TRACKS & TRAILS 2021

Building Business Capability features 13 conference Tracks and 4 Trails to help you navigate the wealth of content.

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TRACKS

Business Analysis Essentials
Business analysis is about defining needs & recommending solutions that provide value to our stakeholders. The discipline of business analysis is far more complex than most people perceive it to be, and with new perspectives and techniques being developed seemingly every day, we sometimes forget about the essentials of business analysis. This track focuses on the analytical, behavioural, leadership and technical skills required to stay grounded and focus on creating value for your organization.

Realizing Business Strategy
Most organizations are facing daunting pressures and are trying to change faster and faster. Our ability to come up with new ideas is difficult enough, but the challenge to translate our strategy into actionable programs, then deliver on them fast enough is the real constraint. This Track focuses on designing new business models and modifying operating models that can turn strategy and architecture into action. How can you communicate the intent of your business strategy to those charged with making it come alive? How are organizations actually realizing strategy intentions into operations? Learn how through critical how-to in case studies featuring professionals from organizations making it happen.

Leadership & Collaboration
Leadership is about influencing a group of people to share in the reach for some common goal(s). Strong, effective leaders are required at all levels of an organization not only to articulate the goals to be accomplished, but to encourage and lead the group to success. Much of what we do in our professional careers is built on the interpersonal skills and relationships we forge. In this Track, industry experts and seasoned practitioners reveal tricks and tips for mastering and applying the leadership and interpersonal skills you need for success.
Collaboration is about intentionally and purposefully cooperating with others to achieve a desired outcome collectively. When teamwork is carefully cultivated and supported, surprising creativity often occurs. Unforeseen risks can be exposed early and unexpected win-wins discovered. Effective collaboration is not easy, especially when participation nowadays is often virtual. Success requires leadership, empathy and forethought. No matter what your target for collaboration –“ partnering in business innovation, eliminating silos, working through requirements, or engaging with IT on agile projects – come to these sessions for deep insight and fresh ideas.

DecisionCAMP
Decision management is rapidly becoming the critical methodological and technological framework to support decision-making approaches across a wide range of industries. Nowadays business analysts, architects, developers and decision makers at all levels actively use decision management techniques and technologies such asbusiness rules, business decision modeling, decision testing and execution, predictive and prescriptive analytics, decision optimization, and more. Operational business rules and decision management systems integrate traditional business processes, business rules, advanced analytics, events, and more – directing them all to a common goal – better business decisions. The DecisionCAMP Track features state-of-the-art sessions by leading authorities and practitioners in the area.

Business Agility
Many organizations seem to be caught up in a never-ending stream of transformations occurring one on top of another. Just continually fixing things is straining organizations to the breaking point. How can we work more effectively? The business transformation we really need is to enable ourselves to continually change more easily and quickly – going way beyond just the next fix or the next release. Continuous change requires mechanisms to become inherently more adaptable, as agile as the markets we serve. For that you’ll need more flexible organization structures. You’ll also need to be able to reconfigure business solutions on demand, as well as perform comprehensive, high-fidelity impact assessment. This Track covers all that and more.

Data & Business Analytics
Nowadays challenges with modeling, managing and analyzing data are on almost every professional’s plate. You can ill-afford to be unfamiliar with the related tools and techniques. And as data proliferates, new challenges and opportunities are emerging. Staying competitive means committing to data-driven decision making. Business analytics can provide invaluable insights but poorly coordinated efforts can easily disappoint. Today data is ubiquitous, complex, unstructured, and fast-moving. How can you harness it effectively? This Track ensures you’re up to speed.

Owning the Product
The importance of product ownership is expanding due to new development methodologies, big data, advanced technologies, the way today’s consumers make purchases, and more. A focus on better customer experience and better product design is essential to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Today’s approaches for determining product features and designing products require stronger collaboration, closer team work, and an iterative process built on constant feedback. What is our role as practitioners in owning the product? How do we become the proxy for our business users and make game-changing decisions on their behalf? This Track will show you how.

