BBC 2026 Agenda

Can you really build the house of someone’s dreams with only a hammer and saw? Maybe, but the results will probably miss the mark. The same goes for business analysis. If we keep relying on the same old tools, we risk delivering what was asked for instead of what’s truly needed.

In today’s business environment, stakeholders expect solutions that adapt quickly, solve the right problems, and deliver value faster. That means BAs need more than just the basics.  we need a toolbox built for today’s challenges.

In this hands-on tutorial, we’ll dust off some of the classics, shine them up in new ways, and add fresh tools to your BA toolbox. You’ll practice techniques that spark better conversations, uncover hidden needs, and create solutions that hit closer to the bullseye. 

Expect energy, interaction, and plenty of “aha” moments as we hammer home how a modern BA toolbox can help you deliver faster, smarter, and better solutions that your stakeholders will truly value.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Recognize when traditional BA tools and techniques may limit solution outcomes

Apply refreshed and innovative tools to engage stakeholders more effectively

Build confidence in choosing the right tool at the right time to deliver faster, better results

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.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

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

McKinsey predicts that AI could automate up to 70% of the work we do today. Yet the most valuable skill for Business Analysts won’t be faster analysis, it will be facilitating meaningful stakeholder conversations that lead to better decisions. Future-proof your BA career by mastering the human skills AI can’t automate (easily): creativity, facilitation, and connection.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to use Richer Pictures, a combination of simple drawings, visual models, and facilitation techniques. You will build your visual thinking toolkit to help you engage stakeholders in new and creative ways, build team alignment, and create clarity where words alone often fail. Future-proof your BA career by mastering the human skills AI can’t automate (easily): creativity, facilitation, and connection.

Whether you’re leading discovery, gathering requirements, or presenting insights, these skills will help make your analysis unforgettable.

No artistic skill required. Just curiosity, a marker, and a willingness to see the bigger picture.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Build a visual thinking toolkit to communicate ideas quickly and effectively.

Create visual canvases to facilitate your next workshop.

Design Richer Pictures to communicate a shared understanding.

Craft visual stories that make your analysis memorable and actionable.

We’ve all heard about Generative AI and how it can help both PMs and BAs in their daily project activities. And most of you have probably used it yourself. But how many have realized that other forms of AI can be the basis of projects at an organization level – especially to increase decision-making skills beyond those offered today by Business Intelligence initiatives. By leveraging advanced algorithms and vast datasets, Cognitive AI systems can interpret context, recognize patterns, and make decisions in ways that closely mimic human cognition.

Cognitive AI is a larger set of AI functionality with many different patterns that are more focused on man-machine collaboration.  The Predictive Analytics and Decisions Pattern is the one having the greatest impact on project approaches today. Instead of just choosing between Predictive or Adaptive approaches, or a hybrid blend of those two – a data-driven approach is now becoming increasingly more important – especially data is the foundation of AI.

Greta Blash has spent many years as both a project manager and a business analyst, with a focus on delivering data and information to support business processes and decisions.

During this session, Greta will help you understand how project approaches adapt to this increased emphasis on data to help organizations make more informed decisions.

Join this session and help your organization embrace a larger implementation of AI beyond just chatbots and prompts.

Are you a business analyst curious about business architecture and wondering if it’s the next step in your career? Or perhaps you’re a business architect looking to tap into the analytical strengths of business analysis? Whether you’re exploring a transition or seeking to expand your toolkit, this session is designed for you.

Join us for an interactive, practical tutorial that demystifies business architecture and its relationship with business analysis. We’ll explore the overlapping skills, shared artifacts, and distinct mindsets that define each discipline. You’ll gain actionable insights to start your journey into business architecture—or enhance your current practice with business analysis techniques. Plus, hear a firsthand account of transitioning from BA to business architect, complete with lessons learned and tips to help you take your next step with confidence.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the foundational concepts of business architecture and how they complement and extend business analysis practices.

Recognize the key differences and overlaps between business analysis and business architecture roles, including mindset, deliverables, and strategic impact.

Gain actionable steps and tools to begin your transition into business architecture or enhance your current role with cross-disciplinary skills.

Based on Ron’s most recently released book: Business Knowledge Blueprints: Enabling Your Data to Speak the Language of the Business, 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 standardizing vocabulary and 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

How to use a concept model for standardizing business vocabulary

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

When it comes to business analysis, BAs get stuck right in to doing their work, eliciting requirements, creating models, consulting stakeholders, running workshops and writing documentation without much planning. The BA work required may be included as a task in the project plan by the project manager, if at all.

This lack of planning can be the cause of missing or inaccurate requirements, not to mention lots of re-work, stress and unmet stakeholder expectations – regardless of being an agile project or not. Due to change and uncertainty, detailed plans will inevitably become outdated, and a lot of waste can occur trying to keep them accurate. However, not enough planning is equally problematic.

This session will explore business analysis planning along with a ‘BA Planning Canvas’, a new tool to help us plan our work efficiently. By planning our BA activities more effectively, we will help ensure our projects deliver business value though better business analysis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the importance of planning business analysis work

Identify the elements of an effective business analysis plan

Use the BA Planning Canvas to plan and deliver better business analysis

We live in a world of products.  We use products, we create products, and we are impacted by products.  Products evoke emotions and also drive behaviour.  The artifacts you create are products in themselves. AI is also accelerating the world of products – sometimes well, sometimes no so – making the landscape both competitive and challenging.  Rather than get dragged by the flow, take charge and lead the flow by building a product mindset.  

This interactive and hands-on workshop will take you through the product management lifecycle, where you will create a product prototype by going through the stages from ideation to retirement, and most importantly, have fun doing it.  We will also look at other considerations such as finance, data, user experience / interface design, stakeholders, privacy, security, etc.

Lastly, whether you envision building the next device, tool, app, document, or party, etc., the lessons and takeaways from this session will be applicable throughout.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The basics of product management and how to apply it

Cultivating a product mindset in enabling your vision

Use low fidelity prototypes in testing and validating ideas

As organizations have grown and succeeded, they have also become more fragmented, with teams, priorities, and decisions increasingly disconnected. The ways of working that once drove success are no longer enough for a future defined by persistent change, where complexity is as much of a threat as competition.

This is an invitation for analysts and architects to reimagine what is possible. Whynde
will explore a vision for organizational cohesion where strategy, design, execution, and
operations move in concert as part of a continuous, connected flow of effort. An
organization becomes a living, adaptive system that creates meaningful value for the
business stakeholders and empowers the people within it to act with purpose and create
outcomes that matter. Cohesion also lays the foundation for intelligent organizations to
unlock the full potential of emerging technologies, including AI, to drive consistent
business results.

The heart of this session focuses on the role we each all can play in helping to realize
this vision. We all sit at the intersection of ideas and execution and help bring structure
to complexity and coherence to change. We, as change agents, are essential in turning
the aspiration of business cohesion into something tangible and real, and helping our
organizations to meet the challenges of the future.

Learning Objectives

• Develop a clear understanding of what organizational cohesion looks like in practice
• Understand and navigate the journey to achieving organizational cohesion
• Apply practical approaches to step into your role as a catalyst for making a difference

Organisations have spent decades building dashboards, KPIs, and frameworks designed to make complexity look controlled. But in a world driven by AI and pattern detection, the illusion of control is becoming more seductive — and more dangerous. Business Analysts now face a critical shift: metrics and machine-learning outputs can look like truth, while masking the messy human reality underneath.

