As the IIBA offices are based in Canada, they will be closed for the day. We'll be back on Wednesday.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
BABOK Presentation
Here's the presentation for BABOK version 2 that I gave in San Diego. I plan to have a version with audio up for IIBA members later this week.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Friday, June 20, 2008
AGM Election Results
The IIBA Nomination Committee would like to thank all the candidates who volunteered to serve the IIBA on the Board of Directors. Voting has been completed and the following candidates were elected by the membership of the IIBA to the Board for the 2008-2010 term:
Director at Large: David Hansen, Kathleen Hass
VP Chapters: Shirley Sartin
Secretary: Indy Mitra
EVP: Kathleen Cunningham
All Resolutions were accepted by the membership. Full results can be found at the IIBA's website.
The Nomination Committee would like to thank the outgoing members of the Board of Directors for their service and dedication to the IIBA.
IIBA Board of Directors
Director at Large: David Hansen, Kathleen Hass
VP Chapters: Shirley Sartin
Secretary: Indy Mitra
EVP: Kathleen Cunningham
All Resolutions were accepted by the membership. Full results can be found at the IIBA's website.
The Nomination Committee would like to thank the outgoing members of the Board of Directors for their service and dedication to the IIBA.
IIBA Board of Directors
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Business Decision Framework - Part 0: Concepts
In the last few weeks I have been working on a proposal for the an SLT Business Decision Framework. This post has some concepts that lay the groundwork for the proposal itself.
Business Decision Framework (BDF*)
Definition: The organizational and operational structure the IIBA will use to make fast, feasible, high value business decisions.
This framework will follow the life cycle of an Idea** and will be a tightly integrated part of the overall strategy development and business planning cycles. The core component of the Business Decision Framework (BDF) is an Idea, which is the core of a Business Case.
Idea
Definition: Some change to the organization that will take advantage of an opportunity or solve a problem.
Ideas are generated and documented three ways today:
- During our first annual Business Planning Cycle we developed dozens of Ideas to support our Vision and Mission as well as our Strategic and Operational Goals. These were recorded and managed in a Business Planning spreadsheet and a Monthly Dashboard Report.
- During the course of normal business each Business Unit and Program encounters opportunities and problems. These volunteers and staff come up with solutions - Ideas - to address their business needs. These Ideas are recorded in whatever medium is handy at the time, but increasingly in our Idea Proposal Form.***
In the SLT we have three ways to document Ideas generated during our quarterly strategic sessions and over the course of normal operations. Our Idea Proposal Process is a very simple version of a Business Case (1 page max). During our annual business planning cycle
Business Case
A tool used to describe three core components of an Idea:
- The Change that will take advantage of an opportunity or solve a problem,
- The Value that Change will bring to the organization
- The Investment that will be needed to cause the Change.
Prioritization
As a principle, it means doing first things first; as a process, it means evaluating a group of items and ranking them in their order of importance or urgency. For the SLT this means having a relatively objective way to assess the value of our Ideas, and the costs and risks associated with implementing them - or not.
Conclusion
Next time I visit this topic, I'll be able to talk about what the NEW SLT and Board have to say about the BDF.*
Julian Sammy
Chief Architect
____
*I like abbreviations.
**Conception, Investigation, Development, Implementation, Sustainment.
***A one page description of an Idea.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Why the BABOK isn't a reading list
I'm working my way through the feedback we've received on the public draft of version 2. Before I get into anything else, I'd like to say thank you to all of the people who participated. We got a lot, and I mean a lot, of valuable comments and feedback that will make its way into the final version.
Some of the comments we got suggested that the BABOK should be structured very differently from the current draft. While we're not ignoring those comments, and looking at ways the IIBA might be able to address those needs, I hope people will understand that version 2 is not going to undergo that kind of radical change. The Task/Technique structure has been there for years now and it serves some very specific purposes that we could not address otherwise. We're going to add material to the introduction of the published version to help people understand why that structure is there and how to use it. I'm not sure that I want to spend a lot of space in the published version talking about why the BABOK doesn't include certain material.
Fortunately, we have a blog.