High-Impact Techniques
A wide range of techniques is available to help professionals do their jobs. Knowing which techniques have proven best-in-class is key in leading your organization toward business excellence. Hear what practitioners who have mastered the techniques have to say and find out which techniques can help you leap ahead. This Track engages attendees in critical assessment of available techniques, related practices, and their applied results.

Digital Transformation
Organizations need to fully embrace digitalized products and services and ways of interacting in order to stay relevant and seize efficiencies. Going digital requires a different strategy, one focusing on creativity, experimentation and end-to-end experience. So how exactly is a digital business different? Digital business capabilities need to be tackled in the context of an omni-channel world that can involve human and robotic agents, AI, and business analytics. You’ll need to think in terms of new or alternative value propositions. High-quality, integrated ways of working and extremely high data integrity is a must; traceable and explainable results a big plus. Stay with us on this fast-moving journey! Find out about the latest in this Track.

Making Change Happen
Businesses today are under immense pressure from morphing markets, rising customer expectations, relentless technical innovation, and brutal competition. Business change agents see challenges on every initiative. All stakeholders must actively come on the journey, so people-centric actions must play a prominent role in your approach. These can involve training for emerging skills and competencies, new role assignments, behavior and cultural assessments, organizational adjustments, realignment of incentives and motivations, and so on. Will you require new ways to make decisions and to interact with peers? New ways to communicate and to resolve issues? These sessions ensure you are fully equipped to make such change happen.

Cybersecurity
As we move deeper and deeper into the digital era, organizations must come to grips with the risks and threats of securing their digital assets. Cybersecurity is more a necessity now than ever before. Rather than bolted on as an afterthought, it needs to be integrated into the very fabric of everything we do. These sessions showcase some of the pragmatic frameworks, strategies, tools, and techniques you can use to shift mindsets and confidently secure your digital landscape.

AI & Machine Learning
A new era of computing dawned this decade, first with IBM Watson winning at Jeopardy and more recently with Google DeepMind winning at Go, the Chinese game of strategy. These breakthroughs have been enabled by the availability of massive volumes of data, new computing architectures, and new algorithms for human-like speech recognition, conversation, vision, and emotion detection. Along with robotic process automation (RPA), AI and ML will transform industries and massively augment human expertise. Demystify the technology. Cut through the hype. Hear what world experts have to say about bringing these tools into your professional toolkit on a workable basis, and using them to build new business capability.

Women in Tech (WiT)
Only 25% of the professionals in tech are women. And they get paid some $7,000 less annually than their male counterparts. We’ve heard the stories. We’ve read them, we’ve lived them. Now, let’s change them! In this Track, learn from women in senior management who share their journeys and insights. Learn how to get that seat at the table. Discuss with your peers the issues, challenges, solutions and opportunities you face.
The Women in Tech (WiT) track continues beyond the week of the conference. In 2020, we started the BBC WiT Mentoring Circle. The goal of the Mentoring Circle is to provide an environment to share, grow and learn together. The Mentoring Circle meets every 2 weeks. Each session is led by a mentor covering topics such as personal branding, receiving/giving feedback, dealing with conflicts, powerful presentation, confidence building, dealing with conflicts, negotiation, job search. and interviewing skills.
The aim of WiT is to build a community for support and growth. It all starts here!

TRAILS

Discover the value agile brings to business analysis. Join us for the Agile Business Analysis Xchange at BBC. The Agile Business Analysis Xchange will bring you the latest learning, engagement opportunities and tools to help you drive change using agile approaches.

While it seems that everyone has an interest in Business Architecture, there is a wide range of ideas about what it should look like. This exciting trail emphasizes that Business drives Architecture and offers a unique opportunity to hear real-world practitioners discuss what they have accomplished and how they did it.

Business Process Forum focuses on the bottom line issue of enhancing the capability of process practitioners and business managers to better deliver improved business performance. An enterprise has lots of moving parts and the use of process models as alignment mechanisms is critical to any business improvement project.

Business Rules & Decisions Forum offers a unique opportunity to hear from real-world practitioners about what they have accomplished and how they did it. All the foremost thought-leaders in the field will be there. Find out how your organization can come to grips with rapid change, massive customization, and complex business logic in a truly scalable, traceable, manageable manner.