BCS Foundation Certificate in Business AnalysisPart 1

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study, is strongly recommended. Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis covers the breadth of concepts, approaches and techniques relevant to Business Analysis. It provides a foundation for the range of modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation–level Business Analysis knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• The role and competencies of a Business Analyst
• Strategy analysis
• Business system and business process modelling
• Stakeholder analysis
• Investigation and modelling techniques
• Requirements engineering
• Business case development
• Implementation of business change

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 17:00 on the workshop day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business ChangePart 1

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study, is strongly recommended. Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change covers the landscape of concepts, life cycle and techniques relevant to Business Change. It provides a foundation for the range of modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation–level Business Change knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• Overview of Business Change
• Business Change Techniques
• Business and IT Alignment
• Business Improvement Definition
• Business Change Design
• Business Change Implementation
• Benefits Realisation

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 17:00 on the workshop day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

Exploring New Techniques and Creativity as a Business Analyst

This session will cover why it is important to be more visual and creative in the way you work and why it is important as Business Analysts to explore new techniques and adapt your approach in order to work with a wide range of stakeholders and achieve better outcomes.

As Business Analysts we have a wide toolkit available to us when it comes to analysing and presenting our findings but does always sticking to the tried and tested methods get our message across in the best way? Ali and Hayley will explore ways in which techniques not automatically associated with Business Analysts such as sketchnotes and infographics can transform your outputs and the way in which people view them. They will go into sketchnoting in more detail providing an overview of the technique and approach, following on with a group exercise to put learning into practice. What delegates will takeaway

• New approaches and ideas to presenting information and results
• How to approach solving problems visually
• Inspiration to learn more (and be provided with the details of where to find support)

Adapting Agile Analysis Techniques for Data-Driven Projects

Data-driven projects (financial trades processing, user behaviour analysis for marketing, logistics, etc..) are normally getting the most resistance when speaking about Agile development, while in reality these projects could gain a real benefit from the short feedback loop offered by the Agile process. Normally, it’s because of the perception that Agile artefacts like user stories even accompanied by acceptance criteria are not suitable for documenting requirements about data processing and modelling. But if we look at traditional requirement documents created for data-driven projects, we can see that often the documents either represent technical solutions or just provide vague business requirements with not enough details for developers to come up with proper solutions. The goal of this workshop is to share practical tools for documenting solution agnostic requirements for data-driven projects. These are suitable for use within an Agile development process and include user stories, example based acceptance criteria and decision models for business rules modelling.

Key Learning Outcomes after attending this workshop:

• Have understanding of how Agile analysis artefacts can be combined and used for data-driven projects to produce solution agnostic but specific requirement documents
• Learn why and how spec by example tools can be used to write clear and unambiguous acceptance criteria
• Have basic understanding of The Decision Model (TDM) and how it can be used to complement the acceptance criteria for user stories requiring business rules modelling

Unlocking the Value of Modelling Within Business Analysis

Are you interested in unlocking the value of modelling for the delivery of information system requirements? Then this highly interactive workshop is for you.

Modelling, often overlooked and undervalued as an analysis skill is a means of reducing ambiguity, promoting correctness, completeness and consistency in business requirements.

During the workshop the facilitators will use an interactive case study to demonstrate how models can be used. Delegates will have the opportunity to practice constructing key UML models such as use case models; class models; activity models; state machine and sequence diagrams.

After this workshop delegates will better understand:

• The value of modelling within business analysis
• The set of UML models to use to drive forward analysis
• How models help technical teams to realise the requirements
• How models enable the business to visualise the requirements
• The relevance of modelling in an agile environment

The Smart BAs Guide to Requirements' Approval

Ever had any problems getting requirements approved?

Yes – then come and join us at this workshop where we will explore what can be one of the most difficult parts of the requirements process.

No – then we would love to hear from you and find out your secrets!

Whether your experience is from agile or more traditional approaches, we know that you will have valuable insights.

The end goal of this workshop is to develop a number of solutions that we can all deploy. The structure of the workshop will be loosely based around the Google Ventures Sprint Process (developed by Designer Jake Napp) which has been used to help hundreds of start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures. It is gaining popularity to solve problems across many industries particularly Marketing and Product Development. Whilst it can be seen as a design process, it has many similarities to the agile frameworks we see on software development and business change projects. We will use some new and improved techniques that could help business analyst professionals expand their BA tool kit. We will look at the techniques, why we chose them and you will get a taste of how to apply them.

What’s more, delegates at the workshop will generate an eBook which we will distribute after the session.

The key takeaways are:

• Exposure to new and improved BA techniques in the areas of problem definition, root cause analysis and solution generation
• When and how to use the techniques
• New and improved ways of managing requirements approval captured in an eBook

Using Assertiveness and the Power of Saying No to Improve Stakeholder Relationships

Assertiveness is a key leadership skill that anyone can learn to use. These days everything seems to be about putting the customer first, but is it always the right thing to do?

• Learn the difference between assertive, aggressive and non-assertive behaviour.
• Learn why it is important to be assertive. For instance, assertive people have been found to be less stressed, find common ground easier and are better problem-solvers.
• Learn specific techniques for being more assertive including how to say no, using the right words and body language, keeping emotions in check and active listening.

The workshop includes examples, stories and anecdotes from 35 years of working experience, what has worked, what didn’t.

Key message: Assertiveness is a skill that can be learned and does improve with practice

Key take-away: Tips for saying no in a way that improves relationships

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business AnalysisPart 2

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis qualification. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study, is strongly recommended. Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis covers the breadth of concepts, approaches and techniques relevant to Business Analysis. It provides a foundation for the range of modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation–level Business Analysis knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• The role and competencies of a Business Analyst
• Strategy analysis
• Business system and business process modelling
• Stakeholder analysis
• Investigation and modelling techniques
• Requirements engineering
• Business case development
• Implementation of business change

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 17:00 on the workshop day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business ChangePart 2

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change qualification. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study, is strongly recommended. Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change covers the landscape of concepts, life cycle and techniques relevant to Business Change. It provides a foundation for the range of modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation–level Business Change knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• Overview of Business Change
• Business Change Techniques
• Business and IT Alignment
• Business Improvement Definition
• Business Change Design
• Business Change Implementation
• Benefits Realisation

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 17:00 on the workshop day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

From the Battlefield to the Boardroom: What BAs can utilise from the ‘Dark Art’ of Interrogation

Business Analysts and Military interrogators have more in common than initially meets the eye. Both must achieve successful outcomes through extracting critical information from stakeholders in highly pressurised, time sensitive environments. Asking questions that cannot, or will not, be answered is useless.

