Pass IIBA CBAP Exam in First Attempt Easily

Part 1 Introduction

1. Introduction

Welcome to the IIBA Business Owner certification course. This course is based on IIBA Bear Guide version three and provides a well-structured approach to help you prepare for various levels of certifications such as CBAP, CCBA and ECBA. Launched by IIBA in September 2016, this course is for all levels that is beginner to advanced level and hence suitable for students, new graduates as well as experienced business analysts who would like to undergo self paced learning without spending hundreds of dollars. Briefly about myself. I am Trivet Patel. I have over 15 years of experience in business analysis and consulting. I have extensive experience working in business projects for clients from different geographies such as USA, UK, Europe, Middle East, Japan and India. I have worked in multiple domains such as insurance, banking, lending, media and sports. I am certified business professional by International Institute of Business Analysis since March 2012.The purpose of this course is to learn key business analysis concepts and specific business analysis tasks described in IBA Bubba Guide version three. With this training, you will be able to align your business analyst knowledge and or experience with concepts of Ibo guide. The objective of this course is to prepare for globally recognized IIBA, CBAP orca certification or for ECBA Certification exam. Now, let's briefly understand coverage for the whole course. The whole course is divided into seven parts. In part one, you will understand about various business certifications offered by IIBA about business analysis concepts and underlying competencies. In part two, you will learn about the business analyst, planning and monitoring knowledge area and associated business analysis tasks. Similarly, in rest of the parts you will learn in detail about business tasks from various knowledge areas such as elicitation and collaboration requirements, lifecycle management, strategy analysis requirements, analysis and design, definition and solution evaluation. Further, in part seven, you will also be able to understand the steps involved in making the IIBA application and appearing for the IIBA exam. Now let's understand the coverage in detail for this part one of the course. In introduction you will understand about the enhanced multilevel business certification framework launched by IIBA. Next you will learn the essence of business analysis and about the role of a Professional and you will get an overview on the structure of the Ibis above guide version three, including purpose of various knowledge areas. With this knowledge you would be able to understand the eligibility requirements and exam blueprints for various levels of IIBA certifications as part of business Analysis key concepts you will learn about the Business Analysis core concept model, key terms and requirement classification schema used in the Book Guide. You will also understand what do we mean by a stakeholder and what do we mean by a requirement and design as per guide. And finally you will learn about the29 underlying competencies which are grouped into six categories such as analytical thinking and problem solving, behavioral characteristics, business knowledge, communication skills, interaction skills and Tools and technology.

