I am really excited about the proposed upcoming changes to the IIBAs BABOK. Kevin Brennan, VP of the Body of Knowledge has posted a diagram on his blog http://www.bainsight.com/ and on the new online community Catalyze http://www.mycatalyze.com/ so take a look. Three of the knowledge areas will be renamed and some of the content will be moved. I really like two of the proposed new names: Business Analysis Planning and Elicitation. I like Business Analysis Planning because we have been having trouble clarifying the differences between what a BA does during planning from what a Project Manager does during planning. This name makes it clear that the business analysis work must be planned. We are not trying to do the PM work, we need to plan our own work. I also like removing the word Requirements from the Elicitation chapter. The techniques that are discussed in this chapter can be used for more than just eliciting requirements. They can be used for design, for scoping, for brainstorming, etc.
The third major change is to separate the requirements planning and management topics. Planning becomes Business Analysis Planning as mentioned above. Requirements management gets combined with Requirements Communication. Although this combination is not as natural, these are two topic areas that are related and are small, so from a practical standpoint it makes sense for us to put them in the same chapter.
We would love to hear what BAs think about these ideas. Reply here or at the sites listed above with your thoughts.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Hi Barbabra It's interesting watching the BABOK evolve from a funcional orientation to more of a process isn't it? Congrats to Kevin for the effort he has put in to get the BABOK to where it is. Cheers Craig Brown