Assessing Your Business Analysis Maturity
For more in-depth analysis or to understand which improvements are most critical to your organization, often an independent assessment is necessary to gauge current capabilities and areas for improvement. An assessment will give your organization and/or individuals a benchmark for which to measure improvements over time. Contact us to discuss our various levels of assessments which use an industry competency benchmark to help you assess your Business Analysis capabilities and to provide a plan for improvement.
Assessing Your Training Needs
One aspect of a complete in-depth assessment is understanding your organization’s training needs. We have provided a list of statements and corresponding training program recommendations below to help you better gauge your overall objectives for business analysis training, including why BA training is needed and what you hope to gain from the training experience.
In our experience this method is more accurate at helping an organization reach its training goals than having individuals answer hundreds of multiple choice questions on specific analysis techniques and concepts.
What is Your Organization’s Main Reason for Seeking Training?
To view a specific course recommendation, select the most prominent reason your organization seeks training:
- We have a new group of BAs with varying skill levels and technique preferences
Recommendation: The BA group should begin with our core curriculum.
Regardless of skill level, there is tremendous value in having the entire team attend training together to learn new techniques, reinforce some that have not been used in a while, and select best practices for your projects and organization as a team.
By having the more senior business analysts attend training they will be able to mentor the newer business analysts. While some techniques may be familiar to senior BAs, our core courses continue to receive the highest evaluations from those students. They are able to more easily understand how to utilize the techniques to their fullest potential.
Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA community can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
- We want to have a consistent approach for defining and managing requirements
Recommendation: The BA group should begin with our core curriculum.
Having the entire team attend training together to learn gives all of your BAs a consistent approach to eliciting, analyzing, and presenting requirements. It also provides a common language and view of their responsibilities.
Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA community can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
- We are developing a center of excellence and want to level-set our entire business analyst community
Recommendation: The BA group should begin with our core curriculum.
Having the entire team attend training together to learn gives all of your BAs a consistent approach to eliciting, analyzing, and presenting requirements. Even if your BAs have varied experience, there is tremendous value to having the entire team attend training together to learn new techniques, reinforce some that have not been used in a while, and select best practices for your projects and organization as a team.
Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA community can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
- Our quality assurance group feels they need better information from the business analysts
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our course. In this course students will become familiar with testing methods and learn techniques for ensuring the requirements they develop can be verified and validated.
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation we recommend that your BA team attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis course first.
- Our BAs struggle estimating their work and have difficulty knowing where to start
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our course. This course teaches the students an approach for how to begin the analysis, decide what techniques may be used and determine an estimate for the time to perform analysis. Additionally, they learn what is “just enough.”
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation, we recommend that your BA team attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis course first.
- Our BAs are experienced, but need advanced training
Recommendation: Advanced business analysis is utilizing all the foundational skills in a more efficient manner to streamline the process or master one particular skill taking it to a higher level of perfection. The following courses were designed for more experienced Business Analysts.
- Many of our business analysts are new to the role and have no formal training
Recommendation: The BA group should begin with our core curriculum. Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA community can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
- We tend to struggle validating the solution being built meets the business needs
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our Use Case Modeling and Solution Requirements course. This course takes you through the steps to ensure that business requirements are validated and that the solution is usable and meets the business needs.
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation we recommend that your BA team attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis and Business Process Analysis courses first.
- Our business analysts need help facilitating requirements sessions with groups of subject matter experts
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our course. This course is specifically designed for BAs and the techniques can be used for structured sessions and “facilitation-on-the-fly.”
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation we recommend that your BA team attend at a minimum our Essential Skills for Business Analysis course first.
- Our team knows and uses many of the accepted practices but does not always know which techniques(s) to use for each project
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our course. In this course, students are taught how to determine the appropriate elicitation and documentation required for various project types, including their own project.
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation we recommend that your BA team attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis course first.
- We are using the IIBA® BABOK® as our guide for accepted practices and need training based upon it
Recommendation: All of our training courses are aligned with the IIBA® BABOK®.
The BA group should begin with our core curriculum.
Regardless of skill level, there is tremendous value in having the entire team attend training together to learn new techniques, reinforce some that have not been used in a while, and select best practices for your projects and organization as a team.
Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA community can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
- We have a group of project managers that do some business analysis and need to better understand and use accepted practices
- The business analyst managers and stakeholders need a better understanding of what to expect from their business analysts
Recommendation: We recommend the seminar.
In order for your business analysts to be successful, both the IT and business community must embrace the business analysis process. The seminar can be used as a working session to discuss how your organization will implement the business analysis process and approaches.
- We need to do a better job with User Acceptance Testing
Recommendation: The BA group should attend our course.
Prior to taking this course your BA group needs to have sufficient foundational training and/or experience in requirements scope definition, requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. If they need this foundation we recommend that your BA team attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis course first.
- We want to provide ongoing training for our business analysts
Recommendation: Business analysis is an extremely complex and interdependent discipline requiring solid foundational skills and more advanced training, real hands on experience, and mentoring to maximize the effectiveness.
We recommend that all levels of business analyst begin with our core curriculum. Once these foundational skills are mastered, the BA can begin to expand their knowledge and mature with our advanced curriculum.
To further discuss your organization’s training goals, please contact us at 866-675-2125 or