In this provocative session, we explore the history of control thinking — from Taylorism to modern analytics — and reveal why organisations are more vulnerable than ever to comforting data and staged authenticity. Through real examples and practical tools, attendees will learn how to challenge misleading patterns, expose what dashboards hide, and act as strategic defenders of reality. Because when the numbers lie, the BA must speak for what’s real.  

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Recognise how organisations create the illusion of control through metrics, dashboards, and AI driven patterns – and why those illusions can be dangerous

Analyse the gap between what data claims to represent and the messy human reality beneath – using histotical, cultural and modern AI examples

Apply practical techniques to challenge misleading narratives, surface uncomfortable truths, and position the business professional as a strategic defender of reality

Business Analysts often bridge the gap between strategy and delivery, but too often, the architectural vision stops above them. The result is that teams build beautiful trees that don’t add up to a forest. This session explores why BAs should think like architects to improve consistency, flows, reduce redundancy, and help teams build more cohesive, scalable solutions.

We will explore how architectural alignment boosts team velocity, how to spot when work is being scoped too narrowly, and how to translate architecture into actions that empower the entire team.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Architectural impact of Business Analysis

Align feature decomposition with system and enterprise architecture

Practical ways to connect business, product, and technology

AI is reshaping how we document and analyze business situations, but some of the most important work remains distinctly human. Understanding the people involved and affected by change is essential, and working with them collaboratively is crucial. Yet this isn’t always easy, particularly when hidden agendas exist, organizational politics come into play, and there are a range of competing perspectives.

This session explores the increasingly important (but less visible) skills that drive real outcomes: understanding people, navigating politics, and applying critical thinking in complex organizational environments.

In this practical session, you’ll hear:

 – Why politics can’t be ignored (and why organizational politics isn’t always a bad thing)

 – Techniques for analyzing the stakeholder landscape and understanding different perspectives

– The importance of getting to root causes and identifying the real business need

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Analyze stakeholder landscape and perspectives

Assess and analyze root causes

Understand importance of organizational politics

Artificial intelligence is moving beyond code completion and chat prompts — it’s reshaping how teams plan, analyze, and deliver value. In this session, Asif Sharif, Founder and CEO of Modern Requirements and Copilot4DevOps, explores how AI-driven agents inside Azure DevOps are redefining collaboration across Business Analysis, Architecture, and Delivery. Through real-world enterprise case studies, Asif demonstrates how intelligent agents can interpret business intent, generate and trace requirements, maintain live compliance, and coordinate change instantly. Attendees will learn how to identify high-impact use cases for agent automation, evaluate ROI in productivity and quality, and apply a framework for safely introducing agentic workflows in their own environments. This session provides actionable insight into how organizations can evolve from document-driven to intelligence-driven delivery — activating people, process, and product capabilities through AI.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how AI agents activate intelligence across DevOps planning, requirements, and testing workflows.

Analyze real-world case studies showing measurable ROI from AI-driven automation in DevOps.

Apply a practical framework to introduce and scale agentic collaboration within enterprise delivery teams.

This is not just another AI talk. While business professionals must understand and harness the power of Artificial Intelligence, let’s talk about “Authentic Intelligence”.

You may feel overwhelmed by the fast pace Artificial Intelligence, but did you know that we can navigate through the change by applying Authentic (human) Intelligence? Beyond the critical thinking that we BAs know we’re supposed to apply, we need to be aware of other intelligence types that can help us do our job better, connecting organizations, people, processes, technologies to build business capabilities.

Hear some interesting stories about how critical thinking, emotional intelligence, linguistic intelligence and creativity are applied to perform the BA job and sometimes even deal with sticky situations with stakeholders. In this session, you’ll also learn how you can improve your Authentic Intelligence to be the best BA you can be.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand different kinds of human intelligence

Realize how a BA needs different types of intelligence to succeed

Learn how to boost and diversify our intelligence types to excel in our BA job

When asked a data question, even experienced analysts can feel daunted—where do you start? How do you move from raw data to reliable insight? This session presents a practical, structured approach to data analysis through a checklist of essential questions every analyst should ask. From clarifying the business problem and understanding data context, to assessing data quality, exploring patterns, and communicating results, this presentation outlines the thinking process that separates reactive reporting from thoughtful analysis. 

Attendees will learn how to frame questions, evaluate data sources, select appropriate tools, design clear visualizations, and deliver actionable insights. Whether you’re mentoring new analysts or refining your own practice, this talk provides tools for confident, context-driven data exploration.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Identify the key questions that guide a structured, end-to-end data analysis process from defining the business problem to communicating insights.

Learn to apply a practical checklist to assess data quality, structure, and context before performing analysis.

Develop strategies for selecting effective visualizations and interpreting results to deliver clear, actionable recommendations.

You’ve probably been creating process maps for years. And you’ve probably either experimented with or heavily used AI in your job as a business analysis professional. But have you combined the two? In this session, you’ll see numerous live demos of ways to use AI on both sides of a process map: 1) to create a map from text, and 2) to analyze and extract knowledge from an existing map. We’ll dig into the AI capabilities of multiple process mapping tools, including draw.io, Lucidchart, and SmartDraw. And if you haven’t heard of Mermaid syntax, you will know about it before you leave.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Use AI to create process maps from narrative descriptions

Analyze and identify potential improvements in a process map

Leverage what you already know to make AI-generated maps better

Quote: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” – Confucius. In tech projects, *how* you ask is often more important than *what* you ask. A poorly framed request can trigger resistance, misalignment, or scope creep, while a well-structured ask can unlock clarity, buy-in, and move the project forward. Learning the art of language sequencing can guide dialogue, shape decisions, and lead to better collaboration. This session guides you in structuring your communication to achieve maximum impact. You will learn how to craft questions that encourage the flow of information, spot and correct problematic phrasing, and apply structured patterns that improve interactions with stakeholders.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Master language sequencing techniques to frame questions and requests that foster clarity, alignment, and constructive dialogue

Recognize and refine problematic phrasing that can trigger resistance, confusion, or unintended project outcomes

Apply structured communication patterns to guide conversations, build stakeholder trust, and improve collaboration across technical and non-technical teams

It’s time we all cheat using GenAl Agents! Yes, create cheat sheets, cheat codes, crib notes, and get stay ahead when working with Claude, DALL-E, and Gemini. There’s a lot the Agents need to know in order to help us. We need to help it – help us. Without proper instructions and guidelines, AI can produce results that are off the mark. Create a file to upload. Include anything you think will help the Agent achieve its mission: context, references, format and much more. Attendees will walk away with how to create their own cheat sheet files and templates in order to build a PRD.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

How do GenAI Agents think, limitations and advantages doing analysis

Start using Context Files

Prompting above and beyond

If you want the solution you’re building to meet its desired outcome, you need product people, testers, and developers to have a shared understanding of what that solution is. That includes knowing how the solution should behave in key situations. 

Conversations are an effective way to build that shared understanding. You may wonder who to include in those conversations, when to have these conversations, what should you talk about, and how to remember what you said.

Join Kent McDonald as he introduces example mapping, a technique that helps you structure your conversations to build a shared understanding. The resulting examples also act as test cases to make developer’s and tester’s lives easier.

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

Understand what example mapping is and when to use it.

Apply example mapping to build shared understanding.

Learn how to facilitate an example mapping session.

When implementing AI, value-first execution is paramount. This presentation will focus on how to align AI initiatives with business priorities to drive measurable impact. Learn how to take your AI initiatives from pilot to scale. Learn practical steps to embed AI into workflows and operating models for sustained adoption. Explore continuous value management – methods to track, govern, and evolve AI performance over time. Understand how to avoid pitfalls through lessons learned from failed transformations and how to de-risk execution.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn practical steps to embed AI into workflows and operating models for sustained adoption.

