capabilities.

In the corporate world, life comes at you fast. Learn this, do that, redo this, scratch that, we’re changing our strategy! It’s no secret that we are living in a time where the acceleration of innovation and complexity are exponentially increasing every day. So how do you create and nurture the right skills, mindsets and culture to continuously drive innovation for today’s and tomorrow’s markets? Learn how Cisco Systems has moved from 31st to 6th on BCG’s most innovative companies list and from 67th to 6th on Fortune’s Best companies to work for in the last 3 years. Strap in as we give you the unpolished, practioner-focused tips to help you build world class intrapreneurs.

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

The Canadian manufacturing and sales operations of 2 large household name manufacturers needed to be integrated as part of a global effort triggered by the merger of these 2 brands a few years earlier. Taking a business design approach to develop the future state of the integrated business unit proved to be a very effective way to focus the integration effort to achieve the desired business outcomes of acting as one. Newly defined business processes became the basis to drive organizational realignment and role design, technology change requirements, staff training, and business governance. It also became an overall communication tool to ensure all stakeholders are aligned on both the reasons for, and the details of the required changes.

In this presentation, Sasha will:

• Describe the high-level objectives of the integration effort, and associated tight timelines
• Discuss how to tackle complex requirements, dealing with change for two unique established businesses
• Share how business architecture and process models can be effectively used as a stakeholder engagement and communication tool
• Demonstrate examples of some of the actual documentation formats used through-out the project.

Realizing strategy is not a new challenge.  In fact, over the last decade a number of books, articles, presentations, and courses have been devoted to this challenge/topic. There is no one set answer to achieving better strategic realization.  There are a wide variety of terms used to describe this challenge – e.g., strategy-to-execution, strategic execution, strategic portfolio management, and so on.  This session will look at how the Verisk IoT organization redesigned its strategy-to-execution model.  Attendees will learn several key techniques to improve their organization’s ‘strategy realization’.  The session will include some strategy execution theory, but attendees will gain insight on how these theories were put to practical use.

Learning Objectives:

• Define business strategy realization.
• Mapping strategy and execution to an organization’s capabilities.
• How to blend multiple execution techniques.

Organizations that grow rapidly – particularly through acquisition – face significant challenges in standardizing policies and processes. This is especially true in a retail environment where the companies acquired are well-established stores with their “own way of doing things”. So how do you successfully implement corporate policies and processes in a fiercely-independent culture?

The approach needs to factor in not just the policies and processes themselves, but how to effectively change behavior. This includes:

• Identifying pain points that can benefit from clearer policies or simplified processes
• Designing policies and processes that allow for some flexibility
• Measuring progress towards compliance with the policies and processes
• Implementing meaningful sanctions for non-compliance. 

OpenRoad Auto Group recognized that a lack of standardization would greatly reduce their ability to identify and develop customer relationships across stores, optimize shared resources such as Accounting, Human Resources (HR) & Information Technology (IT), and provide employees with opportunities across stores. They undertook to standardize their policies and processes, first for HR and then for Accounting.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the role culture plays in implementing policies and procedures
• To learn the importance of performance measurement
• To see how sanctions for policy non-compliance can affect behavior

While attempting to understand our client’s business processes and issues, we found that there is often a gap between the strategy and the vision that led to the current implemented design. Through review of case studies, strategies do not make it into the core business operations due to lack of understanding between the current business process and the expected future state; the inability to visualize the end processes. In order to understand our client’s strategies, visions, and really dig into their issues, we have found using a holistic approach of creating 3D design models of their business from end to end paints a picture that not only helps us understand the current state of our client’s businesses and clarify requirements / issues they are telling us about but also tells us about the unknown issues that are just beneath the surface. we have been able to show an augmented current business process identifying pain points and producing future models that align with strategies while showing optimization gains before change begins.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how 3D modeling is applied to Business Process Optimization
• Review steps taken to identify gaps in understanding current business process vs. the initiated strategy (Gap Analysis)
• Identify the real-time value of seeing business process changes lead to bottom-line impact in your business before physical change is made

One of the primary responsibilities of business analysts, product owners, and all other product people is to build and maintain a shared understanding of the outcome your team seeks to deliver. Conversations are an effective way to build that shared understanding.

You may find yourself wondering who should be included in those conversations, when do you have these conversations, what should you talk about, and how do you remember what you said?

Join Kent McDonald as he introduces example mapping, a technique that helps you structure your conversations and build a shared understanding.

You’ll learn how to determine the right people to include in your conversations, when the best time is to have those conversations, how to structure those conversations, and how to remember what you said.

Learning Objectives:

• How to determine the right people to include in your conversations to build shared understanding
• When the best time is to identify examples
• How to build shared understanding with your stakeholders and team

Change is soooo fun!!! No? Even if you agree (as a BA, it is your daily world, correct?), but I would expect that is not always the sentiment of your stakeholders, particularly with difficult or sensitive change. So, how do you shift the negative limbic response to a positive limbic response so you can get to the good stuff….logic? In this session we will discover the power of fun in change, learn the basics of several techniques (such as MindMapping, Speedboat and Flip It) that turn scary into fun and even practice one or two.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover how fun shifts the psychological response to negative emotion
• Understand some of the techniques to turn scary change into a little fun
• Practice application of a “fun” technique – audience choice

We tell the story of our successful experience and approach for innovation projects. Business Analyst is expected to be value driven from both customer need and organizational motive. BA need to explicit real customer value by sensitivity and blue print strategy to action logically. We also found it effective to design new business through iterative thinking of 6 diagrams from the view of value, requirement(strategy/business), process and activity with their mutual traceability. We emphasize the importance of balancing and realizing multiple business stakeholders’ value (create HAPPINESS for all) not just pursuing the focused end-customer value for the real business success.

Learning Objectives:

• Process to design business from value to action
• Approach to ensure multiple stakeholders’ value
• Method to integrate customer’s needs and internal seeds

Unprecedented changes in the business context are forcing organizations to take stock of the current capabilities of their workforce. Consequently, business analysis professionals will have to master new skills as their current jobs evolve alongside the rise of digitalization, capable machines and changing business practices. Both organizations and practitioners need to chalk out a future-ready career architecture for business analysis roles.

This presentation offers an evidence-based framework to create an effective strategy for reskilling, competency building and underlying career architecture to address the business analysis skills gap.

Key Takeaways

• Learn about IIBA’s career architecture framework
• Individuals can apply the framework to build and align their business analysis career to business and technology trends
• Organizations can leverage this framework to create an organization wide business analysis capability aligned to their business and technology needs. Organizations will be able to determine the right resource fit for the right role

• Do you believe you behave ethically at work?

