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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. Momentum, Inc. - knowledge
Award-winning Management Consulting Company
Business of the Year, 2008
One of the Fifty Fastest Growing Companies in PA, 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.

5. 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.

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

7. 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.

8. 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.).

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.).

12. 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).

13. 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.

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

15. 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.