How I Passed CCBA

Want CCBA label at your name? It’s easy! It is time consuming, it is nervous, it takes efforts but it is easy, nothing outstanding. It took me 1 year of preparations to become certified and now I want to share experience with those who are striving for such achievement.

Become your own trainer. Develop an exam preparation plan and follow it. Schedule recurrent sessions where you will be busy with nothing but reading Body of Knowledge. Be tough to yourself – do not miss or waste time planned for preparations. Check your progress and evaluate how close you get to the goal.

Start with the theory – BABOK^® Guide is the most credible and authoritative source of knowledge and practices for business analysis. Read it 10 times and more. It is your key to success. You may not practice some tasks or techniques, you may not agree with what BABOK says, you may perform it differently at your job but the truth is CCBA exam is based completely on theory provided within the Guide. Study it carefully. Even though exam is based on the BABOK^® Guide, remember that it is not the sole source of questions on the exam.

Order some exam simulations to know at least nearly what to be ready for or to test your readiness. Yes it is payment from your own pocket but believe me it will raise your chances dramatically. I bought 2 months of CCBA exam simulation by Watermark (it is not an advertisement) that allowed me to check every knowledge area and techniques. It also provided me with the real 3,5 hours exam experience which is priceless.

Ask certified guy for help. It will not make your life easier but at least you will do the right things. Real exam experience will serve as a  beacon.

In case you tried simulations you may understand that it is hard just physically to complete exam. Think about 3,5 hours with 150 questions, imagine stress and thirst. I suggest splitting whole time into 3 sets containing 50 questions each. Make a break between sets to catch a breeze of fresh air and to compose your self. This time is also useful to analyse how you are going through the exam and to take corrective actions.

Someone told me to study books that help you in passing the exam (so called Study Guides). I never read one and cannot suggest on it but several guys received their certificate after such additional reading. Actually, several did not as well.

Do not forget about practice. It is quite easy to collect 3750 hours of work experience which may not help you in passing the exam. In case you really wear BA hat regularly you may understand and study what BABOK says much more easier. Try get involved in a project where you may master your BA skills to try everything you learn in real life.

Knowledge areas, tasks, inputs, outputs, task description and elements, stakeholders, techniques per task, techniques in general, underlying competencies, glossary and even general BABOK knowledge… Want CCBA label at your name? Do you best to memorize all this stuff.

What Are You Doing, BA?

What is the next step? When will you finish this activity? What are the deliverables? Did your manager or your customer ask you these questions? Planning is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Building and following a plan is similar to using of a map that provides you with the route to follow. You always know where you are and what is the next step. I would turn to Business Analysis Plan in case such questions arrive.

Plan your journey – start new project properly with the Plan Business Analysis Activities task. It’s purpose is to:

Determine the activities that must be performed and the deliverables that must be produced, estimate the effort required to perform that work.

– Direct quote from Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®

I would start with the end in mind: key deliverable here is the BA Plan itself. Let’s see what it is. In case you do it for the first time its useful to have any template (Organizational Process Assets). I’ve passed several iterations before the “normal quality” artifact was produced and approved.

My current template that is used on every project (may be downloaded below)

So… Activities and deliverables. They are just work breakdown structure (WBS) of an activity assigned to BA. As always, it’s easier said than done. What does WBS for analyst’s work consist of? Several factors are vital here.

First of all, I would think about the project and its stage. Initiating of the project? Then you should read precisely what Enterprise Analysis knowledge area consists of. Follow tasks one by one and you’ll help the project to be approved. Initiated and ongoing project? Nice, take the development process description (pay attention to approach – Plan-driven or change-driven) and align corresponding BA task from BABOK to team activities.

Another hot point – the solution scope. This may help you significantly to identify vectors of work to be covered by you. In case solution contains several processes you should plan set of tasks per process. By the way works per process may be the same. Solution consists of organizational change and development effort as well? Okay, then work with Subject Matter Expert to produce BA tasks to be executed in scope of change. Then include identified exercise as well as development related workload into activity list.

Following idea also may be helpful. Build list of activities based on identified stakeholders (Stakeholders List, Roles & Responsibilities). Take a look at RACI matrix. Amount of elicitation meetings depends on how many “Consulted” guys are on the list. Those who are marked as “Approver/ Accountable” are also counted as effort to communicate and so on.