• Have you even thought about it?

The world we live in has moved from a physical realm to one where we now live partly digitally. It is growing organically,  with every bright idea leading to a thousand new opportunities. But who decides what is the right thing to do in this new world? Well, we do! The professionals and the teams that create it.

So far the results have been patchy. There are some great forces for good and some dangerous abuses of the new technologies.

This highly interactive session will explore modern ethics and allow you to learn something of the inner thinking of your fellow attendees!

Learning Objectives:

• What does it mean to be ethical in the digital world?
• What are the challenges facing professionals?
• What can we do as professionals to ensure customers trust today’s new technologies?

Do you ever wonder why some people absolutely love their work, get all the interesting projects, and are consistently being rewarded for their efforts, while others seem stuck and never get a break? Which side of the pendulum would you like to be on?

There is a success path for business analysts, and there are universal laws of success that can guide you to creating your dream job, here and now. And getting on it is easier than you think. It’s not about working harder or spending countless hours perfecting documentation. It is about applying tried and true laws of success, to show up with confidence and earn the respect you deserve.

You’ll leave this presentation inspired to take the simple, straight-forward, high-impact actions that will get you on the path to your dream job, and elevate you and your business analyst career.

Learning Objectives:

• Set clear career goals, that guide you to more success.
• Identify the high-impact actions and skills to elevate your career.
• Learn key mindset practices that help you move into more success.

Data Science is the most exciting job of the 21st Century, according to Harvard Business Review. Everybody is searching for data scientists – high-ranking professional with the skills, mindset and curiosity to make discoveries in the world of data. But who are those people? And most important, how to be most productive as data scientist? Business Analysts know IT and Business Domain. They have deep business knowledge and are used to ask the right questions to bring value. Data Scientists analyze big data and find conclusions through statistics and Machine Learning. Both have the right tools and methodologies in place and both skillsets overlap, like both need knowledge in stakeholder analysis, elicitation, story telling as well as having the right technical and mathematical skills. Business Analysis and Data Science combined play a major role in our endeavor to become a data driven corporation.

Learning Objectives:

• Role of Business Analysis in Data Science
• Business Analysis Skillset for Data Science
• Collaboration between Data Scientists and Business Analysts

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

Mutual of Omaha Insurance started an Enterprise Business Agility Initiative with a goal to deliver value to customers quicker. Stable Teams were formed with cross functional staff (including a leadership triangle), a prioritized backlog, co-located, working together daily and practicing Agile. A key role on the triangle was the Product Owner (PO). The PO was traditionally a Senior Manager from Product Operations. However, the demand for co-locating and working together daily became a challenge for the PO’s. Mutual tried different PO alternatives including sharing duties, refining roles and providing PO assistants. Utilizing Business Analysts (BA) in this role was a creative solution that played upon the strengths and knowledge of the BA’s. The BA’s were also challenged to operate on a higher level as a PO but still rely on their core fundament competencies to make a successful transition to PO’s. Mutual’s Case Study will highlight retrospective challenges and best practices to create this successful PO model using Business Analysts.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the Product Owner role and what Business Analyst competencies align with these duties
• Understand the BA career ladder and what skills, experience and attributes are essential to transition to the PO role
• Review key challenges and lessons learned as the BA transitioned into the PO role
• Discussion on “Would the PO role be a good fit for you?”

MVP.  It’s a word that we hear a lot as our companies are moving toward Agile and Product Management.  It can be a very misunderstood concept, and that is often because this is where people try to start.  But successful delivery of Minimum Viable Product does not begin with defining the MVP.  It really begins with discovering and defining the Product itself.  Then, it goes on to creating and casting a vision for the Product.  Only then can the MVP be clearly defined, detailed, managed and delivered.  This workshop will take you through the journey from ground zero to being the MVP Hero using a combination of presentation, discussion and group exercises.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn strategies for discovering a Product
• Gain confidence in determining and casting a Product Vision
• Understand how to create a Product Roadmap
• Practicing the rituals to get from Features to User Stories and beyond
• Get insights in measuring and tracking your progress
• Understand how much recognition and celebration matters. Even for the fails.

Product owners (POs) face arguably the biggest challenges on Agile/Scrum efforts. Traditional software development has used similar roles for team members as does Scrum. The PO in Scrum has a somewhat new and unique role compared to the sponsor, “business representative,” or similar responsibilities with predictive approaches.

There are many reasons why the PO role can be challenging. This presentation explores several lessons learned from being an accidental product owner over several years. The list covers some obvious and not-so-obvious lessons learned along the way. The goal of the session is to help you and your teams avoid the pitfalls that led to the lessons learned.

If you play the PO role or interact extensively with one, you will gain a new perspective and learn tips you can apply immediately. It is equally relevant for business analysts who also play a PO role as well as for non-BA Product Owners.

Learning Objectives:

• Quickly review the Product Owner role in Scrum and various variations.
• Explore several lessons learned that can help you improve the Product Owner role on your projects.
• Be in position to use any of the tips to avoid the pain that led to each of these lessons learned.

Products not Projects! So why gather scope when you can jump right into building products?

This tutorial will walk through hands-on examples on how to get the right scope and scope level for products and build a strong foundation that will yield better features and user stories.

Are you working on highly technical initiatives? What do your features and user stories look like? Technical or showcasing business value?

The session will also cover real life examples of what to do when a product is perceived to be highly technical in nature and how the BA can lead the scrum team into producing artifacts that showcase the business value. It will illustrate challenges and impacts associated with the understanding/misunderstanding of the BA role on scrum teams and how to overcome those.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the importance of clear scope statements in the successful delivery of products
• Grasp the level of scope required to build successful products and still be agile
• Understand how to elevate and adapt the role of the BA in the agile world

Architecture is a critical enabler of business agility, digital transformation, flexibility, stability, performance, operational excellence, and business success. However, architecture often struggles to keep up with the pace of business or make the cultural and process changes required, and has often failed to deliver on its promise. New realities require new architectural thinking.

The new world is dynamic, decentralized, data driven, automated, and self-learning. The skills of an architect – big picture, critical thinking, system thinking, abstraction, conceptualization, visualization – are all still important, but the environment for using them, the goals for applying them, and the stakeholders that you deliver them to are different.

This presentation explores how architects can unleash their creativity in this brave new world to build influence, create value and challenge the status quo.