Dominic and Phillip will present a proven methodology developed through extensive experience and empirical study in the most critical of environments, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically adapted for the business world.

This workshop will involve hands on practice where attendees broaden their mindset and learn:

• Effective Intelligence: – the importance of researching and understanding your stakeholders as groundwork for elicitation
• Rapport & Empathy Building: – how to open up your stakeholders within time critical situations to enable effective elicitation
• Enhanced Critical Questioning Techniques: – how to question difficult stakeholders, recognise deception, and overcome conflict to obtain the right answers.

Top Trumps - Top Techniques!

The BA tool kit is wide and keeps expanding. But which techniques are crucial for good business analysis, which do our stakeholders really value and which are overrated or underutilised?

In this session Christina and Debbie will use the famous Top Trumps format (30 cards, 5 categories) to develop a pocket-sized reference guide to the most valuable BA techniques. This will provide an engaging training tool for new BAs or a great icebreaker game for groups of stakeholders!

They will use the BCS book “Business Analysis Techniques: 99 Essential Tools for Success” as an input, plus other sources and most importantly your knowledge, opinions and experience.

Why join this workshop:

• Engage in lively debate with enthusiastic BAs to discuss and agree the most valuable techniques
• Learn about the 5 components of usability, and how injecting fun and play into business analysis leads to positive results
• Contribute to the production of a unique BA resource

Change, Influence, and Cultural Awareness – Critical Skills and Techniques for Today’s Business Analyst

Today’s most successful and valued BAs are seen less as “elicitors of requirements” and more as “agents of change,” helping their organisation envision, design, and implement a compelling future state. That’s why the “Business Analyst” job title is often replaced with “Business Change Designer,” and even “Business Synthesist.”

Our traditional BA tools are still invaluable, but we need more to navigate the minefield of organisational change. This workshop will introduce practical frameworks, methods, tips, and techniques that have been fundamental over many years of introducing organisational change – new systems, new processes, new structures, and even new business models. All will be backed up with real-life examples. Wherever they are on the journey to Business Change Agent, BAs will learn proven tools they can immediately incorporate into their practice. Highlights include:

• People want to be heard – the value of “venting” in discovery sessions
• Understanding “how things get done” – frameworks for organisational and national culture
• Avoiding unanticipated consequences – a structured approach to assessing specific changes

Facilitating Innovation: Think-Shape-Try your Idea with the Innovation Canvas

Innovation is hard. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, but execution often falls short and few ideas lead to valuable results within reasonable time and budget.

In this workshop, we will use the innovation canvas and corresponding validation driven approach (think — shape — try) to guide idea development. Some of the challenges this approach tackles:

• Shift from product thinking to customer thinking
• Turn a “we believe” mindset into a “what are our assumptions & how can we validate them” mindset
• Connect with the established organisation’s way of working, engaging more conservative stakeholders without hindering creativity

The approach helps BAs facilitate their organisation’s innovation process, from ideation to value creation. It enables BAs to take a validation driven approach, building customer feedback and agility into the process right from the start.

The approach’s practical application and results in Euroconsumers’ five consumer organisations in five countries will be shared.

Improving Your Presentation Skills

The art of presenting information in an engaging and memorable way is one that all good BAs should master. A Business Analyst is presenting information on a regular basis either in small workshops or important stakeholder meetings and a foundation in good presentation skills is integral to other talents such as facilitation and negotiation. If you can’t present with clarity, professionalism and confidence you will not make an effective and memorable impact on your customers. Drawing on his experience as a Business Analyst and Sports Coach, and using historical examples, David will discuss several key aspects of this key skill and share his learnings derived from presenting at previous European Business Analysis Conferences, coaching children and adults at fencing, and MC’ing several Corporate events. The topics will range from the basics of presentation to more advanced matters such as developing your own style and telling a story with authenticity. During this workshop, you will learn:

• The basic structure of presenting
• How to prepare for a successful presentation
• How to deal with the fear of presenting
• How to use other media in your presentation
• How to make sure your content doesn’t overwhelm your message

You will also have the opportunity to examine several case studies from history which will reveal some more of the secrets of great speakers which you can add to your toolkit

Breakfast Briefing on the BA Apprenticeship Scheme

This half hour briefing will provide outline details of the new business analysis apprenticeship scheme. The talk will include information on:

• Programme development
• Learning objectives
• The challenges associated with operating a successful scheme

Time will be made available for Q&A.

Keynote: Leaders and Entrepreneurs of the Future

What does it means to be a really effective leader in a digital and fast changing world? How do you identify, nurture and retain the talent you need to develop and build your organisation?Maggie will share her experiences of innovative leadership including the way you can both learn from young people and make a very real difference to their future . In theory, it’s now so much easier to take good ideas forward and commercialise them but in reality there are tripwires which hold many potentially brilliant thinkers back.

• How to remove the tripwires which inhibit innovation
• How to Improve communication and engagement within your company
• How to identify the key qualities needed in a dynamic and diverse workforce

Business Analysis: Keeping an Overview and Connecting the Dots

Business Analysis covers a wide range of domains, tasks, activities, skills, etc … , which makes it often difficult for people not (yet) so familiar with BA to understand the profession. But even experienced BA’s, being absorbed by their day-to-day business, might have lost the overview of what their profession is all about. And what about organisations wanting to adopt BA and/or increase the maturity?

