Building a BA Center of Excellence Momentum inc. Building a BA Center of Excellence Gain Momentum...Produce Results!

Agenda Who is Momentum, Inc. What is a Business Analysis Center of Excellence What we do Setting up your BA Center of Excellence Case Study BACoE Capability Maturity Model What’s is your organization majority level? What’s Next Prepare for your BACoE Question and Answers Contact Information

Momentum, Inc. – who we are Momentum is a management consulting firm. We provide services that help our clients reduce costs and produce better quality products and services through management consulting, process improvement, project management , and implementation support. Women Owed Business 40% Federal 40%State 20% Commercial Award Winning – Best Places to Work; Fastest Growing Business Best Practice Oriented – PMPs, CBAPs, Certified Subject Matter Experts Involved in the Local Community- Dress for Success, Coalition Against Domestic Violence Human Resource Based – Wellness Program, Health and Life Insurance Benefits Through the delivery of business analysis and process improvement services, Momentum has established a BACoE for one of our clients. Today’s presentation discusses the approach taken for that client.

Momentum, Inc. - knowledge Award-winning Management Consulting Company Business of the Year, 2008 One of the Fifty Fastest Growing Companies in PA, 2008 and 2009 Technology Company of the Year Finalist, 2009 Best Place to Work in PA, 2007 and 2008 Specializing in Management Consulting Process Improvement Project Management Implementation Support For Version 2.0 – add speaker notes about the criteria for each award stated at the top of this slide. Megan has this information.

Foundations in Best Practices Certified, Experienced Resources Project Management Professionals (PMP®) Certified Business Analysis Professionals (CBAP®) Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) Training Professionals Endorsed Education Provider (EEP™) for IIBA® Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) for PMI® Later in the presentation we will discuss how the International Institute for Business Analysis (IIBA) plays a role in the establishment of a BACoE by providing business analysis best practices. Momentum being an endorsed education provider for the IIBA and a Registered Education Provider for PMI means that our organization develops and delivers training courses centered on the best practices promoted by each organization. Momentum’s training courseware helps new BAs and PMs understand the best practices to improve their skill sets and prepares learners for taking the certification exams promoted by each organization.

What is a Business Analysis Center of Excellence BACoE What is a Business Analysis Center of Excellence Gain Momentum...Produce Results!

Components that makes up a BACoE Business Analysts Capable of providing services across the gamut of business analysis practices Center of Excellence A established center that exists to bring about an enterprise focus to many business issues, for example, data integration, project management, enterprise architecture, business and IT optimization, and enterprise-wide access to information A BACoE is comprised of two important components – Business Analysts and Center of Excellence. Business Analysts are professionals responsible for eliciting, documenting, analyzing, communicating, and managing requirements. A Center of Excellence provides a way in which a group of professionals can collaborate and establish a set of standards common across the group.

What is A Business analyst Business Analysts works with stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals. Understanding how an organization works Why does the organization exist? What are its goals and objectives? How does it accomplish those objectives? How does it need to change to better accomplish those objectives or to meet new challenges? It is about defining the scope of solutions to business problems Business analysts serve as a bridge between the business units (functional areas) in an organization and IT (developers, system architects, database specialists, etc.).

International Institute of Business Analysis The IIBA is an international non-profit professional association for business analysis professionals. Vision: To be the world's leading association for Business Analysis professionals Mission: To develop and maintain standards for the practice of business analysis and for the certification of its practitioners The BACoE in the Case Study (presented later in this discussion) followed the IIBA’s best practices documented in the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge. The IIBA is an organization similar to the Project Management Institute in that it developed a body of knowledge (compare BABOK to PMI’s PMBOK) and offers business analysis professionals the opportunity to achieve a certification indicating that they have mastered and have practiced the skills and techniques listed in the BABOK. The IIBA also established a network of chapter organizations that helps BA professionals network face-to-face with others in their industry to share concepts and techniques.

IIBA Goals Create and develop awareness and recognition of the value and contribution of the role of the Business Analysis Professional Define the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® Publicly recognize qualified practitioners through an internationally acknowledged certification program Provide a forum for knowledge sharing History Again, similar to PMI, the IIBA has an overall goal to be the organization that other organization's look to as an authority of business analysis methodology and principles. The goals listed on this slide contribute to the overall goal.