Learning Objectives:

• The role of architecture in the age of Agile and DevOps
• New ideas for creative architecture
• Applying core architectural principles with new stakeholders

Since the inception of commercial use of electrical equipment (analog and digital, wired boards and stored programming technologies) for business, the focus has been on increased productivity: improving quality, reducing time and cost.  The responsibility for technology implementations and operations historically has been within the purview of the Information Community, in the early days called EDP or ADP … later named DP or I/S or MIS … and then IM and now, typically IT.  This has been and still is “Building and Running Systems.”

However, the focus is changing: the Digital Revolution, Business Intelligence,  Analytics,  Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things … Robotics, etc.  Today the challenge no longer is simply productivity: improving quality, saving time and money.  Today’s challenge is designing the Enterprise to accommodate structural and disruptive change while seamlessly maintaining operations and, at the same time, avoiding major re-development projects.  THIS is Enterprise Architecture … which is different from building and running systems.   

Learning Objectives:

• IT Motivation that presently pervades the industry
• IT Motivation that INVADES the industry future
• IT Strategy that satisfies Motivation, future and present

Delivering better Customer-journeys and Architecture with limited resources – how do we do it?

The municipalities in Denmark have been introduced to new Danish regulations and expectations and must therefore rethink and rebuild their business architecture.

The municipalities don’t have the resources to just go out and hire a vast number of architects for the challenge. The solution is to educate, the already invested employees at the municipalities, in business design and architecture. The goal is to teach the staff of Danish municipalities to understand and change their old organisation into a new agile organisation to meet the new demands.

Klaus is leading the effort to accomplish this across Denmark.

Learning Objectives:

• How to do architecture with limited resources
• How to change an old organisation into a new agile organisation
• How to Delivering better Customer-journeys

Your enterprise vocabulary matters! Often the development of glossaries, data dictionaries, and other vocabulary artifacts are derived from other architecture development efforts. Stop treating your enterprise vocabulary as a second citizen! A controlled vocabulary drives the development of better integrated and federated architectures helping to reduce ambiguity, apply creativity and manage complexity. In this session, participants will learn how to use a vocabulary-driven development process that encourages the use of a common term for the same concept. Learn how this universal technique works within a multi-framework environment. Learn how to align your enterprise vocabulary and ontology practically. Leave this session with not only the knowledge but the how-to guidance to make an impact on your organization immediately.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how vocabulary driven architecture can reduce modeling ambiguity in architecture
• Identify the steps in the minimum model development procedure
• Construct enterprise-level governance using a vocabulary driven approach.

When originally introduced, Enterprise Architecture was A New Hope that would bring the corporate universe of rebel applications in alignment and deliver value for the business empire.  Some practitioners became enchanted with the tools and techniques of the EA arts and went to the dark side creating an Empire that Strikes Back.  Today, companies are seeking the Return of the EA Jedi to restore balance to the workforce.  In this session we will cover the Enterprise Architecture journey at Southwest Airlines and explore flexible approaches for delivering business value.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the value proposition of Enterprise Architecture
• Common obstacles to growing the practice
• Overcoming common obstacles

As business decisions are increasingly made by computers these days, business analysts could benefit from a better understanding what it takes to build software that makes decisions. Using lessons learned from numerous customer projects, the presenter will use as much plain English as possible to shed light on: getting data ready for automation, modeling decisions to support automation, the iterative software development life cycle (SDLC), common risks and pitfalls in decision automation, and more. This session is geared towards people without a formal development background. Attendees should leave this session with an understanding of how to communicate better with the developers they’ll work alongside as the next business decision gets automated.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand data modeling concepts such as structured and normalized data, data relationships, and validity
• Review how automated decisions are iteratively written, tested, and implemented following the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Learn how to identify common risks for decision automation project failure and how to raise them sooner

Have you heard about capability models? Do you see capability modelling as the Business Architects domain? Not sure how you can add them to the Business Analyst toolkit? This presentation will give you an introduction to capability models and the concept behind them. You will then be taken on a journey of how the Business Analysts at Coventry University have started utilising a capability model to drive transformation, inform strategic decision making and as a reference point for common language between IT and the business. You will leave with an understanding of capability models and how you can easily add them to your business analysis toolkit.

Learning Objectives:

• An overview of capability models
• How the BA can use capability models for developing a business case
• Other ways to use the model

Looking for ways to effectively communicate requirements to stakeholders?  This presentation will provide specific techniques and open source tools for delivering your  business and technical information in a visual, user friendly way that reduces defects and misinterpretation.  Simple tutorials on how to use these tools will be provided and you will look at the next document you have to deliver in a new way.  Increase your productivity and effectiveness by learning to become a Visual Business Analyst.

Learning Objectives:

• Prevent defects and engage your audience through visual communication
• Use tools to reduce ambiguous communication
• Confirm requirements using wireframes and mock-ups

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.

Being data-driven means the company uses data to harness insights across its organization and then turns those insights into action to create competitive advantage and more productive processes.  What does it take to turn your organization into a data-driven company?

Believe it or not, it is not JUST about the data. This presentation will present the 5 key components in successfully becoming a data-driven organization, discuss the necessary infrastructure, and explore a high-level strategy.

Learning objectives:

• What being data-driven is about
• What else is needed beyond just data
• What different phases and roles are required
• How business policies, business rules and business vocabulary play in building a data-driven organization

One of the biggest challenges facing organizations is ensuring that projects and initiatives are effective in implementing business strategy and realizing business goals.  Instead of launching from a roadmap, projects are often initiated when a customer defines a solution to a perceived problem.  In many cases, no effort is made to tie the solution back to business strategy or goals.  

By combining business architecture practices with enterprise business analysis skills, business analysts can add value to their customers by mapping problems/solutions to enterprise capabilities and strategies prior to developing requirements.  This practice ensures that solutions move business strategy forward and that all activities (requirements, design, testing, etc.) in an initiative map back to a business capability or strategy.

Learning Objectives:

• The best source of requirements is business objectives and outcomes
• All requirements should tie back to the objectives/outcomes
• Blending business architecture practices into your BA toolbox allows BAs to ensure Business Strategy stays central to all initiatives

Logical, practical, methodical rule principles and best practices are key to a successful business rules project — as is building the right team. Drawing on real life examples from 17+ years’ experience working with business rules customers around the world, this session will look at important “do’s” and “don’ts” for a successful rules project — not only from a rules best practice perspective, but also from a people perspective. Even with the best rule practices, the business rules won’t write themselves! What qualities and skills should you look for when searching for a great business rules person?