Stefan will help you to take a step back and get a clear overview of what Business Analysis is all about. He will show you the different levels on which a BA can be active, the different types of requirements, the different types of scope, the different types of stakeholders, etc … but he will also show how they are all connected. The presentation will:

• Take you a step back and give you a clear overview of what the BA profession is all about
• Show you the different levels on which a BA can be active
• Show you different important concepts that are part of the BA’s world and their connections

Business Analysis - A Change Opportunity?

Looking at Business Analysis through the lens of Change Management, this session explores ways the profession can help maximise success from change.

Successful organisational change occurs when every individual impacted makes a personal transition from how they work today to how they need to be working in the future state the change seeks to achieve, and Change Management facilitates these transitions through a range of coordinated engagement activities.

But…The success of Change Management depends on having the right information available to engage people at each stage, and evidence suggests that many organisational changes lack such information inputs with consequential negative impacts on change success.

This change management challenge represents a great opportunity for Business Analysts to support change in very specific and visible ways through applying their skills to the development of the specific information inputs on which change management depends.

The key takeaways from this session will be:

• The knowledge that successful Organisational Change depends on change at an individual level, and that Change Management is concerned with facilitating such individual transitions.
• Awareness of key research findings on intrinsic motivation and how these shape the type of analytical outputs that form the critical information inputs to change management
• An understanding of the Prosci ADKAR change management model and the 5 specific Business Analysis outputs needed to support it.

Agile and Business Analysis - a Perfect Combination

More and more organisations are adopting Agile techniques and approaches. Agile adoption brings about changes to processes, approaches and roles, and some BAs can be left wondering where they fit into this new world. Lynda will discuss what it means to be an Agile BA and how as an Agile BA you can bring value to your organisation through having the right mindset and a comprehensive toolkit that includes using visual models. In the talk Lynda will discuss:

• What is an Agile BA?
• Lean, system and service thinking
• Shortening the loop from requirement to delivery
• How to use agile models to visualise and understand ‘just enough’
• How Agile business analysts add value and contribute to development teams

Who are Business Analysts 'Really' Engaging With: A Peek into 'Being Human'

Business Analysts are like catalysts or enablers for creating and delivering business value. Engaging with people from senior management, various business & project teams to end users, BAs constantly interact with people and navigate the initiative in line with the identified strategy. As BAs move into senior positions, the challenge is more to deal with difficult people and tricky situations. In a quest to understand what it takes to be a successful BA in every project, Bindu attended trainings, obtained certifications, learned the tools and techniques, only to find one common factor across, which is crucial for success or failure of any initiative and that is ‘people – human relationships and emotions’ and hence this became the fundamental reason for her research. Are we engaging with stakeholders with the understanding of what makes them ‘human’?

In this interactive session, Bindu gives a peek into her study and extensive research on the underlying layers of human behaviour which completely changed her perspective on seeing stakeholders and people in general and how she harnessed the human potential by being aware of human emotions and behaviours whilst engaging with stakeholders and thereby building good rapport. You’ll have an opportunity to:

• Dissect a real project situation to understand the human emotions
• Learn how to tap into human potential and bring creativity into BA activities
• Discuss practical techniques to empower stakeholder engagement

Are You Thinking What You Think You're Thinking?

So, you’re a Business Analyst. You know how to elicit requirements and analyse them. You are objective about your stakeholders’ needs, understand the project scope, can determine the cost benefit and still things don’t turn out as expected. It seems that our brains are working against us. It’s called Cognitive Bias.

• Why aren’t people coming up with new ideas in your workshops? It’s the anchoring bias, compounded by bandwagon bias.
• Are your problem-solving sessions reaching the right solutions? If not, maybe it’s the curse of knowledge or loss aversion bias – Why is estimating seen as a black art? Blame the planning fallacy and optimism bias.

This session will examine these questions and others by drawing on the fields of psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics and applying them to Business Analysis. We’ll also look at ways to overcome biases and help counter the natural tendencies of our brains. You will take away from this session:

• What Cognitive Biases are
• How they affect both you, as a Business Analyst, and your stakeholders
• Approaches for overcoming biases, or even using them to your advantage

Requirements Come in Many Shapes

There has been a change in the way Business Analyst’s elicits requirements, business requirements can now be presented in a number of ways:

• Traditional requirement’s documents
• User Stories
• Customer Journeys.

Even though the world of documenting requirements is changing, using user stories and customer journeys etc, the elements of a business requirement still stands true, they should still be clear, understandable, unambiguous, traceable and testable.

Continuous Improvement Service - a Journey from Inception to Reality in 18 Months

“If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them….maybe you can hire….The CI-Team.”

Two years ago Sheffield Hallam University’s BA team recognised an increase in requests for support on local change initiatives and process improvements in addition to work on corporate projects. Their skills were in demand to provide objectivity and challenge, critical thinking, and techniques to enable and facilitate improvements and organisational change. Recognising and leveraging this opportunity is how their journey began. They now operate a fully functional Continuous Improvement (CI) service within their BA team. They have high demand across the business for our skills on varied improvement initiatives and for their bespoke training courses.

This session will take you through their journey with an honest portrayal of what worked and what didn’t, identifying how to create a successful CI service. Key Takeaways:

• An understanding of adapting industry BA, Lean and CI tools to provide simple and effective ways to enable and empower teams to improve ways of working and processes.
• An understanding of how to build CI capability and culture at all levels in a complex business
• Ideas on how to apply our journey to their organisation formulated through discussion about where CI would be valuable and how BA skill sets could be utilised in their business

Making the Chaos Visible (and then Solving It)

When as BAs we move into the Process Analysis/Service Design areas of our practice we are faced with uncovering chaos in processes, running into overlapping silos, our exceptions have exceptions, and the edge cases multiply.

Often when faced with this we do everything we can to simplify the view of the world – make it pretty. Then we try to get the buy-in from everyone to change this.

This talk suggests we should show the chaos, all the chaos, in a messy hand drawn way – and then work to unravel and resolve that piece by piece into the new world.

