BABOK: Strategy Analysis

This course is based on the BABOK® Guide v.3 and is accompanied by examples that illustrate the usage of rules and concepts mentioned in the BABOK Guide (real cases). Strategy defines ways that a company may use to increase the value provided to its consumers and, of course, its own benefits in the future.

It can seem that this topic stands out from the series of IT topics that our other courses are devoted to. However, the role of a business analyst is wider than just eliciting and managing requirements. A Business analyst has to care about the project and deliver business value to the customer. Sometimes, such value can be pretty concrete (e.g., automate some business processes to increase their performance), but it would be better to find the biggest value for the customer on the strategic level (e.g., automate all business processes to increase the effectiveness of the whole company). In other words, the strategy identifies those business needs that are the basis for developing future solutions. From this point of view, a Business Analyst has to understand the current state of the company, clarify its target state (when business needs are met), and develop a roadmap to transform the business into the target state. Also, the risks of this transformation should be assessed, and the resulting strategy should be aligned with higher- and lower-level strategies. Participants will also be provided with comprehensive practical exercises to get a hands-on feeling of how IT strategies are developed.

The BABOK Guide v.3.0 is an internationally recognized standard for the practice of business analysis. It summarizes the experience of leading business analysts around the world and describes 30 major tasks of business analysis, along with 50 techniques that are commonly used for solving these tasks.

The major challenge with self-studying the BABOK Guide is that, while describing typical tasks of business analysis, it does not explain when and how one should perform these tasks. It assumes that business analysts shall be able to answer these questions on their own, based on their personal experience and specifics of a particular project. Besides that, the BABOK Guide provides very few examples that might help analysts relate the theoretical knowledge to their daily practice. This course is intended to overcome that challenge. This course provides 16 professional development hours (PD hours) for further IIBA certification.