Learning Objectives:

• Learning rule best practices that have helped others
• Applying common sense to your business rules
• Understanding important skills for successful rule teams

At the Dutch Tax authority, the Law text is evidently the starting point of our daily operations including the implementation in software applications and systems. The Law text is, however, not usable at the operational level and needs to be interpreted and supplemented.

To deal with this issue, we have introduced a semi-automated process that starts at the Law text and generates the necessary content that is required at the next level while keeping the link to the original sources. The final product of this process is a generated software application that executes the Law without any manual programming.

Learning Objectives:

• Automate text extraction and linking of Law text to business rules
• Create a natural language pattern that fits Tax related opertional rules
• Make natural language rules readily executable

When many teams learn agile ways of working, they focus on the new processes, teamwork, and metrics like velocity.

Teams also struggle with Product Owner availability, carrying over stories, and getting quick and regular feedback; often finding out too late what they built is not what the user really needed. Teams are stuck with a backlog of enhancement and fix requests; innovation and the strategic agenda seems like a leadership fantasy, rather than reality.

Let’s put the customer back into the product and our team’s work! We will discuss analysis from the vision and big picture, to the details of the acceptance criteria. There are so many techniques and practices that teams are missing out on to get great products that customers will love!
Come discover what practices you can put to work on the team to get better visioning, better backlog refinement sessions, deeper conversations about the customer, and a more relevant product.

We will highlight analysis best practices, helping teams connect the agile analysis to the agile values of quick feedback, measuring what matters, limited WIP, transparency, working with business and customer groups, and swarming together as a cross functional team.

We will look at what the common anti-patterns are on agile teams that stifle analysis, and we will look at what teams that are getting great results are doing from a customer, product and analysis perspective!

Agile analysis is connected to great results!

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what good agile analysis is
• Discover and understand the anti-patterns of agile analysis and team practices
• Discover what great product and analysis looks like at the team and organization levels
• Connect analysis to agile team results and agile values

Organizational change management (OCM) journeys, like expeditions, are voyages undertaken by a group of people with a particular purpose.  Successful OCM journeys and successful expeditions both require strong leaders, diligent planning, and the ability to pivot or change direction based on environmental changes. During this session, we’ll discuss the need for change in change management, consider the similarities with and lessons learned from successful expeditions, and align agile values and principles with managing change. Ultimately, we will apply agile and expedition behaviors to change journeys with a focus on building flexibility and resilience in individuals, teams, and organizations.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the need for agile change management.
• Explain the relationship between agile values/principles and change management.
• Describe the role of expedition behaviors in successful change.
• Apply agile practices and expedition behaviors to change.

In our fast-paced world of work, where complexity is the norm and speed is of the essence, how can we draw out people’s creativity, when when it’s difficult to still their minds? How can we engage people in our project or presentation, when they’re likely to be distracted? How can we communicate as clearly as we possibly can, when we work on really complex, systemic challenges?

One answer is visual thinking, and specifically simple, hand-drawn graphics. Anyone can learn to draw these visual representations by hand, on paper or on a shared screen, to communicate clearly, to support innovation and creativity and to draw in colleagues and other stakeholders, wherever they are in the world. In this presentation, Penny will introduce short case studies of how visuals have transformed business analysis work around the world. You’ll learn why visuals work so well with human brains and how they help us to represent complex situations holistically. You’ll try out some simple visuals yourself and learn how to put them to use at work.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand how and why simple visuals are so powerful for clarity, creativity and engagement.
• To build confidence to give simple visuals a go back at base
• To find out what difference this had made to the work of others around the world

The head of Marketing turns to the head of Operations and says “Well now we’re talking about semantics.” Did you cringe? Did you immediately begin trying to find another way to ask the question to show the chasm between the definitions each of them apparently have on the matter? Then you too understand the power of words; in design and implementation.

During this interactive session we will explore two of the most powerful tools an Analyst or Architect has, which are some of the first skills we learn in grade school; synonyms and role playing. We will explore the power of words for delivering clarity and creating consensus through active engagement and “walking in someone else’s shoes”.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognizing pitfalls in language
• Tips for recognizing the need for clarity
• Paraphrasing; When and why?
• Leading an audience to consensus

Digital business automation is a transformational journey for the enterprise: you should start small, but you must think big to reap all the benefits and synergies of the different capabilities such as business process, decisions, content management, or RPA. In this presentation, we show how a Design Thinking approach can help you get the most value from your first business automation project and later grow from project to program. You will learn about the key design thinking techniques and how to orchestrate them to foster innovation, elicit what is valuable to your enterprise, vet what is doable through business automation, and plan for building a series of minimum viable product.

Learning Objectives:

• Essential and practical design thinking techniques for rapid project
• How design thinking can expand the concept of business value beyond process efficiency
• How business can drive growth of digital business automation adoption

First person walk through of a Stakeholder experience led agile approach that has been used to track Strategy to Execution and successfully realize the value of Business strategies. Listen to the success story of expanding business architecture practice in a large global health service company to prove the value of Customer centricity.  Learn how to gain buy in from functional leaders to support and champion strategy to execution planning using a multi-year capability roadmap and a stakeholder experience led portfolio prioritization.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn tips on how to successfully stand up a Capability Management practice and execute on Business priorities aligning to Enterprise strategies
• Gain insight from challenges, successes, and lessons learned
• Understand techniques to gain stakeholder buy-in

Enterprise Design connects customer-centric product and service development to the enterprise transformation required to deliver. And no, this is not about running another Design Thinking workshop.

Looking back on 10 years of Design Practice experience applied at scale to challenging enterprise environments, Milan will show how to use Design to give shape to enterprises.

Applied in a holistic and systemic fashion, Enterprise Design can help us deal with challenges of innovation and transformation. It acts as the glue between Customer Experience and Business Architecture, and enables us tackle the complexity that makes ambitious endeavours so ambitious – and worthy of applying our collective intelligence and creativity.

Learning Objectives:

• How to scale design practice to the enterprise level using a framework going from the Big Picture challenges to the tangible Rendering (and back)
• Achieving traceability between the Customer Experience Journey, Operational Business Architecture, Processes and Organization
• Take home a framework and approach to drive innovation and transformation projects by design in your own or client organizations

Many organizations have experienced some type of disruption. These disruptions can range from hurricanes to sick staff to human error. Is your organization prepared to sustain its essential business functions if all or part of it is impacted by a disruption?  By building an organization’s business continuity capacity the risk of disruption is reduced, and the impact of a disruption and time to stabilize operations following the disruption is decreased.