It is a way of working forward with the business – by making them revel in the mess of their world, to the point where the ridiculousness of current processes are perfectly clear to the point of giggles – then getting buy-in to the new ways of working is so much easier. This presentation covers:

• Why chaos is useful
• Laughing in the face of it all
• Getting the business to SEE the cost of the current process
• Walking out with buy-in to any changes

Psychology and the Business Analyst

Having the unique background of a Psychology degree & 10 years BA experience, Ryan will discuss the importance of “people over processes”. He will talk about the impact of behaviour on product development & help people understand why certain patterns happen and what they can do about them. For example, he will talk about:

Elements of group dynamics – how groups develop and the importance of their dynamics on assigning roles and identity to individuals

• Heuristics and examples of fallacies. How they lead to common – but avoidable – problems
• The impact of organisational culture on the individual. How organisational culture affects our behaviour and can be changed
• How motivation works & feeds into emergent thinking about holocracy

Attendees will come away with:

• An understanding of key Psychology concepts
• A recognition of why certain behaviour occurs in teams
• An understanding of how to change behaviour

11:40-12:00: The Socratic Method: Death by Business Analysis? 12:10-12:30: The Agile BA: A Journey of Conflict

11:40-12:00: The Socratic Method: Death by Business Analysis?
Thamer Miles, easyJet

Socrates (469-399 BC) used two metaphors to describe how he engaged in philosophical debate: he is a gadfly, who provokes his interlocutors with persistent questioning; and a midwife, who helps others give birth to the ideas that lie within them.

Does that sound familiar? As business analysts, it often feels as though our stakeholders want us to reach inside their brains and draw out what they need in order to address a particular business problem. It can also sometimes – let’s face it – feel as though they wish we would stop pestering them with endless queries.

This presentation takes a light-hearted look at the parallels between business analysis and the method Socrates used to discuss topics such as ‘What is virtue?’ with his fellow Athenians. You’ll hear:

• It’s not what you know but the questions you ask
• Stakeholders do not always know what they think they know
• Sometimes you just need to back off (spoiler: Socrates died a nasty death)

12:10-12:30: The Agile BA: A Journey of Conflict
Amardeep Sirha, Sky

So, you’ve adopted the agile mind-set. And you’re ready to take on a project…now what?

An agile mind-set is just the beginning for a Business Analyst. There are a number of conflicts that rear their head once the mind-set has been adopted – that’s in addition to the normal change fears. How do organisations foster an environment where just in time analysis is supposed to be the norm, but still require a business case for finance approval?

This session will help the audience explore a number of conflicts which surface once the Agile Business Analyst mind-set has formed. We will cover some key conflicts:

• Can a Business Analyst really be a proxy Product Owner?
• Up front discovery for finance sign off
• Is JIT analysis really a thing?

The three key points the audience will take away:

• What it means to be part of the cross functional team
• Conflicts within the role of an Agile Business Analyst
• Some solutions to help overcome these conflicts

Aligning Business Analysis and EA: Business-friendly models and visualizations to gain insight and ensure strategic alignment

Aligning business analysis and enterprise architecture is a prerequisite for successful business and IT transformation, but it’s easier said than done. In this presentation, I will show how business analysts can benefit from the linkage to Enterprise Architecture and Strategy, and how this all can be achieved using a number of business friendly models and visualizations.

By using these models, one can gain additional insights, such as:

• How does a process contribute to the business capabilities and business outcomes?
• Which business process improvement initiatives should be prioritised to meet strategic objectives?
• What is the impact of strategic initiatives on the processes?
• What is the impact of retiring a business system on the process landscape?
• Where is the data used in business stored, and who has access to it? This is a question that will become very important with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

What delegates will learn:

• The importance and positioning of business analysis in Business and IT Transformation
• How business analysis can be linked to Enterprise Architecture and Strategy using business friendly viewpoints
• How adding enterprise architecture elements to process models can increase visibility and ability to analyse

The BA as Knowledge Curator

BAs have always used models. They bring precision, re-usability and clarity to the work we produce. But our business stakeholders don’t share our enthusiasm for complex diagrams and elaborate models.

In this session Ian will look at the reasons why BAs need to become ‘Knowledge Curators’, and some techniques on how to do it. He’ll use examples – good and bad – from some recent projects, and show why it’s no longer about the tools we use, but the knowledge those tools contain, and how we present it to people that counts. We’ll look at how to:

• Select your knowledge – based on knowing your audience
• Organise it – to take them on a journey of discovery
• Present it – in a compelling way, to engage the them

Keynote: You Can Take It With You

Graeme Simsion’s career has taken him from computer operator, to programmer, DBA, data modeller, data manager, business process designer, IT and business strategist, consultancy manager, facilitator, researcher and educator and, more recently, Hollywood screenwriter and best-selling novelist. Graeme will talk about the generic skills in design, management and consulting that have helped him make the transitions and continue to be at the core of his work.   You will learn:

•    How to extend your analysis and design skills into other domains
•    The key strategies for winning support and engaging stakeholders
•    The most valuable skills to invest in – no matter what you plan to do next

How to Analyse and Manage Stakeholders

Stakeholder management is critical to the effectiveness of your business analysis delivery. It is also essential for your professional development. This session will highlight the key attributes to identify during stakeholder analysis. From stakeholder analysis, this session then covers mapping of stakeholders, required to make the business analysis a success. The outputs of stakeholder analysis and stakeholder mapping will then be worked through to develop a stakeholder communication plan. This session concludes with a quick fire register of different stakeholder traits and approaches that have proved successful in managing these types. Within this session, Sarah will present the following key discussion points:

• Stakeholder Identification and Analysis
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Stakeholder Communication and Management Techniques

Using BDD as a Communication Tool Between the Business and Technology

Have you ever seen that Project Cartoon, the Project Construction Cycle with the tree swing? There are many different variations of the swing in the tree depending on who was describing it and how it was understood. How many projects have you been on where this is the case? More than ever we need a way to explain the requirements that is understandable and clear for all parties on a project. This is where Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) can fit in.

