In my first blog, I shared with you some of the benefits of taking Expleo’s Learning Pathways to meet your training needs. My second blog shared with you the options in our core BA Learning Pathway. In this blog, I want to share with you training options for the Agile Business Analyst, or for anyone who is expected to perform business analysis in an Agile environment.
Agile Training for the T-shaped Business Analyst
One of the most frequent training requests we encounter at Expleo Academy is for help in adapting the toolkit of techniques and accumulated knowledge of experienced Business Analysts to the dynamics of modern agile teams. The first step in that journey is to adapt to an agile mindset. This is needed before building an understanding of how a BA role can operate in a truly agile environment.
Expleo Academy’s Business Analysis Learning Pathways
Agile Fundamentals
Our core BA Learning Pathway provides frameworks and techniques that are equally applicable across any software development lifecycle methodology. For those seeking to understand the mindset required to succeed in modern agile methodologies, Expleo offers an “IC Agile” certified Agile Fundamentals training course. This course is equally applicable to any project or business role. The learning is enhanced by sharing the experience with a variety of perspectives, such as those from Quality Assurance, Software Development, Project Management, and any operational business roles. If your challenge is to fulfil your BA responsibilities in an agile environment, then this course is your starting point.
Product Ownership training
Having completed our Agile Fundamentals training, we strongly recommend any aspiring agile Business Analyst to attend our IC Agile certified Product Ownership course. The course teaches concepts and techniques for taking an agile customer-focused approach to delivering business change projects. In recent years, we have often found that our Business Analysts are asked to perform what we term a “proxy Product Owner” role. This occurs when an in-house Product Owner depends heavily upon their BA to stretch beyond traditional requirements management responsibilities.
Stepping further into the Product Ownership world can require vision-sharing, roadmap planning, and engaging in common SCRUM-inspired ceremonies in a Product Owner capacity. The techniques and concepts we coach on this course can be equally helpful to Product Owners and Business Analysts alike. Business Analysts who have completed BCS Business Analysis Practice on our core BCS Learning Pathway will find that their previous learning will help them to adapt to the world of Product Ownership. Also, this Product Ownership course will expand their already considerable toolkit of techniques for succeeding in Business Analysis roles.
User Stories Workshop
Workshop techniques are critical to the Agile Business Analyst
Expleo’s “User Stories” workshop was originally designed to help teams evolve their capability in managing business requirements through the User Story medium. Our Product Ownership and User Stories courses have now been fine-tuned to compliment each other. So we would recommend considering the “User Stories” workshop as an extension to your “Product Ownership” training. This will allow you to further immerse yourself into the experience of working with agile development teams by practicing collaborative techniques. You can of course opt to complete our User Stories course without any prior agile training, if this will meet a more urgent training need. We are always happy to talk with you about your immediate to long-term training needs and to help tailor a Learning Pathway that will suit you.
Certified Agile Business Analysis (CABA)
For those seeking a training course more specifically focused on the potential for a BA role in an agile environment, we can recommend our iSQI-accredited Certified Agile Business Analysis (CABA) course. This course provides a BABOK framework of techniques that can be useful to Business Analysts in an Agile team. The course is taught by experienced Business Analysts, who are also BCS accredited BA trainers, and so are well placed to help you understand how the techniques taught on our core BA Learning Pathway can be complimented by the BABOK framework outlined in CABA. Like all of our BA training courses, our BA trainers can offer you opportunities to receive feedback and guidance on enhancing your capabilities with the techniques taught, and the learning is provided in a collaborative manner.
I will share more about the training delivery approach used in our BA training in a future blog. In the next blog, I would like to further explore what we refer to as our T-shaped BA training profile.
Ciaran O’Leary is an accredited trainer of BCS, IC Agile, iSQI and ISTQB certified courses, with over 20 years’ experience in business analysis, quality assurance, and training roles. Ciaran has worked in a variety of industries, including Telecommunications, Banking, Insurance, and Pharmaceutical; and in a variety of geographical regions, including Ireland, UK, Germany, Netherlands, America, Australia, and South Africa. Ciaran is passionate about learning as a key competency, for both individuals and business systems, in today’s rapidly changing world. His objective is to help you on your learning pathways in pursuit of your career ambitions, and business objectives.