Continuous value management – methods to track, govern, and evolve AI performance over time.

Avoiding pitfalls – lessons learned from failed transformations and how to de-risk execution

No BA ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley… Well, that’s about to change. Thanks to “Doc” Battan*, who built a time machine… out of sticky notes, she’s sending you back in time to rediscover tools, techniques, and models that will help you define the value your partners are looking for.

Whether you’ve struggled to engage your customers or find yourself translating methods into future-friendly frameworks, “Doc” has you covered. You’ll explore approaches adapted to today’s environment, helping you craft a future-state that will make your next release hit 88 miles per hour. We’ll make history and leave a lasting impact on your future.

Grab your tickets to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, a Pepsi Free, and your Eric Stoltz fan club membership card as you join “Doc” on an adventure through time. Zoot suits and poodle skirts optional—just bring your passion for techniques and your sense of humor!

(Note: Jen isn’t a doctor, but plays one in this workshop)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Gain practical insights into adapting techniques to today’s reality

Practice new tools and models that support the discovery of value for project stakeholders

Renew your knowledge of the classics, techniques we may have abandoned, applied with new twists for maximum engagement and results.

In the book “Please Hold – The Power of Outcome-Driven Thinking”, Fabrício presents the concepts of the outcome-driven mindset in a fun business novel for anyone driving real change at work and beyond.

The outcome-driven mindset may be applied to everything we do. It shapes how we understand problems and opportunities and decide the best course of action based on a specific context. It’s part of a collective way of thinking, not just restricted to Business Analysis professionals, but available to anyone.

To develop this mindset, one must understand some basic principles and practice business analysis approaches that can be learned and trained repeatedly until they become a part of one’s own way of thinking.

Come to learn the value of the outcome-driven mindset and how you can develop and use it to evolve your career by using some basic business analysis techniques.

Using case-based exercises, this workshop will guide you to perceive and apply a specific way of seeing change.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Acknowledge the 7 components of the outcome-driven mindset

Learn strategies to develop the outcome-driven mindset in your organization.

Practice, basic business analysis techniques to develop an outcome-driven mindset.

This session explores a strategic approach to implementing AI through the lens of business architecture, with a particular emphasis on value streams. By distinguishing between capabilities and value streams, it demonstrates how organizations can identify high-impact AI opportunities that align with strategic goals and deliver measurable value. You will gain insights into how value streams provide contextual relevance for AI use cases across the business landscape.

Through real-world examples and a structured framework, the session highlights how business architecture enables organizations to bridge strategy and operations, ensuring AI initiatives are not only technically feasible but also strategically aligned. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how to leverage value stream mapping to pinpoint areas ripe for AI-driven transformation and how to utilize business architecture to maximize outcomes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the distinction between capabilities and value streams and how each contributes to identifying and implementing AI opportunities.

Learn how value streams provide contextual relevance for AI use cases across different business areas.

Explore the role of business architecture in aligning AI initiatives with strategic business goals and operational processes.

Problems on projects and in organizations are nothing new, and finding right solutions is what we all strive for. 
The different priorities, perspectives, and interests among diverse stakeholders could bring the decision making to a halt. The impact of such indecision could be demoralized and confused team members. The real cost of conflicting requirements and indecision is often large but unmeasured, and project progress as the result suffers. 
On a recent advanced gas meter replacement project, the largest in North America, a team of business analysts applied business architecture practice to the project and the impact reverberates within the rest of the organization.

• The core business architecture elements are leveraged to design future processes and build capabilities
• The approach the team adopted has been recognized as effective and called upon time and again to overcome impasses
• The collaborative spirit has been fostered

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand business architecture fundamentals

Apply business architecture principle in challenging situations

Recognize & deliver value to project, team and organization

In today’s fast-paced, AI-accelerated world, the ability to break down complexity is more than a skill — it’s a fundamental advantage. This session explores the art and impact of decomposition: how splitting large initiatives, ideas, or challenges into smaller, testable components enables faster learning, clearer feedback, and better outcomes.

With AI tools now allowing us to prototype, iterate, and validate ideas at unprecedented speed, the cost of experimentation has plummeted — but only if we know how to structure the work. Through real-world examples and case studies, we’ll unpack how effective splitting helps teams reduce ambiguity, surface assumptions, and test hypotheses in ways that drive strategic clarity and customer value.

Whether you’re shaping a product roadmap, navigating organisational change, or validating a value hypothesis, this session will equip you with practical techniques to work smaller, think sharper, and deliver smarter.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Master the art of decomposition

Design and run small-scale experiments

Apply structured techniques

No BA ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley… Well, that’s about to change. Thanks to “Doc” Battan*, who built a time machine… out of sticky notes, she’s sending you back in time to rediscover tools, techniques, and models that will help you define the value your partners are looking for.

Whether you’ve struggled to engage your customers or find yourself translating methods into future-friendly frameworks, “Doc” has you covered. You’ll explore approaches adapted to today’s environment, helping you craft a future-state that will make your next release hit 88 miles per hour. We’ll make history and leave a lasting impact on your future.

Grab your tickets to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, a Pepsi Free, and your Eric Stoltz fan club membership card as you join “Doc” on an adventure through time. Zoot suits and poodle skirts optional—just bring your passion for techniques and your sense of humor!

(Note: Jen isn’t a doctor, but plays one in this workshop)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Gain practical insights into adapting techniques to today’s reality

Practice new tools and models that support the discovery of value for project stakeholders

Renew your knowledge of the classics, techniques we may have abandoned, applied with new twists for maximum engagement and results.

In the book “Please Hold – The Power of Outcome-Driven Thinking”, Fabrício presents the concepts of the outcome-driven mindset in a fun business novel for anyone driving real change at work and beyond.

The outcome-driven mindset may be applied to everything we do. It shapes how we understand problems and opportunities and decide the best course of action based on a specific context. It’s part of a collective way of thinking, not just restricted to Business Analysis professionals, but available to anyone.

To develop this mindset, one must understand some basic principles and practice business analysis approaches that can be learned and trained repeatedly until they become a part of one’s own way of thinking.

Come to learn the value of the outcome-driven mindset and how you can develop and use it to evolve your career by using some basic business analysis techniques.

Using case-based exercises, this workshop will guide you to perceive and apply a specific way of seeing change.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Acknowledge the 7 components of the outcome-driven mindset

Learn strategies to develop the outcome-driven mindset in your organization.

Practice, basic business analysis techniques to develop an outcome-driven mindset.

Please note that Lily will unfortunately not be able to attend. However, she has recorded her session, which will be made available for download.

This presentation offers a focused and practical look at why Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a new norm instead of a passing trend, and how to integrate AI into the Business Analyst’s (BA’s) daily work. We will bypass general discussions to focus on specific, impactful AI applications that significantly boost BA productivity by tens of times. The session provides insights into the immediate benefits, potential drawbacks, and crucial considerations before applying AI to your work, equipping you to make informed decisions about AI integration in your practice.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand AI Adoption Journey and how Everyday AI takes part in this journey

Appreciate AI for boosting BA productivity

Rethinking your role in the age of AI

Do you see the growing importance of data but question how your current skills fit in? This session is for you. Discover how to leverage your unique background in areas like business analysis, operations, or strategy to successfully pivot into a data-focused role.