This talk will explore how BDD can be used as a communication tool between the business and the technology team. It will cover how the BA is instrumental in extracting the requirements of the business providing clear specifications for the delivery team real examples.

• Understand how BDD improves communication
• Discover why we need examples to illustrate specifications
• Learn the critical role of the BA in BDD

Systems Thinking: A Crucial BA Skill in an Uncertain World

It has often been said that we live in an increasingly volatile, complex and ambiguous world.   The external business environment is complex and fast-moving, yet often our stakeholders are blindsided by ‘silver-bullet’ solutions that assume a neat linear relationship between cause and effect.

In reality, things are rarely neat and linear. More often we’ll find that situations are devilishly difficult, requiring us to understand and engage with a whole range of messy interconnected issues and perspectives.

In this practical presentation, Adrian Reed discusses the importance of systems thinking in business analysis. During the presentation you will hear:

• What systems thinking ‘is’, why it matters, and the conditions in which it can be relevant in an analysis environment
• A range of practical techniques from the world of systems thinking that have direct applicability in the BA world
• How systems thinking and systems practice, when embraced by a range of complementary practitioners and stakeholders, can help an organisation ‘learn’

How to Leave Your Stakeholders with an Unforgettable Experience

All Business Analysts would agree that effective stakeholder management is a skill much in demand. At Harrods BAs have the opportunity to work across an exciting breadth of projects including implementing a new beauty clinic, enhancing e-commerce solutions, and improving the Christmas Grotto experience for its Customers. The variety of projects leads to a diverse set of stakeholders, all with very different needs. In these scenarios we need more than some of the common toolkit techniques.

In this session with Kaja you’ll experience:

• Real life examples of managing stakeholders in the luxury sector
• Techniques that proved invaluable for efficient stakeholder management
• Methods for identifying the stakeholders with the most influence to support project delivery
• How to build rapport and manage stakeholder conflict in a fast paced environment

15:15-15:35: Blue Lights to BA15:45-16:05: T-Shaping - How the BA can get Closer to Their Team

15:15 – 15:35
Blue Lights to BA
Philip Radford, Higher Business Analyst, NHS Digital

Listen. Analyse. Act.

Philip’s route to becoming a BA has been built on a foundation of clinical training. Two and a half years ago he embarked on a career change from Paramedic to Business Analyst. He will share with you the journey he took. He will explain why he decided to change career, how he did it and what attracted him to business analysis. He will discuss the experiences he has gained, both good and bad during this transition and what can be learned from them.

Philip believes that business analysis can learn from other professions. By encouraging people to join from different backgrounds we are exposed to alternative outlooks and new approaches to the work we do. His session will encourage delegates to think more widely about what makes a good BA.

The key learning points for delegates will be:

• The core skills of a paramedic that translate to good business analysis
• The differences between the professions and the challenges this presented
• What the BA profession can learn from my experience

15:45 – 16:05
T-Shaping – How the BA can get Closer to Their Team
Simon Lynch, Senior Business Analyst, Aviva Health

In the current shift towards Agile delivery of projects the traditional Business Analyst function of up-front requirements analysis and build is becoming extinct – fast-paced, Agile delivery requires immediate decision making, and to do this Business Analysts need a better understanding of the people they work with, the work these people do and how they do it. T-shaping is the art of expanding your knowledge to increase understanding, and this presentation will focus on how a BA can become more T-Shaped to serve their customers more effectively.

• The key messages to be taken away are:
• What is T-Shaping and why is it important?
• The pros, cons and barriers to T-Shaping
• What a BA can do to be T-Shaped in an Agile environment.

Value for Money - The Importance of Benefits Realisation

Business change no longer happens in isolation but is set to compete over restricted budgets, skills and delivery schedules within large project portfolios. There is an increasing focus on getting ‘value for money’ when committing to change projects. However, detailed business benefits are not always captured. Business cases often only describe high-level benefits without making any effort to base-lining the initial status quo, defining acceptance criteria, measuring key performance indicators and performing benefits reviews throughout the project lifecycle.

This session examines the importance of benefits realisation for project success at B&CE. It introduces a proven multi-step model on how to incorporate successful benefits realisation throughout the end-to-end project lifecycle. Attendees will learn:

• A ‘hands-on’ multi-step model for benefits realisation
• The importance of a ‘value for money’ approach to justify project expenditure
• How to ensure benefits realisation after project closure.

Panel: Everything You Wanted to Know About Business Architecture but were Afraid to Ask

Have you ever wondered what Business Architecture really is and how it interacts with Business Analysis to effect transformational change? Are you hearing conflicting messages from this relatively new profession and want some clear answers? Well this is your chance to quiz a panel of Business Architecture thought leaders to gain an insight into their profession and how they perceive their profession’s contribution to Business Transformational Change.

Are BAs Relevant in an Agile Team?

As most organisation move towards a Dev Ops and SCRUM delivery, BAs find it hard to stay relevant within a SCRUM team. Questions frequently arise am I needed anymore? What is my role within this team? The presentation will talk you through:

• Importance of a BA in an Agile team
• Skills that you need to develop
• Tools and techniques that make you invaluable to the team.

After this session, the audience will have a working knowledge of their purpose in an agile team and more importantly tangible next steps on actions they will take. I shall be running a mini objective/goals setting during the presentation that the audience can then take away with them and implement into their professional life.

10 Ways Your Business Customer Can Damage Your Project - and What to do About Them

How ironic is it that an IT project can be broken by a Business customer who is too motivated for success? Benedicta Makin looks at specific problems created by inexperienced or over-ambitious Business customers which she has spotted over the years, with practical recommendations on how to address them.

Sponsors often assume that an operational leader can dive straight in and shape the Project from the Business side because they’re an experienced manager, right? But a Business customer who doesn’t understand what is reasonable to expect from an IT project can threaten the project’s success. There are inexperienced ones, indecisive ones and greedy ones, and you handle them all in different ways. Takeaways:

• The different problems an inexperienced Business Customer can cause
• The likely consequences
• The likely impact on your project

Keynote: (Not) Just a BA!