You may use templates. What I mean here is a standard consequence of activities that always go together. Example: You always have to prepare for elicitation, then you elicit requirements, document and confirm. Put here one more task dedicated to update of materials after feedback from validation meeting. Do not forget to communicate the latest version of deliverable. Next time you plan any elicitation you may apply this chain of efforts spending less time for planning and estimation. Call for your imagination to build your own templates and remember to read BABOK carefully.

You have to predict the quantity of iterations for each activity. Imagine you practice lean prototyping and co-design sessions with your stakeholders. Taking into account the volume of the feature under analysis you may plan, let it be, 4 research sessions and 2 validation sessions. Use these multipliers to calculate total estimate for the feature.

Now that you are able to define the set of activities to be performed during analysis it’s time for estimates. Key inputs here are expert judgement and your experience. Apply your knowledge from previous projects, from the similar cases you’ve completed before. Some senior guy always exists in your company – consult him. Once again it makes sense from the techniques perspective to mention BABOK. Estimation is one that is used here.

Let’s look what we’ve got in the end. We completed list of activities. Also multiplicity per each activity is identified. Estimation is in place. Multiply quantity per estimate for each activity in the list. Then build a total sum and you are done! One thing left to mention – consider assumptions.

IIBA provides us with the Quick Tip on this topic. QT 49 is called “Estimating the Requirements Effort” (IIBA members only). In general it’s nice example of what we are going to produce while performing Plan Business Analysis Activities task. The most valuable, from my point of view, section within this article is about assumptions. As estimation is just a guess try to build it based on complexity hypothesis to make it more reliable. You may find example on assumptions within my template as well.

It’d like to close this topic by mentioning Manage Business Analysis Performance task. BA Performance Assessment shall be considered while maintaining your plan. You may update your activities list as new details appear and you understand what to do next (rolling wave planning).

Final thing. Plans are not for the blind following. Plans are for vision of a desired goal. Adjust and update them to be more effective and efficient. Don’t be afraid – changes are just normal.

P.S. Those who would like to use suggested template click link: BA Plan_Efforts Estimation_Template.

P.P.S. Still thinking about BA career? Read my previous post To BA or Not to BA for insight.

To BA or Not to BA

I open my blog with attempt to provide food for thought helping to decide on becoming a Business Analyst.

Why? Just read some article similar to 5 steps to becoming a Business Analyst or How to plan BA career. The output of this reading forced me to think whether it is really worth doing – planning steps to become the Business Analyst.

It takes a lot of efforts and time to become a professional in your field. Business Analysis is not an exception. Commonly BA role is not performed by a junior level staff. It may require industry domain experience, knowledge of process or even process group that supports a separate organization vertical. Diverse set of tools and applications are huge plus, communication and interaction skills (underlying competences as BABOK states) are fundamental for performing as analyst successfully.

So BA or not BA? Does building plans for new career make sense? Let me assume that many of hard-working professionals perform hybrid roles every day. I found out one day that I am already the business analyst after my supplier commented on my boss’ question: “Ask your analyst”. Blank look and clarifications: “We call such guys a Business Analyst”. Try to extract BA tasks from your daily business and pay attention to your comfort. That’s right. Do you feel confident performing this tasks? Is it what makes you happy? Work-life balance is what I am trying to connect with here.

Forget about salaries, image, opportunities and challenges. First of all Business Analysis is a job that may bring different types of people with diverse skill set and aptitude to happiness. Find a minute and look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (By the way, BABOK does not state it directly but it’s implied that understanding of motivation and needs of teammates is the part of Underlying Competences. So paying attention to Malow’s approach would be beneficial)

BA role is able to satisfy your needs at the last or last but one level. Assuming that your daily job contains analyst tasks and you may weigh the amount of satisfaction that is brought to you by these activities, it’s right time to answer the question of becoming the Business Analyst.

Today IIBA is working hardly on making Business Analyst position recognized. Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® is available at one click. Tones of articles are written suggesting how to make important career change. Does it help? Yes, but I think it’s a minor thing comparing to understanding of what you really need inside your heart.