Attendees will walk through concrete steps to engage with your organization’s data culture, processes, and forums. You’ll learn proven techniques to identify key stakeholders and uncover opportunities to contribute, making you stand out as a valuable data ally.  Attendees will also explore how to reframe your existing skills to demonstrate immediate value to a data team.

Drawing from my own journey of transitioning from operations and strategy to a Principal Data Product Manager role at DaVita, you’ll leave with an actionable roadmap to make your own successful move into data.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn how your existing skills can strengthen data culture and processes within your organization

Develop techniques to uncover formal and informal data forums

Leverage your knowledge and skillset to connect with, support, and join a data team

No BA ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley… Well, that’s about to change. Thanks to “Doc” Battan*, who built a time machine… out of sticky notes, she’s sending you back in time to rediscover tools, techniques, and models that will help you define the value your partners are looking for.

Whether you’ve struggled to engage your customers or find yourself translating methods into future-friendly frameworks, “Doc” has you covered. You’ll explore approaches adapted to today’s environment, helping you craft a future-state that will make your next release hit 88 miles per hour. We’ll make history and leave a lasting impact on your future.

Grab your tickets to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, a Pepsi Free, and your Eric Stoltz fan club membership card as you join “Doc” on an adventure through time. Zoot suits and poodle skirts optional—just bring your passion for techniques and your sense of humor!

(Note: Jen isn’t a doctor, but plays one in this workshop)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Gain practical insights into adapting techniques to today’s reality

Practice new tools and models that support the discovery of value for project stakeholders

Renew your knowledge of the classics, techniques we may have abandoned, applied with new twists for maximum engagement and results.

In the book “Please Hold – The Power of Outcome-Driven Thinking”, Fabrício presents the concepts of the outcome-driven mindset in a fun business novel for anyone driving real change at work and beyond.

The outcome-driven mindset may be applied to everything we do. It shapes how we understand problems and opportunities and decide the best course of action based on a specific context. It’s part of a collective way of thinking, not just restricted to Business Analysis professionals, but available to anyone.

To develop this mindset, one must understand some basic principles and practice business analysis approaches that can be learned and trained repeatedly until they become a part of one’s own way of thinking.

Come to learn the value of the outcome-driven mindset and how you can develop and use it to evolve your career by using some basic business analysis techniques.

Using case-based exercises, this workshop will guide you to perceive and apply a specific way of seeing change.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Acknowledge the 7 components of the outcome-driven mindset

Learn strategies to develop the outcome-driven mindset in your organization.

Practice, basic business analysis techniques to develop an outcome-driven mindset.

Your BPMN diagrams capture roughly 25% of operational reality. They were designed for human communication – not machine analysis – and AI cannot deliver meaningful recommendations from incomplete data. Drawing on 25 years of process optimization experience, Sasha will present a practical approach to documenting processes in formats AI can actually consume: structured knowledge base. A real case studies will show how this method uncovered hidden cost drivers, counterintuitive correlations, and targeted fixes that traditional analysis missed entirely.

Learning Objectives:

What is limiting AI’s analytical power

What “AI-ready” process knowledge looks like

Practical framework for building knowledge base

Agentic AI success – easy to pilot but hard to produce. Enterprises are quickly discovering that success hinges less on model novelty and more on disciplined practice. Join Pierre and Swami as they introduce a systematic approach to building reliable enterprise-grade agentic solutions. Based on real-life scenarios, they present the key activities that ensure success – from discovering your Agentic AI sweet spots, selecting agents and tools, designing agentic goals to systematically and reliably build and deploy. With a set of use cases, they show the unique aspects of agentic testing, observability, and governance that enable continuous improvement. Attendees will gain a clear view of how disciplined execution turns AI potential into measurable business success.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the end-to-end lifecycle of enterprise Agentic AI solutions

Learn how disciplined execution and systematic design practices protect business value

Gain practical insights from real-world implementations

Digital transformation isn’t just about technology—it’s about agility, adaptability, and empowering teams to thrive in constant change. And agility is no longer optional—it’s the engine of digital transformation. Without agile, digital transformation is like sailing without a compass.

In this session, Oluwabori takes you on a practical journey of how Agile principles are reshaping organizations in reducing risk, driving innovation and lasting transformation with speed. He reveals how Agile practices empower teams to adapt faster and innovate smarter by breaking down silos and enabling continuous delivery of real customer value. 

Whether you’re navigating legacy systems or championing future-ready solutions, this talk will help you turn agility from a buzzword into a competitive advantage, shift from reactive delivery to strategic impact, equip you with the mindset and tools to lead with confidence, future-proof your organization and ultimately unlock your team’s full potential.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how Agile principles unlock real business transformation beyond IT

Learn practical strategies for embedding agility into organizational culture

Explore real-world case studies showing how teams deliver faster and smarter

Business analysis leaders are re-architecting their teams in response to automation, AI, and hybrid delivery models. Join together to hear and share how your colleagues are redefining roles, reshaping performance measures, and creating learning environments that keep their teams relevant. The discussion will highlight practical approaches to skill development, AI literacy, and value measurement, and collaboration across the organization on the value and services BAs provide.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Discuss how organizations are evolving BA roles and competencies to meet AI-driven demand

Explore approaches for embedding continuous learning and AI readiness into BA teams

Gain actionable tactics for influencing leadership support for capability investment

This presentation explores how to craft truly inspiring solutions that drive profound business transformation. We will delve into the critical interconnectedness of core business analysis concepts—Change, Need, Solution, Stakeholder, Context, and Value—as outlined in the Business Analysis Core Concept Model (BACCM). Building on 20 years of experience as a technology leader and consultant, the session will dissect the six essential dimensions for a robust and inspiring solution. Attendees will gain practical insights into establishing technology solutions by considering the technical, strategic, and human aspects critical for organizational development. Learn to transform initial uncertainties into proven, impactful solutions, ensuring alignment across all business dimensions for sustained success.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the interconnectedness of core concepts in solution design.

Identify six critical dimensions for crafting robust and inspiring technology solutions.

Apply practical insights for effective organizational transformation using technology.

How do you activate intelligence in an organization that doesn’t know it needs business architecture? In this session, you’ll get candid, actionable steps for identifying the need, pitching the value, and building a business architecture practice, even if you’re the only architect in the room. Even as a solo architect you can progress from recognizing gaps as a business analyst to delivering results with limited resources. Learn how to spot signals that your organization is ready, craft a compelling pitch, and create impact as a one-person practice. Discover the transition from solo to team and the lessons learned as the practice scaled. Whether you’re starting from scratch or expanding your influence, this session offers effective insights, practical tools, and real-world stories to help you activate business architecture intelligence—no matter your starting point.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Recognize organizational signals that indicate readiness for business architecture

Apply strategies to pitch and build a solo business architecture practice

Analyze the transition from individual contributor to scalable architecture team

Confidence is often treated as a personality trait — something you either have, or you don’t. But research and lived experience suggest something different: confidence is a capability that can be intentionally built. This session normalizes self-doubt while reframing it as data, not identity. Attendees will leave with new language, shared perspective, and practical ways to interrupt negative feedback loops.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Explore the roots of imposter syndrome and social comparison

Identify common “confidence killers” in high-performance environments

Share real stories in a guided story-circle format

New to Generative AI? Curious what all the buzz is about?
Step into AI Playtime — a high-energy, hands-on session where you’ll discover the power of AI through experimentation, laughter, and a little friendly competition. This immersive experience is designed for AI beginners who are ready to get their hands dirty (in the best way!).