The role of the Business Analyst is regularly misunderstood, misused and is often seen as a catch all for anything that doesn’t fit into other roles. It is recognised as critical within a project, but often unrecognised for successful project outcomes. As Head of Business Analysis in the Department for Work and Pensions, Richard will show how, in order to attract new talent and retain existing, he was responsible for driving the definition of the BA role.

Getting an organisation to recognise the role and value it brings was always going to be hard and when that organisation is the Civil Service it often seemed insurmountable. Richard will explain how he worked with BAs and function leads across Government to create the framework for the BA. He will address how he has driven both the awareness of Business Analysis and the increase in BA capability within both DWP and across other Government Departments.

What you will learn:

• How Government is recognising the BA role
• Ideas for raising awareness of the profession in your own organisations

Becoming an Agile BA: Bridging the Gap Between the Theory and the Practice

Many Business Analysts from a traditional background can struggle to understand whether their skillset is still relevant for Agile project and be clear on how it should be deployed, especially when the focus is often so strongly put on the roles of the Scrum Master and Product Owner. It may make the most experienced BA question where they fit in and make them feel like they need to abandon many of the normal critical processes to align to the new methodology.

The presentation gives practical examples of where trusting standard best practice Business Analysis techniques is essential to the success of an Agile project and demonstrates how having a professional BA will provide unique benefits to the team. The presentation includes:

• Examining the role of a Scrum Master and their traditional responsibilities to the Product Owner and the organisation. Challenging areas of the role that sit more naturally and more effectively with the Business Analyst
• Using the V model to demonstrate how the Business Analyst’s responsibilities fundamentally do not (and must not) change in an Agile project
• Demonstrating the direct relationship of eliciting requirements using a Waterfall approach (Use Cases) and an Agile approach (User Stories)

Experiment to Liberate: Revolutionary Development for Evolutionary Delivery

In a world where tech superstars like Google, Facebook and Apple tell us the Engineer rules, where does it leave the Business Analyst? Specifically, the Business Analyst in John Lewis.

At John Lewis they are working towards Organisational Agility; new ways of working to deliver outcome-based value, over projects and programmes. This has required a whole new set of skills in each of their toolkits, not least the BAs’.

This session will take you on the John Lewis BA road trip from domain and system specific analysts, to professional Business Analysts, and along their path to flexible, self-organising engineering teams.

You’ll hear…

• How an evolutionary delivery approach required revolutionary professional development
• How business analysis enabled teams to experiment
• How the practice model was central to supporting and coaching BAs in developing their T-shape

‘Help me R2D2 – You’re My Only Hope’ – How Robotics Can Help the BA

Let’s face it, when you set out to optimise your organisational processes, how many Jedi masters do you know that you can turn to? I’m guessing none, so is it time to turn to the robots?

Robotic process automation (or RPA) is a form of clerical process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or Artificial Intelligence (AI) workers. RPA can work on Front-End and Back-End processes mimicking repetitive work more quickly, accurately and tirelessly than humans. This results in optimised resource utilisation, increased quality and a reduction in costs.

This session will explore:

• RPA – what it is and how it works
• How the BA and BPM (Business Process Management) skillset fits with RPA
• How can a BA prepare to come into the RPA world?
• What RPA tools are out there and how they can help your organisation
• Examples where utilisation of RPA has helped achieve optimisation benefits

The 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Business Analyst (After Stephen Covey)

Stephen Covey’s book has sold over 25 million copies and is widely regarded as one of the most influential business management books of all time.

This presentation explores the foundational concepts, each of the habits themselves and their application.   Jonathan will share personal insights into the use of the habits and offer practical advice for their adoption by business analysis professionals.

You will learn:

• The foundational concepts behind the 7 habits and an explanation of each
• How the 7 Habits can be used by Business Analysts
• How the 7 habits can be used be used to support your development

Unlock your BA Potential - Grow Your Career

We are often reminded to take ownership of our own career development.

We are often told “your career is your responsibility”.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately…aside from maybe a 30min careers talk from the school Careers Counsellor at high school, we have not been schooled, coached or mentored in personal and career development.

Most of us follow our intuition and if we are lucky, we find ourselves in the roles we enjoy. Sometimes we do not even realise it when we are in that role!

• What if we approached it a little more structured and planned our development and our careers?
• What is the role of our managers and leaders?
• What does the literature say? What is your experience?

Take control and Unlock your Potential

Join Michael as he shares his international case study experiences

You will learn:

• Simple techniques to craft a career development plan
• What a good development plan looks like
• How to get un-stuck in one’s career

The Value of Conceptual Data Modelling

Conceptual data modelling can prove to be instrumental in making valuable discoveries about the true essence of an organisation’s business: what are the “things of importance” and how do these things “flow through the business”?

This case study will show how conceptual data modelling offers an invaluable tool for the business analyst to:

• Provide the “glue” for business colleagues to have an intelligent discussion about how to develop the business across functional silos
• Facilitate the discovery of which activities act on which “things” leading to an understanding of how these “things” tie the business together
• Create a shared semantic foundation for discussing and agreeing solution requirements

The Challenges and Benefits of Aligning Architecture and Business Analysis within the Bank of England

This presentation will provide delegates with an overview of the challenges faced and the resulting benefits from aligning Business Analysis more closely with Architecture.

This presentation will tell you how we approached this problem at the Bank of England and the benefits from moving to a revised working model.

The presentation will explain the different viewpoints from the Architects and how this information can be used by a Business Analyst, we will highlight the nuances between each group and how they can be resolved in order to have a true joined up service offering.

Overall, delegates will learn:

• The challenges and benefits associated with BAs aligning more closely with architects.
• How can we continue to build these relationships?
• Overview of lessons learned at Bank of England

How to Split User Stories

User story splitting is an established practice on agile delivery teams. But in Tony’s experience, it’s really difficult to do well. In this session Tony will cover the basics (what, why and when) but he’ll also deep-dive into more advanced topics. In particular Tony will show that story splitting is an iterative process and that different techniques apply at different levels.