IIBA Business analysis body of knowledge® (BABOK®) Definition The BABOK® is the collection of knowledge within the profession of Business Analysis and reflects current generally accepted practices. Knowledge Areas Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Enterprise Analysis Elicitation Requirements Solution Assessment and Validation Requirements Management and Communication Enterprise Analysis includes tasks related to the development of an organization’s strategic plan. BA’s assist the organization by conducting feasibility studies and business cases to help the organization decide which IT projects it should undertake to fulfill a business need. Elicitation involves various techniques used to identify business and system requirements. Elicitation may include interviewing stakeholders or conducting large group sessions such as Requirements Workshops. Requirements analysis involves prioritizing, organizing, documenting, and modeling the requirements in a way that achieves a joint understanding of the requirements across all stakeholder groups. Solution Assessment and Validation involves verifying that requirements are quality requirements (clear, concise, unambiguous) and validating that the requirements support the original business goals and objectives determined during Enterprise Analysis. BA Planning and Monitoring occurs throughout all four areas described above. It involves selecting the tools and techniques that will be used in the other four areas and developing a work breakdown structure for the BA tasks. Performance measures are also established to ensure the tasks are performed efficiently and effectively. Requirements Management and Communication also occurs throughout all four areas described above. It involves tracking the changes to the requirements that occur over time and presenting the requirements to various stakeholder groups (e.g. executive level, business partners, end users, etc.).

Underlying Competencies describe the skills, Knowledge and abilities that support business analysis Decision Analysis Learning Problem Solving System Thinking Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving Ethics Personal Organization Trustworthiness Behavioral Characteristics Business Principles and Practices Industry Knowledge Organization Knowledge Solution Knowledge Business Knowledge Oral Communications Teaching Written Communications Communication Skills Facilitation and Negotiation Leadership and Influencing Teamwork Interaction Skills General Purpose Applications Specialized Applications Software Applications Good business analysts must master many skills in order to be successful at eliciting, documenting, and managing requirements. Many of those skills are represented on this slide. During a typical project a BA may lead a large group of stakeholders as they discuss and identify requirements (oral communications, facilitation, negotiation, leadership, and influencing skills), document and model the requirements (written communications, specialized applications, systems thinking), and then present those requirements to stakeholder groups (organization knowledge, teaching, teamwork).

Problem and Solution Definition Each Knowledge and abilities has a clear purpose and contribution to the whole Problem and Solution Definition Stakeholder Interaction Underlying Competencies Enterprise Analysis Requirements Analysis Solution Assessment and Validation Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Elicitation Requirements Management and Communication Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving Behavioral Characteristics Business Knowledge Communication Skills Interaction Skills Software Applications BAs help the organization identify business problems and assess possible solutions to the those problems. BAs interact with many different stakeholder groups including the business units, IT, and business partners. BAs work to develop many different skills (underlying competencies) in order to be able to perform their tasks successfully.

Effectively setting up your BA Center of Excellence Momentum Case Study Effectively setting up your BA Center of Excellence Gain Momentum...Produce Results!

Case Study: The problem Lack of Skill Development The Business did not establish a business analysis team Those that were supporting the analysis needs for the business had no formal training in business analysis skills No Methodology Business had no templates developed and little to no processes were documented Standards were not established and no quality of service measures were in place to help guide and support the business No Monitoring and Tracking of Execution No formal assignments to tasks With no standards and quality of service measures in place there was no monitoring of the work being done No Refinement The business was not conducting lessons learned sessions during and at the completion of each project resulting in no process improvement. The organization on which the case study is based had several problems as listed on this slide. They had a few BAs who performed a variety of tasks on different IT projects. Each BA performed the tasks in different ways with no consistency. This lead to requirements being elicited, documented, and communicated in different ways across the organization. Stakeholders involved in the projects were confused by the different methods employed by the BAs. Developers and architects could not anticipate what types of requirements would be supplied to them before design and development could start. At the conclusion of projects, any lessons learned by a BA were not shared with other BAs because there was no communication framework established.