Join a team of fellow attendees and dive into an engaging, interactive case study where you’ll explore:
– How various AI tools can boost creativity and productivity
– How to create multimedia outputs like visualizations, images, and songs
– Surprising ways AI is already transforming industries today

Groups of up to 5 will each be provided with a laptop loaded with a premium AI assistant for the session. Bring your own laptop too – you’ll want to compare tools and try things on your own. Space is limited to 30 participants; latecomers are welcome to follow along independently.

Whether you’re cautious or curious, this session is your sandbox for safe, playful exploration. You’ll try real tools, tackle real scenarios, and see how AI could impact your work, your business, and your world.

– Collaborate with peers
– Experiment with emerging tech
– Compete in an AI-powered challenge
– Have fun while learning something truly game-changing

No experience? No problem.
– Come with questions. Leave with insights, inspiration, and maybe even a few new friends.
– Let’s play with AI—and imagine what’s possible.

Please bring your laptop for this session.

The Immersive Sessions are spread across three session slots and as interactive group exercises it is compulsory to attend all three session slots, in order to complete the exercise and be fair to your fellow participants. No dipping in and out!

Start/End Times:
– Parts 1-3: 8:10 – 10:30 AM
(no room change needed)

What if the biggest barrier to your company’s growth isn’t market conditions or new technology—but the way you’ve been guarding strategic thinking? Too often, strategy is treated like an executive privilege, leaving teams reactive, dependent, and underutilized. The result: slower decisions, fragile plans, and missed opportunities.

This presentation flips that script. It challenges leaders to stop doing all the thinking themselves and start building strategic depth across every level of the organization. You’ll see how unintentional gatekeeping stifles innovation, why giving people earlier exposure to strategy changes everything, and how deeper questioning sharpens—not shortcuts—human judgement. stories, bold insights, and practical tools, you’ll learn the impact of modeling curiosity, creating space for bigger thinking, and sparking conversations that unlock your team’s hidden potential.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Spot and break gatekeeping behaviors that limit team thinking.

Build business and strategic leaders from functional experts

Model curiosity and create space that empowers strategic thinking at every level.

Awareness is powerful — but without action, it fades.

This final session in the Women in Tech series moves from clarity to commitment. Participants will translate insights into a practical, personalized strategy for sustainable confidence and performance. Through guided reflection, facilitated table discussions, and structured planning exercises, participants will assess their current performance and confidence gaps, identify recurring triggers, and select areas to intentionally strengthen. Each attendee will leave with a simple, one-page Personal Transformation Blueprint, clear next steps, and built-in accountability prompts to sustain momentum.

This session is where awareness becomes ownership — and ownership becomes action.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Evaluate current confidence and performance landscape to identify key gaps and recurring self-doubt triggers.

Prioritize high-impact capability areas that will strengthen resilience, confidence, and effectiveness.

Develop a practical Personal Transformation Blueprint with clear actions and accountability mechanisms to sustain growth.

New to Generative AI? Curious what all the buzz is about?
Step into AI Playtime — a high-energy, hands-on session where you’ll discover the power of AI through experimentation, laughter, and a little friendly competition. This immersive experience is designed for AI beginners who are ready to get their hands dirty (in the best way!).

Join a team of fellow attendees and dive into an engaging, interactive case study where you’ll explore:
– How various AI tools can boost creativity and productivity
– How to create multimedia outputs like visualizations, images, and songs
– Surprising ways AI is already transforming industries today

Groups of up to 5 will each be provided with a laptop loaded with a premium AI assistant for the session. Bring your own laptop too – you’ll want to compare tools and try things on your own. Space is limited to 30 participants; latecomers are welcome to follow along independently.

Whether you’re cautious or curious, this session is your sandbox for safe, playful exploration. You’ll try real tools, tackle real scenarios, and see how AI could impact your work, your business, and your world.

– Collaborate with peers
– Experiment with emerging tech
– Compete in an AI-powered challenge
– Have fun while learning something truly game-changing

No experience? No problem.
– Come with questions. Leave with insights, inspiration, and maybe even a few new friends.
– Let’s play with AI—and imagine what’s possible.

Please bring your laptop for this session.

The Immersive Sessions are spread across three session slots and as interactive group exercises it is compulsory to attend all three session slots, in order to complete the exercise and be fair to your fellow participants. No dipping in and out!

Start/End Times:
– Parts 1-3: 8:10 – 10:30 AM
(no room change needed)

As projects move from idea to delivery, the original “why” behind decisions often gets lost. Different business analyst roles and teams use their own tools and methods, so key context isn’t always carried forward. This leads to rework, repeated conversations, and stakeholder frustration as the same questions come up again throughout the project lifecycle.

In this session, we’ll share how our organization tackled these challenges by rethinking how information and intent are captured, connected, and communicated. We’ll talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how we applied consistent business analysis techniques and structured collaboration practices to make our process clearer and more efficient—keeping the purpose behind every change visible from concept to completion.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how context and intent can get lost as projects move through the lifecycle.

Learn practical ways to keep business purpose clear using consistent analysis techniques.

Explore methods to make analysis more connected, transparent, and efficient across teams.

Traditional BA CoEs often focus on templates, training, process, governance, and compliance. The next generation is different—serving as innovation engines that accelerate value delivery through analytics, AI enablement, and adaptive frameworks. This session outlines a modern BA CoE maturity model and shows how forward-thinking organizations are embedding AI skills, data literacy, and agentic thinking into their capability strategies. Participants will learn how to transition from oversight to enablement and position their CoE as a driver of business intelligence and change agility.  Business Analysis is more important than ever in an AI world, and it is changing! Come learn the latest thinking on what a BACoE will look like for the future!

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the importance of the evolution of business analysis with AI

Discover what BA practice maturity looks like in an AI driven enterprise

Discover the Future BA Role, Tasks, and Services BAs provide the organization

Many organisations are pursuing multiple transformations in parallel, and tackling seismic problems that are too big or complex to be solved in one go. A solution to that overwhelm is the Discovery Factory. 

A “Discovery Factory” breaks problems and transformation goals into manageable-sized chunks, and applies repeatable processes and proven methods to design and deliver solutions at pace and scale – again and again. This way-of-working enables Business Analysts, Architects and Designers to operate like an assembly line and maximise productivity.

We will share our experience setting up and running a Discovery Factory for one of the largest and most complex government departments in the UK. We will share the six critical success factors for a Discovery Factory: the right talent; an infectious culture; brutal prioritisation; repeatable processes; strategic tooling; and visionary leadership and explain how this led one team of BAs to complete over 120 discoveries in a year.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Gain insight on how to set up a Discovery Factory in your organisation

Understand the six critical success factors of a Discovery Factory, based on our experience

Understand how Discovery Factories can benefit your organisation

New to Generative AI? Curious what all the buzz is about?
Step into AI Playtime — a high-energy, hands-on session where you’ll discover the power of AI through experimentation, laughter, and a little friendly competition. This immersive experience is designed for AI beginners who are ready to get their hands dirty (in the best way!).

Join a team of fellow attendees and dive into an engaging, interactive case study where you’ll explore:
– How various AI tools can boost creativity and productivity
– How to create multimedia outputs like visualizations, images, and songs
– Surprising ways AI is already transforming industries today

Groups of up to 5 will each be provided with a laptop loaded with a premium AI assistant for the session. Bring your own laptop too – you’ll want to compare tools and try things on your own. Space is limited to 30 participants; latecomers are welcome to follow along independently.

Whether you’re cautious or curious, this session is your sandbox for safe, playful exploration. You’ll try real tools, tackle real scenarios, and see how AI could impact your work, your business, and your world.