Key takeaways:

• Why splitting user stories is more important than you thought
• When to do it
• What vertical story slicing really means
• Cockburn’s named “goal levels” and why they are relevant
• The various techniques, and what order to apply them in

Cardiff University: A New Student Digital Experience Created for Students, Designed with Students

At Cardiff University they have taken up the challenge to modernise the Student Digital experience. They have been working to create a central place for students to access all the services they need during their time with us at Cardiff University.

They have combined Agile business analysis and traditional requirements gathering techniques with a strong focus on user research to create a digital landscape that works for students and enhances their time at Cardiff.

Computer Science Masters Students have been given the Student Digital project as the topic for their group project. The outputs of their efforts have then informed the real Student Digital development.

They have run student workshops and pop-up sessions around the campus to collect student views. Use of wire-frame prototype screens and iterative requirements gathering has enabled them design a system with the students that works for them and enhances their time at Cardiff University.

What you will learn from the presentation:

• How to work collaboratively with your customers, using their input to create a product that they can own

• How building prototypes enables you to understand what works for users and delivers business benefits. Feeding this collaborative learning back into subsequent iterations adds value. This allows you to address any risks early and maximise business benefits

• How Agile story mapping combined with business focus of the service oriented architecture can give you a good visual map of user journeys which results in a product that will work for your customers.

Why Should I Care About Pretty Pictures?

There’s a stereotype of people who work in IT. And there is a stereotype in how people in IT work. Black and white spreadsheets. Grey diagrams. Monochrome and monotone.

However, the stereotype is far from true. There is a wave of change as analysts are realising that to be heard, they must first be seen. And to be seen, work is moving from grey scale and excel, to exciting new frontiers of data visualisations and infographics.

You’re invited to look at the work of an analyst through the eyes of an artist. Replace tables with pictures to help make decisions faster, bring solutions to life, and get your stakeholders emotionally attached.

In this presentation, we’ll explore why you should care about pretty pictures:

• The science behind why visual communication is part of our DNA
• How you can start to be more visually creative with your work
• What we’re doing at John Lewis to make this possible

IIBA UK - Collaborating to Represent the BA Community

Business Analysis as a role has been around for longer than most people realise, and IIBA UK has been one of the key players that has guided the development of the profession for just over a decade. The business landscape has changed significantly in that time, with IIBA UK evolving to meet the needs of members and the broader profession. We will bring this to life in this short talk, and look to the future.

Learn more about:
• The breadth of work undertaken by IIBA UK to develop individual BAs and the BA profession
• The changing environment in which BAs operate
• What opportunity does the future hold?

Keynote: Fulfilling Your Business Potential in 2017 and Beyond

Blind Adventurer and international motivational speaker Miles Hilton-Barber keynote will outline a radical yet simple set of life principles that will enable companies, individuals and organizations to become more successful today, despite facing unprecedented global change, wrapped up in a fast-moving, colorful and humorous presentation with photos and video clips from his many expeditions and adventures.

He will challenge you to look again at who you are, and how you can achieve so much more than you think you can in both your personal and business life, because “The only limits in your life are those you accept yourself”…

Some key life principles Miles will be seeking to convey during his presentation will include:

• Our quality of life and potential for fulfilment, happiness and success in both our business and personal lives is not dependant on external circumstances (such as the economy, Brexit etc), but on our internal mental response to them.
• Many things in our life and business not impossible- we just haven’t done them yet!
• Focus on your goals and not your challenges or barriers.
• Embrace positive change.
• Persevere in challenging times- it’s just part of life.
• Have fun- enjoy your work.
• Teamwork and good personal relationships essential for growth.
• The only limits in your life are those you accept yourself.

Its 'Business Analysis', Spock - Just Not As We Know It

This fun, interactive presentation will cover:

• ‘Foot Surveys’, which show graphically how the industry is approaching the big problems of managing requirements, requiring delegates to physically walk to a corner that represents their answer to questions appearing on the projected screen.

• Real world and amusing ‘horror stories’ from the instructor’s own 30 years of front-line experience building technologies for the banking, automotive and eGovernment sectors.

• A participative game in which we will build a ‘Human Traceability Matrix’ with the help of delegates

Business Leaders Know us and Trust Us: the Old Mutual BAs Journey to Being Seen as Strategic Partners with Senior Leaders

Many BAs complain that their business doesn’t know what they are capable of. In stark contrast, at Old Mutual, the Business Analysis practice is building up credibility from the board down. Senior leaders in the business know the names of key BAs and what they can do. In this presentation, we share how these BAs offer support at a strategic level, helping department heads and their teams to articulate strategy. Through this involvement, Old Mutual BAs find out about potential projects early, meaning that they can help the business to consider strategic fit, and to explore options and ensure the business case is clear before projects start. Facilitation skills are key to this involvement and have helped the BAs to build credibility. You will leave understanding:

• The strategic work taken on, and the skills required;
• How Old Mutual got this started (which involved Finance)…
• What is working well, and what hasn’t;
• Progress on widening the core group of BA facilitators.

Business Analysis in an Agile World -- Delivering Value, not Just Software

The full potential of agile development is only realised when it delivers a solution that solves the real business problem. The problem is that we don’t always know what the problem is. All too often, teams deal in solutions, and nobody is looking to see if they solve the real problem.

This talk is about how to integrate business analysis with agile development. It shows a better way of doing business analysis by identifying the customer segments and their value propositions. It demonstrates how to use safe-to-fail probes to reveal the viability of proposed solutions, and how to design the solution for optimal use of information and convenience. Naturally the talk shows how to write the right stories and feed the development team by using a story map.

This is a practical demonstration of working in an agile way. It works through examples that show agile business analysts how to ensure they are solving the right problem and delivering the right value to the right customers.