2. About Enhanced IIBA Certifications

Different companies, different industries, different geographies, each have different ways of performing business analysis. The only thing that is common is business analysis competencies that that are needed to elicit and analyses requirements and define solutions. In this session, you will learn about enhanced multilevel competency based business analysis certification framework launched by IIBA in September 2016.By the end of this session, you would be able to decide which Ibis business and certification is appropriate for you. From September 2016, Ibis has launched four level enhanced certification framework. This enhanced certification framework is aligned to the latest practice analysis study. The enhanced certification framework has expanded in scope in terms of business analyst practice at all levels. In an organization that is at operational level, at strategic level, at traditional project level, this framework evaluates competencies of business analysts at multiple levels. Competencies are defined for each level and for each competency. Business analysts need to have certain level of proficiency in terms of performance. This framework guides and prepare you for the next level as you gain more experience, knowledge and competencies. However, there is no need to go from level one to two and two to three. You can attempt for any level if you are meeting prerequisites for that level. Hence, this framework provides support for complete career progression from entry through to retirement. IABA has validated the Enhanced Certification Framework competencies proficiency levels and exam questions by involving well over 300 volunteers from global BA community at various stages of the work. Hence, this is truly a certification framework by business analysis for business analyst. With this background, let's understand various competency based certifications offered by IIBA. Level one is a new entry level certificate introduced in the Enhanced Certification Framework. IIBA has named this level as Entry Certificate in Business Analysis and the acronym is ECBA. This level recognizes individuals entering the business analysis profession. The target audience includes students enroll in business analyst academic programs, new graduates from other disciplines who are learning and developing VA skills. The target audience also includes functional managers who manage business analysis and professionals with business or domain experience, but no experience as business analyst and who want to transition or change career into business analysis. This level does not have any prerequisite in terms of business and work experience. This level is good for you if you do not have B experience or are new to the profession. This level will only test applicants knowledge and will set foundation for competency development in business analysis. Please note that this level does not require periodic recertification. The level two is Certification of Capability in Business Analysis or CCBA. This level recognises BA practitioners who are result oriented and who actually perform the business analysis work. These individuals may or may not have official title as Business Analysis, but have experience and skills to perform business analysis work. This level has prerequisite of two to three years of experience in business analysis. This level is suitable for individuals working at any level within an organization such as operational, strategic or in projects. For example, a customer service officer may be involved in improving business processes at an operational level oar divisional manager involved in improving customer services ate strategic level or a project team member working on business and tasks and deliverables. This level is also suitable for project managers, testers and quality assurance analysts who perform business work along with their primary responsibilities and have enough bars to qualify. This level will test applicants knowledge as well as experience in business analysis inform of a scenario based exam. The situation based questions are designed to test your competencies and ability to apply experience in a given situation to choose the best course of action. These are practical questions that will test what a BA performs on a daily basis to validate your business analysis experience. Please note that it is not necessary to go all the way from level one to two and to two and three. You can attempt for any level if you are meeting prerequisites for that level. Any level up to level three can be taken directly. An exam would be as per that level. The level three is a Certified Business Analyst Professional or CBAP which is a gold standard certification. This level recognizes seasoned senior business analysts who look at bigger picture to lead and guide business analysis, work at operational, strategic or on projects of various sizes and complexities and are responsible for delivering business value. This level has prerequisites of minimum five years of experience in business analysis. This level will test applicants expertise in business analysis in form of a case study based exam. The case study based exam questions will test your skills and ability to lead and guide business analysis work. The questions are designed to test practical application of your experience and guidance in solving or addressing more complex and unstructured business challenges or opportunities. Level Four is the new highest level certification introduced in the certification framework. IIBA has named this level a Certified Business Thought Leader. And the acronym is Cbatl. This certification recognizes BA professionals who are experts in the field of business analysis or our industry thought leaders and are involved in advancing the BA profession by giving back to the BA community and also contribute to the evaluation of the Be practice. This level has prerequisites of minimum ten years of experience in business analysis. This level will not have any exam and would be based on assessment of applicants overall experience and contribution to the BA community. We will not be discussing requirements for level four in this course. To recap in this session, we have learnt about four level enhanced certification framework launched by IIBA. This enhanced certification framework has expanded scope in terms of business analysis practice atoll levels in an organization and evaluates competencies of business analysis at multiple levels. This framework guides and prepares you for the next level as you gain more experience, knowledge and competencies. This framework provides support for complete career progression from entry through to retirement. Please note that it is not necessary to go all the way from Level One to Two and two to three. You can attempt for any level if you’re meeting prerequisites for that level. Any level up to Level Three can be taken directly and exam would be as per that level. Your request is to visit IIBA website that is www.iiba.org,and check if there are any updates or changes.