The American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) in partnership with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a guide, Business Continuity Planning for Immunization Information Systems, to help the immunization programs around the country prepare their organizations for continuation of business operations in the event of a disruption.

Presentation components:

• The methodology used
• How to identify and prioritize the business functions
• Risk mitigation vs continuity options, why you need both
• Lessons learned

Learning Objectives:

• How to identify and prioritize your business functions
• What is included in a business continuity plan
• What was the methodology used to support development of the business continuity plan
• What lessons were learned along the way

Regardless of what methodology you use, requirements are often a means to an end – deliver technology that gives stakeholders what they need… all through the limited focus of the end-user. What they lack is a holistic view of the business that enables IT to address the needs of the “customer,” not just the technology user.

Using a defined framework, this session will illustrate how aligning requirements management to an organization’s Business Architecture allows Business Analysts to drive and trace requirements directly from a customer perspective that is aligned to business strategies, value streams, business capabilities, and roadmaps.

The outcome is of this alignment are requirements that reflect not only the needs to solve a specific problem, but also the needs of customers, stakeholders, and the organization’s strategic goals. This customer-oriented, value-centric approach to requirements positions the B.A. to drive change and transform the way IT solutions are delivered.

Learning Objectives:

• Leveraging Business Architecture in Business Requirements Management
• Aligning Requirements to Business Strategy
• Benefits of Business Architecture for the BA

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.

Business analysis is undoubtedly a ‘people profession’.  It is difficult to imagine any large-scale change that could be progressed without the co-operation and co-ordination of a wide variety of stakeholders.  Yet, it is rare to see unanimous stakeholder agreement—and in ‘messy’ situations we might find that stakeholders don’t even agree on the nature of the project or problem that we are trying to solve. 

With creative, complex and transformational projects we play a key role in balancing complementary and sometimes competing perspectives, and there are a number of tools in our BA toolkit that we can utilise.

In this practical session you will hear:

• A range of practical techniques for stakeholder categorisation and engagement that build upon traditional stakeholder modelling.
• Techniques for appreciating, discussing and balancing different stakeholder perspectives
• The importance of representing marginalised and ‘unheard’ groups when designing services

Learning Objectives:

• Understand a range of practical techniques for stakeholder categorisation and engagement that build upon traditional stakeholder modelling.
• Understand a range of techniques for appreciating, discussing and balancing different stakeholder perspectives
• Understand the importance of representing marginalised and ‘unheard’ groups when designing services

Requirements are complex and detailed, sometimes it can feel like they will never be complete. But do they really need to be? On a recent software development project, many requirements models and diagrams were drafted and discussed, helping the stakeholders and solution designers to communicate about needs and ideas—but very few of them were actually “done.” This presentation will discuss which requirements models made my project a success, even though few of them were actually finished. I’ll explain the rationale for creation along with the extent of completion of each model. Come hear a project success story where few of the requirements were “finished!”

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the rationale for use and value of various requirements and analysis techniques
• See examples of how requirements evolve on a real project
• Learn to recognize when a requirements technique has stopped being useful

Over the past decade, business analysis has found itself increasingly challenged by the widespread adoption of agile methodologies. We’re asked to produce requirements faster and often to take on the role of the “product owner”–without the authority we need to do so, or without an understanding of how the role is supposed to work. The problem is that Scrum is a new product development methodology–designed for the creation of products in new markets. It’s not designed for the kind of changes business analysts are involved in–the development of software to improve the effectiveness of business processes. However, agile isn’t going away–rather, we need to change how we do business analysis. BAs need to move from a focus on developing software requirements to focusing on value realization and process improvement. Fortunately, there’s a set of techniques for doing just that, and ones which are not only compatible with agile methods, but which were the basis for many of them–Lean process improvement. We’ll show you how to solve the “product owner” problem and develop a vision for your agile projects that delivers real business value, and how to combine ongoing process improvement with software development.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to map value streams
• Analyze processes to see where waste occurs and find the greatest opportunities to increase value
• Translate opportunities into user stories and acceptance criteria to support truly agile change

Saudi Arabia is undertaking the largest change project ever attempted, guided by its Vision 2030 strategy. Every aspect of government, business, and personal life is impacted. This is creativity, innovation, agility, and deep analysis at national scale.

Realizing the vision has triggered transformation of the public sector requiring reimagining and reengineering of the business processes by which it delivers services. The Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT) is at the forefront of this change.

This presentation describes MCIT’s journey from low BPM maturity with no process documentation, modelling tools, process performance management, or process culture, to a successful implementation of process-based management having all of those.

The presentation shares practical lessons learned about process-lead organizational transformation and discusses the necessary mindset and cultural changes, as well as the legacy governmental constraints that obstruct BPM development.

Learning Objectives:

• The role of process in organizational transformation
• High-impact strategies for process change management
• Developing the process mindset
• Enhancing BPM maturity|Insights into Vision 2030

The words “Innovation” and “Creativity” seem so elusive, vague, and outright intimidating at times. This session is one that will focus on the case study of how a small team navigated through the complexity, ambiguity and indefinite land of innovation. By sparking the creative mindset to build guiding principles, a backlog of tangible actions, a marketing and communication plan, and a trail of failures, we were able to modernize a very traditional company.

Every person has what it takes to innovate, but those skills need to be sparked and cultivated using a few of the techniques shared in the workshop. Providing structure learned from the case study around backlogging items to innovate, bringing others along on the journey and getting intimate with failure will leave you reaching for the stars!

Learning Objectives:

• Review the top 3 Creative Attitudes with concrete examples of how to cultivate them in the corporate workplace
• Walk through how Capital Group built an Innovation Backlog through all of the challenges of a large corporation
• Provide tips and tricks for marketing innovations to people who are not open to the new and different
• Deep Dive on the Resume of Failures- How Mistakes can be the Key to Success with examples from the CG Innovation Team

Within de Volksbank, a Dutch retail bank, process oriented management has been introduced by means of a BPM initiative: a combination of agile work methods, intensive process and risk management workshop. All the bank’s processes are redesigned, process ownership implemented and continuous improvement realized.

Realization took place by a combination of process design, change management and process monitoring. The process maturity grows from level 1 to 3 (on a 5 point scale). Process optimization approach like lean and process mining are implemented within the bank, and will be shown.

Value streams are defined and managed both from a customer orientation (service guarantees) and stakeholder orientation (performance guarantees). Customer journeys, customer effort scores are the basis for design and performance enhancements. Innovation such as robotics and process mining support realization of both customer and stakeholder targets.