– Collaborate with peers
– Experiment with emerging tech
– Compete in an AI-powered challenge
– Have fun while learning something truly game-changing

No experience? No problem.
– Come with questions. Leave with insights, inspiration, and maybe even a few new friends.
– Let’s play with AI—and imagine what’s possible.

Please bring your laptop for this session.

The Immersive Sessions are spread across three session slots and as interactive group exercises it is compulsory to attend all three session slots, in order to complete the exercise and be fair to your fellow participants. No dipping in and out!

Start/End Times:
– Parts 1-3: 8:10 – 10:30 AM
(no room change needed)

Agentic AI is revolutionizing how organizations operate and automate, yet its success depends far less on technology and far more on exceptional business analysis. AI agents cannot deliver value unless their purpose, scope, and requirements are clearly defined, and that’s where business analysts play a pivotal role.

This session explores how Agentic AI changes the nature of business analysis. You’ll learn how to analyze and reimagine end-to-end workflows, identify opportunities for intelligent agents, determine where a human-in-the-loop is essential, and define the business systems and data requirements that make AI agents effective. The emphasis: focus first on getting the requirements right, then the technology can follow.

Agentic AI is the next frontier of business operations. Business analysts who develop these skills will stand out as indispensable contributors that drive smarter automation, faster innovation, and higher organizational value.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Explore the key concepts of Agentic AI from a business analysis perspective.

Understand techniques for identifying high-impact AI agent opportunities.

Examine methods for specifying requirements in an Agentic AI environment

Digital transformation isn’t just about technology — it’s about people. In this highly interactive session, participants will explore how to equip employees as champions of change. Through self-reflection, scoring exercises, and guided discussion, attendees will gain a personalized snapshot of their own change readiness while discovering practical strategies to sustain transformation. Walk away with actionable tools and insights to strengthen employee engagement and make change stick in your organization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Identify the key traits and competencies of effective Change Champions and assess your own readiness to champion digital transformation.

Apply structured self-reflection and scoring tools to evaluate organizational readiness for sustaining transformation.

Develop practical strategies to equip employees as active participants in change, strengthening engagement and long-term adoption.

Most strategic initiatives fail not because of poor execution, but because critical questions go unasked during planning. Yet business analysis, the discipline built around asking those questions, is rarely present when strategy is formed. 

This session makes the case for repositioning business analysis as a core capability in strategy formation, not just delivery. Through practical techniques and real strategic challenges, attendees will discover how analysts can shape better decisions at the point where they matter most: before commitments are made, assumptions harden, and course correction becomes expensive. 
The session also explores what it takes to operate effectively at the strategic level: the skills, the mindset, and the organizational navigation required to bring analytical rigor into strategic discussions.

Business analysis is a social activity as much as it is a practice of applying analytical tools and principles. This talk will reinforce BA competencies that enable business analysts to stay relevant while embracing AI as a powerful technology: diplomacy, facilitation, visual thinking, and empathy. The session will also address the AI shortcomings and how applying the BA Mindset principles can mitigate the risks of AI failures.

Learning objectives:

How is emerging technology impacting business analysis

What can we learn from AI successes and failures

BA competencies required to future-proof your career

The scope of User Experience (UX) encompasses the entire service journey for both digital and physical products.  Yet, most products and design decisions are still optimized for the “average user” who is typically young, healthy, and distraction-free. 

This session introduces a 3A’s framework – Age, Ailments, and Atmosphere – as a holistic approach for building inclusive systems, services, and environments.  

– Age: designing for the cognitive and physical changes across the entire lifespan to ensure product longevity.

– Ailments: addressing the spectrum of temporary, situational, and permanent (dis-)abilities to capture underserved markets.

– Atmosphere: Understanding the contextual environment and how it creates situational impairments, preventing capability failure under duress.

Attendees will gain an actionable framework that transforms “accessibility” from a compliance cost into a competitive capability, driving ROI, loyalty, and new market opportunities.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

articulate the business case for resilient design

understand the impact of age, ailments, and atmosphere

identify opportunities by developing contextual scenarios

“Have you ever spent 20 minutes searching for a document you know exists in your company’s systems, only to see that time balloon into an hour? Eventually, you either track down a colleague to ask—or worse, recreate the entire thing from scratch.”

Imagine if your organization’s most experienced employee—someone who has been there 20 years, read every document, attended every meeting, and remembers everything—was available 24/7 to answer any question from anyone. 

That’s essentially what an AI Knowledge Twin does, except it has perfect memory and can access information instantly.

Key Takeaway: An AI knowledge twin isn’t just a technology project—it’s an organizational transformation that requires strategy, governance, and cultural change to unlock your company’s collective intelligence.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Clear understanding of the value proposition for AI knowledge twins

Practical checklist for initiating your own project

Awareness of critical success factors and common failure modes

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, business analysts (BAs) play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between business needs and technical execution. This presentation empowers BAs to understand, identify, and advocate for the strategic management of technical debt within their organizations. Attendees will gain a clear understanding of what technical debt is, how it accumulates, and why it poses significant risks to project timelines, product quality, and long-term business value. Through real-world examples, practical frameworks, and collaborative strategies, participants will learn how to:

–  Recognize the symptoms and hidden costs of unmanaged technical debt.

–  Communicate the business impact of technical debt to stakeholders in meaningful terms.

–  Integrate technical debt considerations into backlog prioritization, sprint planning, and product roadmaps.

Attendees will understand that technical debt is not just a developer concern—but a shared business priority.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Define and recognize technical debt in the context of software development and business analysis, including its causes, types, and long-term impact on project outcomes.

Analyze the business implications of unmanaged technical debt, such as increased costs, reduced agility, and compromised product quality, and communicate these risks effectively to stakeholders.

Apply strategies to identify, prioritize, and advocate for technical debt remediation within project planning and backlog management, ensuring alignment with business goals and sustainable delivery practices.

You’ve been asked to “pull together some data” to help your organization make a decision.  Where do you start?  How do you present your findings in a compelling, persuasive way?

Participants will be invited to participate in a workshop where they will:

• Study their audience and understand what will help them make a decision

• Perform analytics on a dataset using Excel

• Develop a recommendation and a supporting presentation, using AI to help craft the message

Volunteer participants can step up to the plate to deliver their data pitch.  Feedback and tips will be shared by team coaches to help fine-tune the story.

So…will your pitch be a home run – or a strikeout?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how people make decisions

Learn effective visualization techniques

Incorporate AI into preparation of a “data story”

Architecture equips organisations with the structure and insight to understand strategy, operations, and implement change. Combined with ethical principles, it supports decisions that go beyond compliance to create real societal value. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes central to organisations, architecture provides the foundation for Responsible AI—aligning technology-driven change with ethical and governance principles. This session explores how architecture can embed ethics across the business and technology lifecycle, sharing practical lessons from programmes addressing automation, data use, and resilience. It demonstrates how an architectural mindset makes Responsible AI tangible—ensuring innovation is trustworthy, transparent, and aligned with organisational purpose.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how architecture supports Responsible AI and ethical governance

Learn practical methods to embed ethics into strategy, design, and delivery

Discover real-world examples of architecture enabling trustworthy innovation

Most analysts gravitate to process models to understand a requirement – but those are the verbs in a sentence. The importance comes from understanding, and differentiating the meaning through the use of data models.  These are the nouns in the sentence. 

As the importance of analysis is recognized for agile development, the data models form the basis for the personas identified for user stories.