3. Business Analysis & the BA Professional

Business analysis is a broad profession in which business analysts work on different types of initiatives and use different competencies, knowledge and skills. In this session, you will understand and what is business analysis and about the role of a Business Analyst. By the end of this session, you would be ready to understand the purpose and structure of the Ababa Guide. You might have heard the saying only change is constant. This applies to business as well. Organization’s business environment is constantly undergoing change with respect to customer demands, competition, new marketing channels, evolving technology, etc. These changes in the business environment lead to identification of the business needs. Changing business needs compels organization to acquire capabilities that are required to carry out business. Required capabilities can be new or improved business processes, systems, etc. So business analysis is required to fully understand the ongoing changes in the business environment, define requirements and design and develop solutions to meet the changing business needs and deliver value. BABOK Guide version three defines business analysis as the practice of enabling change in an enterprise by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to stakeholders. Business analysis enables an enterprise to articulate needs and to design and describe solutions that can deliver value. Business analysis performed on a variety of initiatives within an enterprise. Initiatives may be strategic, operational or tactical. For example, a strategic initiative could be to improve customer satisfaction, operational initiative could be to improve customer service specific business processes, while technical initiative could be a project to implement business process management system. With this background, let's understand the role of a business Analyst. Business Analyst is the one who collaborates with various stakeholders and understands the business needs in terms of problems or goals. Business Analyst analyzes current state in terms oafs is, business processes, enabling systems, et cetera. Business has defined future state in terms of two b business processes, enabling systems, etc. To meet the business needs. Business Analyst is also involved in defining the change strategy to transition from the current to the future state. Whenever stakeholders convey their desires, it is the responsibility of a business analyst to elicit the actual needs of stakeholders and determine the underlying issues and causes. Business analysis further defines solution requirements and designs to meet the business and stakeholder needs. Business Analyst is also involved in analyzing performance of the existing solutions and identifying ways of improving their performance to increase value. Business Analyst is responsible for discovering, analyzing, synthesizing and communicating business analysis information. BABOK Guide version three defines a business Analyst as any person who perform business analysis task described in the Book Guide no matter their job title or organizational role. Other common job titles for people who perform business analysis include business architect, business systems analyst, management consultant, process analyst, product owner, et cetera. To recap. Business analysis is required to fully understand the ongoing changes in the business context. Define requirements and designs. And develop solutions to meet the changing business needs and deliver value a business analyst is any person who performed the business analysis task described in the BABOK Guide no matter their job title or organizational role business analyst understands the enterprise problems and goals analyzes needs and solutions devices. Strategies. Drives. Change and facilitate stakeholder collaboration in the next session will learn about the purpose and structure of the BABOK’s Guide.

4. Structure of the BABOK Guide

The primary purpose of the BABOK Guide is to define the profession of business analysis and provide a set of commonly accepted practices. In this session, you will get an overview regarding in the purpose and structure of the Baboon Guide. By the end of this session, you would be ready to learn the key concepts in business analysis.BA Bach stands for business Analysis. Body of Knowledge.BA bag guide comprises of two parts. First part is the Core Content and the second part is the Extended content. The Core content of BABOK Guide version three is composed of 30 business owners tasks organized into six knowledge areas. The extended content of the BABOK Guide consists of business analysis, key concepts, underlying