The approach, results, dashboards, etc. will be presented. And also some practical examples and lessons learned will be shown.

In summary:

• Customer orientation: voice of the customer as starting point for process performance.

• Practical approach of value stream management

• Examples of methods, techniques and tools, e.g. robotics and process mining

Learning Objectives:

• Show practical results based on sound concept
• Technology is a precondition, not a goal
• Success factor is mix of design, change management and monitoring

Understand key strategies to keep your team thriving through digital disruption, course correction, accelerated growth, or mountains of data. Dive into team dynamics and how they relate to each person and situation. Within purposeful operational excellence, the business processes become better as the humans are on point and target. David Childs will share stories and lessons which have transformed teams and organizations by capitalizing on their most valuable assets.

To take your organization and team to the next level it is critical to identify both common values and culture as they are the keys to organizational excellence. These insights will help you understand and lead your team at the highest levels of productivity.

Habits with personal and systemic value systems are always at play in any organization. Learn how to identify and work with these invisible forces which affect every decision an organization makes. David will share our proven approach and the thinking behind it, the principles of alignment and the rules of engagement.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how to extract and evaluate tacit knowledge
• Learn how to align through discussion and objectivity
• Identify the hidden living values that guide your organization
• How to achieve buy-in within your team adjacent silos
• Tools to discover your organization’s true value

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

Jobs are disappearing. Industries are struggling. Businesses are facing unprecedent forces. Some leaders are painting a picture of crisis. Many business analysis professionals are helping corporations to transform. The truth is that the Business Analysis profession itself is not immune to these global forces. Most individuals must go through transformative change to thrive now and in the future. It is no longer adequate to respond or adapt. Relying on known techniques, tools and templates is simply not enough. We must dig deeper, much deeper. In every crisis lies the seed of opportunity. Join us to uncover what you can do now to lead in the age of AI, robotics and the internet of things and position yourself for long term success.

Learning Objectives:

• What is ‘deep’ business analysis and why it is imperative in business today
• What are the key ingredients to ‘deep’ business analysis
• How to lead yourself and your business through the age of AI, robotics and the IofT

Over 400 analysts support nearly 200 Agile/Lean teams delivering software for Nationwide.  Our learning culture is anchoring in standard work monitored by maturity models that gauge impact on high quality software delivery.  Learning paths create an easy to follow framework to increase practical experience in specific technology domains and delivery practices.  Partnerships with Duke and George Washington University enable certification programs that foster breadth and depth of skill set development.  Local community college partnerships support ongoing reskilling as the pace of change quickens in our IT landscape.  Career development is a focus for people leaders in partnership with associates.  We’ve scaled our learning culture so that new and an tenured associates continue to learn and grow – you can too!

Learning Objectives:

• Standardize work processes using guardrails
• Identify major technology and practice gaps
• Determine & scale community learning needs

Feedback is essential at every level of the enterprise, but most people cringe at the thought of giving negative feedback. We’re conditioned from childhood not to say anything if it isn’t “nice”. As a result, we miss the opportunity to provide clear, meaningful feedback that can change relationships and outcomes. Instead, we suffer in silence or we dance around the topic leaving the receiver dazed and confused and everyone’s energy zapped. Let’s get rid of the old approaches like sandwiching the negative between two positives- you’ll just end up with a watered-down version of your truth. Let’s learn to say what we mean so we get what we want. The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your dialog but most of us don’t have the confidence or tools to communicate this directly. If you are an Agile team member looking to improve the retrospective, a manager looking to provide better feedback to your team or if you want meaningful feedback that empowers you to improve your own performance, this session is for you.

Learning Objectives:

• Give direct feedback that gets results
• Provide feedback in 5 minutes or less
• Elicit feedback that can inspire you to do great work
• Techniques to build your confidence

Leadership is something that needs to develop.  Even with natural ability, leadership requires work.  Leadership isn’t easy!    Great leaders strive to understand themselves, their environment and those they lead. To develop your leadership skills, you need a plan; a strategy!  No matter what role you play in your organization, having a Personal Leadership Strategy that is actionable and achievable will benefit you!

In this session, Heather and Michelle will lead you through the development of a Personal Leadership Strategy from the perspective of an experienced and anew leader. Using real-world examples and tools, you will create your own personal leadership inventory! This will enable you to create  personal and team strategies to propel you and your team forward.  Strategies will incorporate self-promotion and team goals. By the end of this session you will have a personal leadership strategy roadmap to build your own strategy right away.   Join us if you are ready to take a chance to make a change to be a future ready leader!

Learning How To:

• Define personal leadership
• Evaluate leadership skill
• Create a leadership strategy

Explore an interactive session where you will become aware of how impactful your mindset is. Learn how to increase the productivity of your teams without spending a dime.  Seek insights that you can apply to unleash your creativity, and in turn unleash the creativity of your organization. Investigate practical techniques that can be easily applied that will shape your attitude and improve your performance.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the impact from various mindsets
• Improve personal attitude
• Increase productivity of self and teams
• Build cohesive teams
• Overcome emotional hijacks
• Unleash personal creativity

In a technical world dominated by discussions of serverless, APIs, and microservices, we’ve reached an inflection point that will form the basis of the next wave of technology evolution. However, to take advantage of these advances, we must rethink the way we build, manage and deploy applications. Decisions will play a key role in this revolution.

This presentation will focus on the DMN and BPMN standards and their integration with industry data standards to enable a powerful approach to handling Fintech and Regtech using the mortgage industry (MISMO) as a case study.  We believe that “decisions as a service” will become a primary delivery model and facilitate the creation and deployment of powerful APIs and microservices. Decisions enable a business-driven approach to development and deploying the capabilities as services will enable consumers to get custom automation. This is imperative in industries like financial services where the only constant is change.

Learning Objectives:

• Integration of business and technical standards
• True service-based based environment using APIs and microservices
• Setting the table for other emerging technology – blockchain, AI, etc

Decision modeling using DMN is a creative and analytical activity focused on describing the requirements and structure of operational business decisions. It produces artifacts easily consumed and leveraged by both business and technical audiences.

Decision modeling comprises both Decision Requirements Diagrams and business logic, typically (but not always) represented in decision tables. We will touch on the role of decision tables in the elicitation and development of DRDs, but will be primarily focused on the visual aspect of decision modeling.

This presentation introduces practical and effective decision modeling techniques intended primarily for Business Analysts and others who are either curious about this visual approach or who are eager to be unleashed upon the craft.

 Examples shared will be drawn from real-world experience on actual financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, retail, military, or government projects.