This presentation will address how data models can support the deeper understanding of requirements and help meet the agile Definition of Ready

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand the importance of creating data models

Differentiate between the various data models and their usage

Apply the data modeling technique to various elicitation activities

As a BA professional, you are usually not in a formal leadership role. Yet, you have the knowledge, skills and perhaps even position to lead stakeholders to better choices and more meaningful results. However, are you leading consciously, to the best of your abilities, and with lasting impact?
Let’s
– raise the bar by rethinking what defines success, focusing on outcomes over outputs;
– own the stage to reconnect stakeholders through facilitation and guidance;
– make a dent by revolutionising the design of truly future-proof solutions.
(Oh, we’ll talk about pizza too…)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Be aware that leadership is inherently part of business analysis

Consider when and where you should lead

Encourage people to act and lead, starting today

You’ve been asked to “pull together some data” to help your organization make a decision.  Where do you start?  How do you present your findings in a compelling, persuasive way?

Participants will be invited to participate in a workshop where they will:

• Study their audience and understand what will help them make a decision

• Perform analytics on a dataset using Excel

• Develop a recommendation and a supporting presentation, using AI to help craft the message

Volunteer participants can step up to the plate to deliver their data pitch.  Feedback and tips will be shared by team coaches to help fine-tune the story.

So…will your pitch be a home run – or a strikeout?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how people make decisions

Learn effective visualization techniques

Incorporate AI into preparation of a “data story”

Business analysis is undergoing a significant shift. Once primarily viewed as a supporting function focused on documentation and delivery, the discipline is increasingly recognized as a strategic leadership capability that shapes decisions, aligns strategy with execution, and guides organizations through growing complexity.

In this session, we explore the six key business analysis trends shaping 2026, grounded in the evolving realities of AI adoption, digital transformation, and enterprise decision‑making. Drawing on practical examples and interactive reflection, this presentation examines how business analysis professionals are moving from outputs to outcomes, from reporting data to shaping executive insight, and from technology enablement to accountable, human‑centered decision leadership.

As a BA, we fulfil many roles in any organization: product owner, UX designer, team lead, change manager or tester. We adapt as needed.

But many of us feel out of our depth, suffering from impostor syndrome, putting on ‘masks’ to cope with fear and self-doubt, resulting in anxiety and exhaustion. To remove these masks, we need to challenge the stories we tell ourselves and realize that we are adequate and valuable. Then we can embrace our true authentic selves and feel more confident and connected.

This session will explore how to recognize and remove these masks to reduce imposter syndrome, increase well-being and be a more effective and happier BA.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand how we use masks in imposter syndrome

Appreciate the impact of imposter syndrome to our work and well-being

Apply strategies to remove our masks and reduce imposter syndrome

“Many organizations struggle to turn insights into action, often relying on disconnected analytics that overlook real-world impact. This session examines how to close the insight-to-action gap while keeping customers at the center of every decision.
Attendees will explore how traditional data-driven approaches can unintentionally harm customer experience (CX) and how a continuous decision-centric model can avoid these pitfalls. With a practical step-by-step guide, this session equips leaders and practitioners to deliver timely, contextual, and outcome-driven decisions that align with business goals and customer needs.”

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Close the insight-to-action gap.

See why traditional approaches cause unintended negative impacts on customer experience (CX).

Bridge insight-to-action while ensuring customers are at the center of every decision.

Let’s face it.  The biggest problems in modern IT are not technological.  They are the results of people doing people things, like making near sighted decisions, throwing money at a problem, and buying the promises of vendors selling sunshine and rainbows.  Those of us in the Business and Enterprise Architecture space are usually the ones who get to unwind the resulting Gordian Knot in IT systems, data transfers, and complex manual processes. Nick will present a comprehensive list of patterns that you can use to simplify, reduce, and orchestrate your portfolio landscape.  It’s time to be the hero.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Decide where to focus your portfolio simplification efforts

Apply a wide array of methods to reduce complexity

Convince your leadership of the value of simplification

Do your stakeholders struggle to understand and articulate what they need until it’s too late? Are you struggling to navigate the messy reality of business needs in a rigid procurement process?

In this session, Karen Newnham breaks down how her and her team use short trials to uncover their stakeholders’ true requirements for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions whilst managing  commercial risk.  

Karen will show how early experimentation can reveal hidden needs, challenge assumptions, and build stakeholder confidence in the solution that’s eventually chosen. 

This talk is for BAs who want to move beyond static requirement lists and into practical discovery, where learning happens through doing and decisions are grounded in evidence.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Rethink your approach to Procurement projects

Learn how to use prototypes and trials to surface requirements your stakeholders can’t articulate

Understand how to reframe COTS exploration as a low-risk, high-value activity within procurement constraints

Agentic AI is rapidly emerging as the next evolution beyond generative AI and task-based automation. This session clarifies what makes agentic systems distinct, highlighting core capabilities such as reasoning, planning, memory, and multi-step task execution, along with the importance of feedback loops and continuous interaction with the environment.

The session then outlines the architectural foundations needed to support agentic AI in the enterprise, including layered frameworks for data ingestion, model selection, orchestration, and governance. Attendees will learn how reasoning engines, knowledge graphs, and vector databases integrate to enable contextual decision-making, and how to ensure interoperability with existing systems.

Finally, the session presents a practical implementation framework—covering use-case identification, tool selection, agent design, API integration, workflow orchestration, and governance structures such as human oversight, monitoring, and compliance. Real-world examples illustrate how organizations can apply agentic AI for knowledge management and operational optimization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Defining Agentic AI and Its Core Components

Architectural Foundations of Agentic AI Systems

Implementation Framework

The great white-collar reset is upon us. It is not coming, it’s arrived. AI agents are automating the cognitive tasks that have defined knowledge work for decades, and the anxiety in our community is real and legitimate.

But anxiety is the wrong response. Business analysts and business architects occupy a position that no other practitioner community holds: we are the custodians of how enterprises actually work. We understand the requirements, the capabilities, the value streams, and the operating model beneath the organisational chart. We sit between strategy and delivery. We decide what gets automated, how it gets scoped, and whether it succeeds.

That is not a role AI replaces. It is a role AI requires.

This keynote sets the agenda for a new era of Business Analysis practice, one in which our community becomes the pilots of agentic enterprise automation rather than its passengers. It makes the case for the operating model as a living strategic asset, for value streams as the natural anchor for every business analysis professional’s deliverable, and for the Business Analysis/Business Architecture alliance as the governance layer that agentic systems cannot function without.

The question is not whether AI will transform your organisation. The question is whether our practice will lead that transformation.

Two conference days. Dozens of sessions. More ideas than you can fit in one notebook.

Before you head out — or get ready for tomorrow’s Tutorial Day — we want to give you something conferences rarely make time for: a moment to actually talk about what you just experienced. This closing session brings everyone together around five roundtables — each one picking up a thread that ran through the last two days. No presentations, no panels. Just you and a small group of fellow practitioners, comparing notes.

Find the table that pulls you most and share what’s actually on your mind.

1. AI in practice — what did you hear that you’ll actually use? We’ve spent two days absorbing AI case studies, frameworks, and warnings. This table is for the honest debrief: what landed, what felt theoretical, and what you’re genuinely taking back to your team.

2. The BA role is shifting — where are you landing on that? Strategy, leadership, agentic automation. Several sessions made the case that our role is expanding. This table is for the real conversation: what that means for you personally, and whether you buy it.

3. Architecture and cohesion — great in theory, messy in practice. Connecting strategy to delivery sounds obvious until you try to do it. This table is for people who work at that junction every day — what actually helps, and what gets in the way.