competencies, techniques and perspectives. The core content of BABOK Guide provides common framework that describes business analyst tasks. Business Analysis tasks are performed to properly analyze the change and evaluate the necessity for a change. In practice, the Business Analyst Tasks are tailored depending upon the type of the initiative. A Business Analyst Task is a piece of work that may be performed formally or informally as part of business analysis. These tasks are grouped into knowledge areas and the Business Analysts may perform this task from various knowledge areas sequentially iteratively or simultaneously. The BABOK Guide does not recommend a processor an order in which tasks are performed. Tasks may be performed in any orders long as necessary inputs are available. As we have understood, core content of BABOK Guide consists of 30 business tasks which are grouped into six knowledge areas. Now let's try to understand purpose of each of the knowledge areas. It’s okay if you find it difficult to understand these concepts on the first go. You would eventually understand them once you finish the whole course. The first knowledge area is Business Analysis, Planning and Monitoring, and it describes a task that must be performed to plan overall Business Analyst approach. They govern business tasks of all other knowledge areas and organize and coordinate the efforts of business analysis and stakeholders. The second knowledge area is Elicitation and Collaboration, and it describes the tasks that must be performed to carry out illi citation communication and collaboration with stakeholders. The third knowledge area is Requirement Lifecycle Management, and it describes the tasks that must be performed to prioritize, trace, maintain, approve and manage changes to requirements and designs. The fourth knowledge area is Strategy Analysis, and it describes a task that must be performed to identify the business needs, assess current state capabilities, define future state capabilities to meet the identified business needs, and define a change strategy to transition from current state to the desired future state. The fifth knowledge area is Requirements, Analysis and Design Definition and it describes the tasks that must be performed to structure, organize, specify, model, verify and validate requirements and designs, identify solution options and estimate potential value of each solution option and recommend the best solution. The 6th knowledge area is the solution evaluation, and it describes the tasks that must be performed to measure and assess the performance of an existing solution, assess limitations of solution and limitations of an enterprise, and recommend actions such as improving, enhancing or replacing the solution to increase value. The extended content of Book Guide consists of business analysis key concepts that define the key terms needed to understand the concepts and ideas within the Book Guide underlying competencies. Describe the knowledge, skills, behavior, characteristics and personal qualities that would help business analysis in performing the Business Analyst work. Techniques described in the BABOK Guide are the most commonly practiced business analysis techniques that help in performing various business tasks. Please note that these are not complete set of techniques used in business analysis. In practice, we can tailor and use multiple alternative techniques in conjunction with other techniques to accomplish a task perspective provide an overview on the ways to use various business owners tasks and techniques depending on the context of the initiative. These perspectives do not represent all the possible perspectives from which business analysis practice. Most initiatives are likely to engage one or more perspective to recap. The primary purpose of the BABOK Guide is to define the profession of business analysis and provide a set of commonly accepted practices. It helps to define the skills necessary to effectively perform business unless work BABOK Guide comprises of two parts. First part is the core content that is composed of 30 Business Analyst tasks that are organized into six knowledge areas. We have also learned that by the Guide provides a common framework that describes business as tasks that are performed to properly analyze the change or evaluate the necessity for a change. The second part is the extended content that is composed of business analysis, key concepts, underlying competencies, techniques and perspectives. So after understanding structure of the BABOK Guide and about various knowledge areas, you are now ready to understand IIb eligibility requirements and exam blueprint to be covered in the next session.

