Course Contents
1. What is Business Analysis
- Describe the business change lifecycle
- List the following principles of business analysis
- Describe the variants of the business analyst role
2. The Competencies of a Business Analyst
- Explain the concept of the T-shaped Professional
- Identify the three areas of business analysis competency
3. The Strategic Context for Business Analysis
- Describe business analysis and the strategic context
- Define the factors assessed using PESTLE to analyse an external environment
- Identify the elements of the VMOST technique used to analyse an internal environment
- Describe the following elements of performance measurement
- Describe the structure of a SWOT analysis
- Describe the POPIT and Business Model Canvas techniques used in strategy execution
4. The Business Analysis Service Framework, incorporating the following services:
- Situation investigation and problem analysis
- Feasibility assessment and business case development
- Business process improvement
- Requirement’s definition
- Business acceptance testing
- Business change deployment
- Stakeholder engagement
5. Investigating the Business Situation
- Understand the purpose of workshops
- Understand the purpose of observation
- Understand the purpose of interviews
- Understand the purpose of scenarios
- Understand the purpose of prototyping
- Define user role analysis
- Define quantitative approaches including: Surveys or questionnaires, Activity sampling, Document analysis
- Describe the Rich pictures Mind maps, two diagrammatic techniques used to record a business situation
6. Analysing and Managing Stakeholders
- Identify stakeholder categories using the stakeholder wheel
- Describe the Power/Interest grid technique to analyse stakeholders
- Describe stakeholder responsibilities using RASCI (RACI) technique
7. Improving Business Services and Processes
- Explain the business process hierarchy
- Describe aspects of the event response level (UML activity diagrams, or process swimlane diagrams)
- Describe aspect of the actor-task level (Tasks writing the UML activity diagram)
- Analysis considerations at actor-task level (Steps or ‘work instructions’ supporting each Task level)
- Understand the concepts of the as-is and to-be process models
- Identify generic approaches to improving business processes
- Define the purpose of customer journey maps
8. Defining the solution
- Describe the gap analysis process
- Explain the use of POPIT in gap analysis
- Describe the process for developing options
- Describe the purpose of design thinking
9. Making the Business Case
- Describe the lifecycle for a business case in business case development
- Identify the areas of feasibility assessment
- Define the structure and contents of a business case
- Understand categories of costs and benefits
- Understand the importance of an early impact assessment
- Understand a business risk assessment in relation to the options presented
- Explain the purpose of the following investment appraisal techniques; payback, discounted cash flow (net present value) and internal rate of return
- List the key features relevant to the production of a business case within an Agile contex
10. Establishing the Requirements
- Explain the requirements engineering framework
- Understand the role of different actors in requirements engineering
- Understand the categories of requirements, business, technical, functional and non-functional
- Describe the hierarchy of requirements
- Describe requirements elicitation techniques
- Understand requirements analysis, including; requirements filters, INVEST, MoSCoW and Business rules
11. Documenting and Modelling Requirements
- Understand requirements documentation styles including; text-based documentation styles and Diagrammatic documentation styles
- Define the structure of the business requirements document
- Understand the importance of the requirements catalogue
- Describe the format of user stories
- Describe the elements of the use case diagram used to model functional requirements
- Describe the elements of a class model used to model data
- Describe the product backlog in modelling and documentation in an Agile environment
12. Validating and Managing Requirements
- Formal requirements validation
- The activities in the Agile requirements validation process
- Describe traceability and change control in relation to requirements management
13. Delivering the Requirements
- Describe the following types of delivery lifecycle; waterfall lifecycle, the “V” model, the incremental lifecycle and the iterative lifecycle (Agile)
14. Delivering the Business Solution
- Explain the role of the business analyst in the business change lifecycle
- Describe the role of the business analyst during the design, development and test stages
- Describe the SARAH (a person focused organisational change management tool) and a business readiness assessment technique
- Describe how the benefits plan is used in the realisation stage
Fees
Business Analysis™ Foundation Certificate (4 days)
The fee includes:
- Course presentation, accredited by BCS
- Comprehensive ALC course workbook
- Official course textbook: Business Analysis, 4th edition
- The BCS Business Analysis Foundation Certificate exam
- Delivered by a practicing senior business analyst and project manager
Pre-requisites:
There are no specific pre-requisites for entry to the course or examination. There is however some pre-reading prior to business analyst course commencement.
Exams & Other Information
Live Virtual Training – At course completion participants of business analyst foundation course will be provided by BCS the examination institute, an access code to the online web-proctored exam hosted by QuestionMark and accessed via a web browser. Access codes are valid for 6 months.
Face-to-Face Training – Participants will be provided with a paper-based exam which is completed whilst at the course in the same venue of the course itself.
The format for the examination is a one hour multiple choice examination. The examination is closed book. Candidates must achieve 26 from 40 questions to pass. Successful candidates are rewarded the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis.
Course Delivery
The business analysis course for beginners comprises theory, practical assignments and examination practice.
ALC Group is accredited by BCS as an Accredited Training Organisation for Business Analysis™ Foundation