• Integrate business analysis and agile
• A practical way to be an agile business analyst
• Solving the right problem and delivering the right value

Impeccable Stakeholder Skills for Conducting a Drugs Warrant - Stakeholder Insights from a Police Officer turned Business Analyst

Have you ever had to spring a ‘surprise’ on a stakeholder and you are not entirely sure how their response is going to be? How do you catch someone off guard and still maintain the best chances for a successful outcome? Insights from a former police officer who spent 2 years on a high performing proactive drugs unit. Charlie will take you through the stakeholder lessons learned from the perspective of executing a drugs warrant and cover essential skills on de-escalation in highly charged environments that make the board room battles look like child’s play.

This presentation will provide you with fresh perspectives on helping you to think through stakeholder engagements and challenge you to apply the following principles:

• All about the game plan
• Your mouth piece is your best tool
• Woosah works

Disrupt & Thrive: Design Thinking & You

Someone’s disruption is another’s success. But how do you harness the latent ability of people to be disruptors rather than disrupted? Design Thinking is a catalytic agent empowering people to innovate. Join us for an introduction to Design Thinking and discover how it empowers organisations to create valued experiences and profitable outcomes. In todays fast moving and ever complex world doing things the same way will inevitably lead to disruption, especially if you cannot move or react both creatively and with agility. Learn how a new focus on the “Why?” is quite possibly the most important aspect of any future activity. What impact could this have on Business Analysis? You might already understand the importance of Why, but face   barriers to adoption. Design Thinking just might be the change agent you long for and so desperately need.

Learning points:

• Understanding of Design Thinking
• Examples of how it has made a difference to people
• Why its growing in importance to organisations
• The potential impact on Business Analysis
• Approaches to overcoming barriers to adoption

Bringing Order from Chaos (and How to Not Cause a National Electricity Blackout)

Dealing with chaos is business as usual for a Business Analyst, as we manage and implement change projects and initiatives. However, the fear and chaos of a particular problem often prevents us from realising the possible, and needed, outcomes and benefits.

With lots of examples from Graham’s background in engineering and current IS projects at National Grid, this presentation will provide you with some fresh perspectives and ideas on using BA tools and techniques in a chaotic environment, specifically:

• Levels of problem magnification and abstraction
• Selecting the right problem detectors and tools
• Dealing with and managing stakeholders.

In this presentation Graham will explain how to find order in both literal and figurative plane wrecks, build your own electricity network, and leave you equipped with more confidence that we need not fear the chaos that so often surrounds the work of a Business Analyst.

Audience Analysis - a Technique to Help With Business Change Implementation

A timely and appropriate audience analysis is crucial to plan the right interventions for embedding business change. Audience Analysis helps to identify who is impacted by the change, to understand their reaction towards it and to ensure that impacted audiences are ready, willing and able for business change. Any business implementation approach based on just feedback from a few key stakeholders, and without any detailed audience analysis is bound to create issues/problems whilst embedding the business change.

The key take away from this presentation:

• Why Audience Analysis is important
• How to perform Audience Analysis
• How it contributes to business change implementation

Seeing is Believing: Prototyping with Visio

‘We set them up – you knock them down’ – mocking up a straw man engages users and inspires them to think about the practical use of a system during requirements gathering. Even if their first reaction is to tell you what’s wrong with the mock up, this can still provide a wealth of detail.

Requirements by nature are not sexy, and it is sometimes difficult to get stakeholders to participate and have the vision/knowledge to think creatively when presented with a blank piece of paper.

At Sheffield Hallam University, they’ve had success in engaging users with complex requirements by creating simple Microsoft Visio prototypes. This helped them avoid many of the common pitfalls of requirements gathering, such as ambiguity, stakeholder conflict, poor engagement and difficulty achieving sufficient detail needed.

In this interactive session Clinton and Kathryn identify where a simple Visio prototype adds value to requirements. Using examples of past projects and facilitating a group activity, they’ll demonstrate how this easy and accessible approach can provide benefits and flexibility to the modern BA.

Key takeaways:

• Examples of different approaches we’ve taken to prototyping using Visio, and how/ when to apply them
• Benefits of using Visio for prototyping to gather requirements
• Practical examples and a Visio stencil containing useful “prototyping” shapes

Business Analysts in a Dispersed Team

Geographically dispersed teams have proved themselves as a good and stable yet flexible and productive approach to staffing. More than that, such a team today is rather a rule than an exception. Observable and evident progress in communication tools allows significant cost reduction via organising “virtual” teams. Being a BA means deep and personal involvement into the process, product ownership and extensive collaboration with the stakeholders. Still, business analysts, customers, managers, implementation team members can be easily spread all over the world – located in the different offices, countries or even continents. All that brings lots of cultural, political and geographical gaps between key players, which can give a rise to communication and organisational challenges. We are going to share our experience in building efficient work for the team of business analysts as a part of a bigger “virtual” team.

Delegates will learn:

• Common issues in a dispersed team and the ways of dealing with them
• How to build trust-based relations with stakeholders over a distance
• How to organize planning and monitoring in a virtual team of business analysts

The Dojo of Collaboration

In martial arts the dojo is a respected training facility for the art. Everyone has to be respectful to the instructor and their fellow classmates. In the dojo the students are there to learn the techniques, with precision, so it can be applied if there is ever a need to use it for self protection. The students have to work together to sharpen their techniques and skills, and rely on each other to help grow in the art. The ultimate goal is that everyone is developing their techniques and skill sets to perform the art to perfection when needed.

The same is needed to effectively collaborate. In order to transform businesses with powerful solutions individuals must work together. The powerful solutions come from the diversity of the team. However, with diversity can come challenges as you are interacting with different personalities, perspectives and mindsets. However, you must find a way to work together to ultimately reach the goal at hand. By working with each other, such as you do in the dojo, you are sharpening each other and leveraging each other’s skills to transform your business.

This interactive session will leverage martial arts, videos and exercises to demonstrate how to effectively collaborate to build powerful solutions for your organization.

Objectives:

• The Foundation – Building the relationship
• The Culture – How to foster a collaborative environment
• Maintenance – How to maintain the collaborative environment and partnerships built