5. About IIBA Eligibility Requirements and Exam Blueprint

IIBA certifications evaluate the competencies acquired by business analyst in terms of knowledge, skills and experience at various levels such as beginner or entry level, intermediate level, expert level, and at the level of a thought leader in business analysis. IIBA certification provides support for complete career progression to business analysis. In this session, you will learn about the eligibility requirements and exam Blueprints for Enhanced Certification program launched by IIBA in September 2016.By the end of this session, you would have understood the percentage of questions from each knowledge area for various levels of IIBA certifications and be able to prepare for your exams accordingly. To recap. From September 2016, IIBA has launched four level Enhanced Certification Framework. This framework evaluates competencies of business analyst at multiple levels and provides support for complete career progression from entry through to retirement. Level one is a new entry level certificate and it is named as Entry Certificate in Business Analysis, or ECBA. This level recognizes individuals entering or learning the Business Analysis profession. Level two is Certification of Capability in Business Analysis, or CCBA. This level recognizes be a practitioner who are result oriented and who actually perform or do the business analysis work. Level three is Certified Business Analyst Professional, or CBAP, which is a gold standard certification. This level recognizes seasoned senior business analysts who lead and guide business life work of various sizes and complexities and are responsible for delivering business value. Level four is a new highest level certification and is named as Certified Business Analysis Thought Leader or Cbatl. This certification recognizes BA professionals who are experts in the BA field or are industry thought leaders and are involved in advancing the BA profession. Please note that level One, Two and three are exam based certification, while level four is an assessment based certification. For this multilevel certification program, IIBs define competencies and level of proficiencies required for each level in terms of expectation of performance. Your skills, knowledge and experience in business analysis should reflect the competencies and proficiencies to be considered for that level of recognition. To be considered suitable for Level One, that is ECBA, you are just required to have basic knowledge and awareness of skills in business analysis. You are not expected to have any experience or skills in business analysis and are just expected to follow rules and work under guidance. To perform tasks to be considered suitable for Level Two, that is CCBA, you are required to have applied knowledge, practiced and perform business analyst tasks. You should have skills, knowledge and experience to independently work and recommend actions on well scoped work or on more complex work under expert guidance. You should have confidence to modify the provided guidelines and rules to address challenging situations. To be considered suitable for Level Three, that is CBAP, you are required to have advanced knowledge and fully developed skills to execute business work of varying complexities. You should be a seasoned practitioner and should have ability to provide insights, create guidelines and rules to solve more complex and unstructured challenges. Please pause and study competency and level of proficiencies required for each level. Now let's understand eligibility requirement for each level of NAN certification framework. For level one that is ECBA, there is no requirement for experience in business analysis. You also do not require any professional references. Only thing that is required is minimum 21 hours of professional development or training in last four years. For level two, that is CCBA. Minimum 3750 hours of business as work experience is required in the last seven years. Apart from this, minimum 900 hours of business and as work experience is required in each of two knowledge areas or minimum 500 hours in each of four knowledge areas, you also need to have minimum 21 hours of professional development or training in the last four years. For CCBA, you need to have two professional references from a career manager, a client or a CBAP recipient. For level three, that is CBAP. Minimum 7500 hours of business analyst work experience is required in the last ten years. This work experience must be aligned with the Baby Guide. Apart from this, minimum 900 hours of business and work experience is required in each off our of the six knowledge areas. You also need to have minimum 35 hours of professional development or training in the last four years. You also need to have two professional references from a career manager, a client or a CBD recipient. For all certification, you must have high school or equivalent education, and you must also submitsigned code of conduct to IIBA. Please pause and study eligibility requirements for each level. Now, let's understand exam blueprint for level one, two and three. Level One is a new entry level certificate and it will test applicants knowledge in business analysis. The exam will be one and a half hour duration and will have 50 questions with multiple choice answers. The Level one exam will have 25% questions on businessized Knowledge or on the extended content of the BABOK Guide that includes Definition of Business Analysis and the BA Professional Business Analysis key concepts, underlying competencies and techniques. 75% of questions for Level One will be on six knowledge areas or core content of the BABOK Guide. Please note that 64% of total questions will be only on three knowledge areas. That is, Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge Area Requirements lifecycle Management knowledge Area and Requirements analysis and Design. Definition knowledge Area please pause and Study exam blueprint for level one. Level Two is Certification of Capability in Business Analysis and it will test applicants knowledge as well as experience in Business Analysis in form of a scenario based exam. The exam will be a three hour duration and will have 130 questions. Informed situations described in two to four sentences with multiple choice answers. The situation based questions are designed to test your competencies and ability to apply experience in a given situation to choose the best course of action these are practical questions that will test what a BA performs on a daily basis to validate your business owners experience. The Level Two exam will have 100% of questions on six knowledge areas or core content of the BABOK Guide. Please note that 70% of total question will be only on three knowledge areas. That is Elicitation and Collaboration knowledge Area Requirements lifecycle Management knowledge Area and Requirements analysis and Design definition knowledge Area please pause and Study Exam Blueprint for level two. Level Three is a certified Business Professional and it will test applicants expertise in business analysis in form of a case study based exam. The exam will be a three and a half hours duration and will have 120 questions described in form of one to one five page of cases with multiple choice answers. The case study based questions will test your skills and ability to lead and guide business analysis work. The questions are designed to test practical application of your expertise and guidance in solving or addressing more complex and unstructured business challenges or opportunities. The Level Three exam will have 100% of questions on six knowledge areas or core content of the BABOK Guide. Please note that 30% of total questions will be only on Requirements, Analysis and Design definition Knowledge Area Please pause and study Exam Blueprint for Level Three to recap in this session we have briefly learnt about four Level Enhance Certification framework launched by IIBA in September 2016.This enhanced certification framework evaluate competencies of business analysis at multiple levels and provide support for complete career progression from entry through to retirement. You have learnt about the eligibility requirements and Exam Blueprints for various levels of enhanced IIBA certification program. You are requested to visit IIBA website, that iswww.iiba.org and check if there are any updates or changes in IIBA eligibility requirements and Exam Blueprint. In the next session, we'll learn about the business key concepts.

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