Learning Objectives:

• What decision modeling is and how it fits into the big picture
• Why decision modeling returns such a high value for the level of effort required
• How to create effective decision models and how to make impactful use of them

China’s awakening in Decision Management came with a new set of challenges.  To begin with, the volume of credit requests has reached new heights that dwarfs the volumes we have historically seen around the world so far.  Velocity is playing a leading role, driving the need for elastic architectures of another dimension.  Last but not least, the rapidly changing business landscape brings new opportunities to refine strategies through new and diverse data sources.

In this presentation, we will share Xinshu Credit’s experience leading the charge.  In particular, we will cover:

• Decision Service Architecture that scales
• Guidelines for digesting quickly volumes of data sources
• Modern technology blueprints for elasticity
• Lifecycle Management best practices for ultimate performance

Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are hot topics everywhere you go. Every organization wants to turn its digital data into gold. Data scientists are being hired, software is being purchased, clouds are being provisioned. Lots, and lots, of money is being spent to move to a new era of algorithmic, data-driven business!

And yet… not much is actually happening. Most data science projects are still experiments, trials or pilots – some have become shelfware. Outside of big-name internet firms, demonstrated success at scale is remarkably hard to find. Most companies make decisions the same way. Data science is over-promising and under-delivering.

The problem is that data scientists don’t know how to talk to business people or IT professionals. They can talk to the data just fine. They can’t talk to the business to find out what problems need to be solved. They can’t talk to IT to get their algorithms across the last mile of operational adoption.

They can’t talk to the business or to IT – but you can.

Learning Objectives:

• Why decisions matter to ML and AI – and you
• Business rules AND machine learning not business rules OR machine learning
• Why and how to define decision requirements

The use of decisions and processes to structure and detail business knowledge is a good way to develop requirements.  The goal of the session is to share and discuss experiences in designing complex decisions between processes in real projects using BPMN and DMN. To accomplish this, we will first demonstrate how a modeled process helps to model the decisions it contains and when it is better to break away from these process dependencies. Secondly, we will show how the decisions build their own perspective on the business knowledge and talk about the important role of the business object. Lastly, we will share some of the experiences in dealing with specialist groups.

Learning Objectives:

• Requirement Engineering with Process and Decision
• Dependencies between process (BPMN) and decision (DMN)
• Process and decision as different views on the specialist modelling
• The importance of the business object

In the AI era, many business applications which consider themselves “intelligent” cannot simply execute a complex rules-based transaction and wait for the next one. To become really “intelligent” applications,  they should be able to learn from already executed transactions, accept new facts as they become available, and, when necessary, they should make changes in their own execution logic. These stateful applications should be able to support both decisioning and behavioral rules, validate and propagate changes in the states of involved business entities, and finally “connect the dots”.

In this presentation, we will describe an ingenious architecture that supports the creation and continuing development of such intelligent, perpetually running applications. This proposed architecture utilizes the modern pub/sub tools with continuous data streams and state machines,  allowing subject matter experts to define and maintain behavioral and decisioning rules. We will demonstrate the architecture by using several real-world scenarios.

Learning Objectives:

• How to develop “live” intelligent applications
• How to define both behavioral and decisioning rules
• How to validate and propagate real-time changes

We are working in a constrained environment – limited time, money and resources with a growing book of work and a full change agenda. We need to work smarter and faster to execute on our strategic plans, but how?

By applying a little creativity, and using the Scaled Agile Framework as our inspiration, we designed and implemented a new way of prioritising, planning, and executing the strategic objectives of our business area. We challenged the traditional (and somewhat conservative) mindset of the bank, and introduced a methodology that encourages transparency, engagement, improved quality and better alignment with strategic ambitions.

Learn how our BA team introduced a new way of working to the treasury and reporting function of one of Northern Europe’s largest banks, and along the way how we redefined the role business analysts can play in delivering change.

Learning Objectives:

• How to apply agile ways of working to strategic prioritisation
• How to close the gap between strategy and execution
• Reshaping the role of BAs in delivering on strategic goals

There are lots of data analytics tools available, but most come with two significant costs: the cost of a license and the cost to obtain the required skills to use the software. But what if you could create dashboards and data visualizations with software you already use every week? What if your dashboards could show data in the context of diagrams that you already provide to your colleagues and customers? You may be surprised to learn that Visio could be the answer to your business and operational intelligence requirements. You can layer data visualizations on top of process maps, organization charts, floor plans… the same diagram that you already use to communicate vital information.

Learning Objectives:

• Leverage software and knowledge you already have
• Build BI dashboards in as little as 10 minutes
• Visualize process metrics and KPIs in the context of a process map
• Reflect important employee performance data on an org chart

The need for speed (of delivery) can make it hard for Business Architecture to gain traction during the strategy-to-execution life-cycle. This barrier can be especially compounded in an agile work environment where strategy and in-flight work are continuously flexing.

Applying a Marketing approach to Business Architecture communication can create the traction needed to insert architectural value. Enhanced integration in the strategy-to-execution life-cycle will facilitate an iterative approach to agile Business Architecture.

A real-life case study will be presented to demonstrate the value of these creative techniques.

Learning Objectives:

• How to market your Business Architecture practice to the business
• How to incorporate agile ways of working into your Business Architecture practice
• Effective Business Architecture artifacts for senior leadership
• A USAA case study using Business Architecture

As part of our business process architecture transformation at Idaho National Laboratory, we are building diverse and inclusive teams that apply a six-step methodology to achieve process simplification and integration. Through this process, we deconstruct our current state, analyze the individual elements, and then reconstruct optimized and integrated processes. We lead users through discovery workshops, determine the roles necessary, apply systems thinking to understand interfaces in integration, incorporate data analytics in process optimization, apply human performance tools during validation, and disposition existing content while finalizing deliverables.

Learning Objectives:

• The importance of diverse and inclusive teams for transformation initiatives
• Elements of our six-step methodology to achieve process simplification and integration
• Use of data analytics to understand current state and drive optimization
• The importance of consistent roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, and authorities in process development

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

Business analysis is emerging as a key role in leading agencies and organizations to establish cybersecurity initiatives across their enterprise.  Knowledgeable BA’s are well suited as ambassadors, working as the liaison between business, IT, security and project management.  In this presentation, I will share my experiences, insights and knowledge working in the role of a business analyst alongside cybersecurity experts and analysts; and reveal how to apply the skills and techniques described in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge to facilitate planned change that exceeds stakeholder, compliance and regulatory requirements.

