Business Analysis Foundation

The business analysis foundation course is the cornerstone of the bcs business analysis curriculum. It is an internationally-recognised qualification relevant to anyone requiring an understanding of business analysis including business analysts, business managers and their staff, business change managers, project managers, system developers. 

Key Points to advance your Business Analysis Career

• Take your first step on your business analysis career path with a certification that has international respect & value
• Understand how to identify and evaluate options for improving your business
• Develop skills and knowledge to support successful business change programmes within your organisation
• Attain one of the four modules you need to gain the International Diploma in Business Analysis

Business Analysis skills are increasingly in demand as organisations grapple with the need to ensure better return on project investment. Business Analysts bring a unique blend of technical and soft skills to any project. Key components of a BA role include business case development, analysis of the current state, development of the future states - all whilst keeping the business benefits constantly front of mind.

Business Analysts work as the liaison between the business stakeholders and those charged with implementation of the organisation’s objectives. BA skills are especially critical to IT-enabled business change projects where the mix of business and analysis skills really comes into play.

This 4-day course comprehensively covers the BCS syllabus and prepares participants for the Business Analysis Foundation Exam, now an online exam which can be sat from any suitable computer or test centre around the world. For more information on Business Analysis Certifications please visit the BCS site.

Learning outcomes

The Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis will help participants to:

• Understand the roles and responsibilities of Business Analyst in relation to the other roles typically found in the wider project and technical teams
• Understand a generic Business Change Lifecycle and their role from initial business case, design, implementation and ultimately the realisation of benefits
• Attain new skills to successfully develop, manage, and communicate business requirements and be a productive and contributing member of a project team

The foundation course covers the broad range of principles and techniques within the sphere of Business Analysis, including:

• What is Business Analysis
• The Competencies of a Business Analyst
• The Strategic Context for Business Analysis
• The Business Analysis Service Framework
• Investigating the Business Situation
• Analysing and Managing Stakeholders
• Improving Business Services and Processes
• Defining the Solution
• Making the Business Case
• Establishing the Requirements
• Documenting and Modelling Requirements
• Validating and Managing Requirements
• Delivering the Requirements
• Delivering the Business Solution

Who should attend

The Business Analysis Foundation course is relevant to anyone requiring an understanding of Business Analysis including:

• Business Analysts
• Business Managers
• Business Change Managers
• Project Managers
• System Engineers

The BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis

• The Business Analysis Foundation course is also the starting point for anyone who wants to attain the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis. This is an internationally recognised qualification designed for business and IT professionals who are serious about business analysis and want to demonstrate they have a detailed understanding of business analysis best practice. To attain the Diploma, it is necessary to complete four modules – Foundation plus 3 Practitioner modules – and to then sit an oral exam. ALC offers the most requested Practitioner modules needed to satisfy the Diploma requirement.

Choosing the right course

• There are two leading bodies in the world of business analysis – IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. The two organisations collaborate for the furtherment of the business analysis profession. ALC offers the BCS curriculum on our public schedule and has the IIBA curriculum (CCBA, CBAP) available for in-house presentation. We recommend the BCS Business Analysis Foundation as the more robust starting point for any individual or organisation starting out on business analysis.

What is Business Analysis

• Describe the business change lifecycle
• List the following principles of business analysis
• Describe the variants of the business analyst role

The Competencies of a Business Analyst

• Explain the concept of the T-shaped Professional
• Identify the three areas of business analysis competency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 context

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

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

Validating and Managing Requirements

• Formal requirements validation
• The activities in the Agile requirements validation process

Delivering the Requirements

• Describe the following types of delivery lifecycle; waterfall lifecycle, the “V” model, the incremental lifecycle and the iterative lifecycle (Agile)
• Describe traceability and change control in relation to requirements management

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 include:

• Course presentation, accredited by BCS
• Comprehensive ALC course workbook
• Official course textbook: Business Analysis, 4th edition
• The BCS Business Analysis Foundation Certificate exam

Pre-requisites:

• There are no specific pre-requisites for entry to the course or examination.

Exam

• Live Virtual Training – At course completion participants 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 course delivery format comprises theory, practical assignments and examination practice.
• ALC Group is accredited by BCS as an Accredited Training Organisation for Business Analysis Foundation