4. Data and decisions — where does the quality problem really live in your organization? Vocabulary, governance, AI-ready data. This table is for comparing where your organization is, and what’s worked to move things forward.

5. Change and adoption — the part everyone underestimates. Technology is rarely the hardest part of transformation. People are. This table is for the war stories, the lessons learned, and what you’d do differently next time.

Tables will wrap up naturally. If your group wants to keep the conversation going over dinner — that’s entirely up to you. Several restaurants nearby are worth the walk.
Thank you for being here. See you next year – or tomorrow!

The term “elicitation” means to bring out or expose. The requirements of a project are often hidden and must be elicited so that they can be understood, analyzed, and validated by all stakeholders.

To act as a Business Analyst, the professional must be able to “dance with the stakeholders”, adjusting the rhythm based on the context and considering cultural, behavioral, and psychological factors.

This practical workshop applies concepts throw case studies that allow the student to apply the techniques during the course, thus increasing assimilation and memorization.

The instructor makes use of theatrical techniques of role-playing characters to simulate interview and meeting situations.

The participant is encouraged to take responsibility for identifying the “real” problems and opportunities and is enabled to do so using the right elicitation technique for each situation.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Encourage the Business Analyst to take responsibility for identifying the “real” problems and opportunities.

Conducting investigative elicitation techniques.

Experience and learn how to deal with communication problems with different profiles of respondents in case studies with characters played by the instructor.

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

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn what aspects of Business Architecture will be right for your needs

Enhance your Business Analysis skills with a higher and wider perspective

Practice some key Business Architecture techniques

Most organizations are talking about AI, and many are starting to integrate it into end-to-end business processes without breaking something. This workshop cuts through the noise. Participants work through a full enterprise process and decide where AI belongs, where it doesn’t, and what kind of AI is viable.
You’ll use a realistic case study to map the workflow, identify decision points, and classify candidate tasks using deterministic logic, probabilistic models, and agent-based orchestration. Small-group breakout work forces the real conversations: feasibility, failure modes, data gaps, and where human oversight must stay in the loop. You’ll also see how analysis can drive good AI decisions and keep an organization from fixating on shiny tools and instead solve real problems and opportunities.
The session ends with each group producing a simple, defensible AI integration blueprint for the case process. No jargon. No vendor pitches. Just clear reasoning and practical application.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Decompose an enterprise-level process into an AI-driven solution plan – Identify which steps are viable candidates for deterministic automation, probabilistic AI models, or agent-based orchestration.
2. Evaluate AI suitability, uncertainty tolerance, and required human intervention; without defaulting to tool-first thinking.
3. Facilitate cross-functional analysis using structured techniques that surface assumptions, challenge unrealistic expectations, and drive teams toward a realistic and practical AI integration plan.

Business analysis revolves around clear communication. And all of us work in a data-driven world. Consequently, if you can enhance your visual communication skills by turning data into actionable insights, you’ll be two steps ahead. That’s the purpose of this hands-on workshop: leverage commonly available tools – Visio and Power BI (PBI) – to provide actionable data visualizations for your team and leadership.

Bring a Mac or a PC because we’ll provide software licenses you can use in Safari, Chrome, Edge, or any browser.  You’ll visualize data in Visio organization charts, flowcharts, and other diagrams. And the culmination of the day will be learning enough about Power BI, and about the Visio Visual for Power BI, to create PBI reports that deliver data in the visual context of a diagram. The results are powerful, effective, and remarkably easy to create with the techniques you’ll learn in this workshop. Visio and Power BI experience are not required.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Empower decision makers with actionable data

Create insights from data by adding visual context

Leverage readily available software tools

How can you effectively select the appropriate tools for enterprise analysis? Additionally, what strategies can ensure your team’s success in this endeavor? This tutorial unveils a comprehensive guide to harnessing valuable insights from four crucial enterprise analysis methodologies: PESTLE analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, SWOT analysis, and the Three Horizons.

Discover the distinct advantages and pragmatic applications inherent in each of these four strategic techniques, useful for all business analysts. You’ll receive instruction on the timing and utilization of each method, but also be imparted the skills to maintain your team’s acumen and motivation. Gain valuable insights into integrating specific organizational elements spanning inputs, processes, and requirements. Moreover, unlock the full potential of each framework to extract pivotal insights, translate them into actionable strategies, and execute well-informed decisions.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Deep Dive into Analysis Frameworks: Gain an in-depth understanding of PESTLE, Porter’s Five Forces, SWOT, and Three Horizons analyses, while exploring how Gen AI tools can streamline data synthesis and uncover hidden trends.

Integrate Organizational Factors with AI: Discover methods to incorporate organizational dynamics and external market influences with AI-driven data analytics to improve the precision of your analyses.

Actionable Strategies for Informed Decision-Making: Learn to convert insights from both traditional methodologies and Gen AI-generated outputs into actionable strategies, ensuring that your team is well-equipped for effective decision-making and agile response to market shifts.

‘practical skills for modern and AI-ready organizations’

For: Business analysts, process analysts, operations managers, architects

Learn foundational process modeling, then apply modern design principles to real-world scenarios. This hands-on workshop teaches you to discover process context and to create BPMN models. It then shows you how to redesign processes for flexible, empowered decisions, built-in innovation, end-to-end thinking, and AI readiness.
Whether you are an experienced analyst or new to process work, you will learn modern design principles that traditional process mapping ignores. These skills enable you to identify where current processes fail organizational needs, scope improvement initiatives, and design workflows ready for today’s dynamic business environment. All content is designed for immediate application in your organization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Process context and BPMN fundamentals

Seven modern design principles that traditional process mapping ignore

How to identify where processes fail modern organizational needs

AI offers powerful insights, but its value depends on the strength of the data foundations that support it. Without clear terminology, defined rules, and trustworthy data, even advanced AI produces inconsistent or misleading results. This tutorial helps participants move from fragmented, ad-hoc data and documentation practices toward a disciplined approach that ensures reliable, scalable value. 

Through interactive case studies and exercises, participants will see how different interpretations of the same dataset lead to conflicting answers and how aligning on shared definitions, rules, and metrics eliminates confusion. Unlike many data-focused sessions that concentrate primarily on structured datasets, this tutorial explicitly addresses the challenges of unstructured data and natural-language content.

The tutorial will also cover practical governance tactics, including validation, controlled vocabularies, and metric rules, that strengthen organizational trust in data. Attendees will leave with a repeatable framework to prepare their own ecosystems for AI adoption, enabling consistent practices, stronger collaboration, and the confidence to harness AI effectively.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Collect and define shared vocabulary and rules to ensure consistent data interpretation.

Apply practical techniques to improve the quality and consistency of unstructured data for reliable AI outcomes.

Understand how fostering a strong data culture enables teams to trust, govern, and effectively use data for AI.

You’re tired of building products nobody uses. Your users keep asking for features, but you suspect they don’t actually need what they’ve asked for.

Sound familiar? 

In this tutorial, Kent McDonald shares a set of discovery techniques from the worlds of business analysis and product management. You’ll find out how to use those techniques to identify the real problem underlying a request for a solution.

These techniques include:

– **Story-based interviews** that get people to tell you what they actually do (not what they think they’ll do—people are terrible at predicting the future).
– **Decision filters** you can use to get rid of bad ideas
– **Problem statements** that keep your team focused on outcomes.

You’ll walk away with templates, techniques, and the confidence to push back when stakeholders hand you solutions disguised as requirements.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn how to use story based interviews to uncover your users needs.

Facilitate conversations to establish powerful problem statements.

Understand how to create and use decision filters for more effective prioritization decisions