What the attendee Will Learn:

• Brief history of cybersecurity
• Risk and cost associated with cybercrime
• Applying business analysis techniques to facilitate risk management
• recognizing the value of industry standard cybersecurity frameworks
• Common cybersecurity terminology, techniques and tools
• Role of governance, risk and compliance to support cybersecurity initatives

Like the Internet in the mid-1990s, Blockchain is getting closer to its breakout moment every day. A fundamental ‘techtonic’ shift transforming the world as we know it.   Blockchain is a foundational technology that is creating the next Internet and opening up new opportunities around the world.

Learning Objectives:

• Find out where are we today in the adoption curve and the chain of events that led to Blockchain.
• Lessons from the rise of the Internet.
• The rise of the Internet of trust and why Blockchain is important today.
• What is possible? Real world use cases discussed and how to apply your BA skills.
• How Blockchain works and what you need to be aware of as a Business Analyst.
• Winning in the new world of Blockchain and what to expect in industry segments globally.

While the current AI fascination is fueled by Machine Learning, the architecture and application landscape is being redesigned around Microservices and APIs. These technologies are combining forces to affect many facets of business, creating a paradigm shift all around you. Do you know how to take advantage of the tsunami created by these technologies?

In this session, we will explain these technologies and how to extract business value from them. We will demonstrate how line of business people can integrate machine learning into business decisions that are explainable, auditable, and traceable and how they can easily assemble business automations that orchestrate a series of microservices via modern API platforms. With this knowledge in hand, you will be ready to face the next wave of technologies that are hitting your organization.

Learning Objectives:

• Introduction to Microservices and APIs
• Overview of current AI solutions and how they affect Business Decisions
• Orchestration of microservices for Business Automation

Digital Transformation has changed fundamentally the way organizations operate. New digital tools are available with increasing regularity – and many of them have the potential for a major impact. They enable the transformation of business processes to become more efficient, agile, meet compliance requirements, enhance customer experience or improve the general quality of deliverables. They may help achieve a level of process performance not previously envisaged. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of those digital enablers which has been applied, or at least discussed in many organizations as practice reports and conference presentations show. This process technology is becoming a mainstream trend, relevant for many businesses.

However, many organizations struggle to realize the full potential of RPA. According to newer statistics even 30-50% of RPA initiatives fail completely. The presentation discusses opportunities and challenges of applying RPA as process improvement approach. It shows how RPA can be a powerful solution but it also points out how it may become a dangerous illusion. The presentation describes how organizations address the challenges and realize the opportunities this digital technology brings to the table. It proposes a process-led approach that helps to focus on the right sub-processes to automate, improve those business processes considering the end-to-end context and sustain the results through appropriate governance and hybrid workforce management. Agile principles are combined with the required focus and direction. The approach leverages the capabilities of business process management (BPM) to realize the full value of RPA, fast and at minimal risk.

All findings are illustrated using case examples, mainly from financial and high-tech companies. Key methods and tools are explained in the context of those practice cases. 

Learning Objectives:

• Focus on the right processes to get most our of RPA
• Apply RPA in an end-to-end process context – using an agile approach for fast results
• Sustain the achieved RPA outcomes

Cenovus is a Canadian integrated oil and natural gas company headquartered in Calgary. We’re committed to maximizing value by responsibly developing our assets in a safe, innovative and efficient way. Our operations include oil sands projects in northern Alberta, which use specialized methods to drill and pump the oil to the surface, and established natural gas and oil production in Alberta and British Columbia.

In certain areas of Asset Management, Cenovus’s data-driven decision-making philosophy has had analytics play a major role in certain asset management activities. This presentation reviews 2 initiatives: How Text Analytics improved the quality of data used in Asset Failure analysis and how Machine Learning algorithms were used to derive models for Asset Failure prediction. Based on ongoing initiatives, the presentation provides insight into real-world opportunity definitions, ML algorithms, technology, data gathering/cleansing techniques, user-acceptance roadblocks and other learnings from an organizational perspective.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding ROI for Data Science initiatives
• Understanding Data cleansing techniques
• Overcoming roadblocks to adoption, show business value

In a recent survey conducted by IIBA, we asked our corporate members what the future skill needs were for business Analysts.  The answer was that the number one skill area in 3 years was Data Analytics.  This indicates that BA’s are challenged to learn more about this field.  It does not mean that BA become Data Scientists with deep technical and statistical skills.  The IIBA has done additional research supported by many recent articles that talk to the role of the BA in several areas that support Business Data Analytics.  One insight that we have seen is that when BA’s are involved in data analytics teams, the outcomes improve and the business is better able to utilize and consume the results. 

The BA involvement starts in a familiar way.  It starts with understanding the business problem.  It looks at what data is needed to understand and gain insights in the problem space.  It looks at creating and designing the data experiments and assessing the results. The BA then leverages their skills as the ‘translator’ to make business requirements make sense fo the technical and data scientists.  When the results are brought forward, the BA will work to create visualizations to explain the data, but even more importantly they work to do the ‘storytelling’ and what the data says, what are the insights and not just throw out statistical data overload but to craft the story in a way that the business can examine it, and evaluate how it corresponds to their experience and ‘gut’ based sense of the business. 

This presentation will highlight these aspects, and show how Business Data Analytics is a logical extension of the practice of business analysis, and as a real improved value proposition to business leaders into how to get better results from their investments in data analytics, and business intelligence.  

With the focus today being Business Capability (action), Data modeling is getting lost.  Business needs to define its data, for from the data comes information that can become knowledge that can be used by the business to be successful.  But how do we make sense of the different types of data modeling?  What are the differences?  When are they appropriate?

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the different type of Data Models
• Understand when to use each type of Data Model
• Introduction to Process-level Data Modeling

Five years ago there were 2.4 billion internet users. Today there are 3.8 billion internet users in 2017. That is 14 users per second. 

Those users have one thing in common – data.

BBC reports that there is at least 1,200 petabytes in the major online sources (Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft) alone. That is BIG data! Big data is a catchphrase that has been tossed around for years. Today data is bigger than ever. Corporations need to know how to manage, analyze, and most importantly how to secure data. Knowledge in Data Management is essential in today’s businesses – big or small.

This session will introduce you to Big Data and Data Management. It will teach you the basics of data governance, security, storage, quality, and analytics. It will prepare you to understand conversations about data and provide a solid foundation to help build more data management skills.

IBM predicts nearly three million data jobs in 2020. Join me to begin preparing for the future of data.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe Data Management and its components
• Identify opportunities to improve data management
• Recognize why data management is essential