So, on to the explanations. One common suggestion is that we should include more footnotes or a list of recommended references in the BABOK, so that is serves as more of a reading list. I certainly understand why people would want that kind of book, but the BABOK isn't the right place for that kind of information. There are several reasons why not.
The most important reason is that the BABOK is not, at its core, an academic work. By that I mean that it does not draw its authority and correctness primarily from previously published works. I'm not suggesting for a moment that all those previous works on business analysis are now obsolete, or that they weren't very important in establishing the field, or anything like that. What I am saying is that the primary source of the BABOK's authority is that it was written, reviewed, and developed by practitioners in the field. The BABOK describes what business analysts actually do, not what any expert in the field or even the BABOK committee thinks they should do. Practice in the field takes precedence over expert recommendations every time, if the two come into conflict. Now, that's not to suggest that we support bad practices--we all know that there are many things people actually do that aren't very good ideas.
The second reason is that the practices described in the BABOK are "generally accepted"--in other words, in widespread use throughout the industry. Any idea that is generally accepted is fairly unlikely to have one definitive accepted source. Sure, many of these concepts have a known originator (Chen for ERDs, Jacobson for Use Cases, and so forth) but those ideas have been built on and modified by hundreds of people since they were first developed. Trying to tie it back to one and only one source is often impractical and probably undesirable.
Why undesirable? Well, keep in mind the primary goal of the BABOK. Our objective is to create a common definition and understanding of what business analysis is. But we don't want that understanding and the field to be frozen in time. Our hope is that people will build on that understanding and develop new works that will enhance the profession.
And if we did include direct references, what then? As a practical matter, that listing would rapidly become thought of as a study guide for the certification exam, no matter how much we protested that it shouldn't be. So what happens when those books go out of print (as many of the works referenced during the development of the BABOK are)? Does that mean that the IIBA needs to make sure everyone has access to those works? What about new books or books that we didn't happen to read during development, but which are still valuable? And God help us, what about sources on the Internet? Given that the BABOK will soon move to a much-longer term update cycle (roughly every five years is the plan) including a reading list simply isn't practical.
Finally, in all sincerity, it's impossible to develop a single reading list that will be useful to all BAs. Does a BA who primarily develops requirements for in-house software applications need to read the same books as a BA who specializes in process analysis? In practice, everything out there right now only meets the needs of a portion of the business analysis profession. As BAs get a better understand of both their commonalities and their differences that may change to some extent, but right now there's very little that I could recommend to every BA out there, and most of those wouldn't be books that are generally considered business analysis books (Smart Choices, for example).
That's not to say that the IIBA won't develop this kind of material. We can certainly see the value in it. It's just to say that the BABOK is not the right place for it to be kept and maintained.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Some of the comments we got suggested that the BABOK should be structured very differently from the current draft. While we're not ignoring those comments, and looking at ways the IIBA might be able to address those needs, I hope people will understand that version 2 is not going to undergo that kind of radical change. The Task/Technique structure has been there for years now and it serves some very specific purposes that we could not address otherwise. We're going to add material to the introduction of the published version to help people understand why that structure is there and how to use it. I'm not sure that I want to spend a lot of space in the published version talking about why the BABOK doesn't include certain material.
Fortunately, we have a blog.
So, on to the explanations. One common suggestion is that we should include more footnotes or a list of recommended references in the BABOK, so that is serves as more of a reading list. I certainly understand why people would want that kind of book, but the BABOK isn't the right place for that kind of information. There are several reasons why not.
The most important reason is that the BABOK is not, at its core, an academic work. By that I mean that it does not draw its authority and correctness primarily from previously published works. I'm not suggesting for a moment that all those previous works on business analysis are now obsolete, or that they weren't very important in establishing the field, or anything like that. What I am saying is that the primary source of the BABOK's authority is that it was written, reviewed, and developed by practitioners in the field. The BABOK describes what business analysts actually do, not what any expert in the field or even the BABOK committee thinks they should do. Practice in the field takes precedence over expert recommendations every time, if the two come into conflict. Now, that's not to suggest that we support bad practices--we all know that there are many things people actually do that aren't very good ideas.
The second reason is that the practices described in the BABOK are "generally accepted"--in other words, in widespread use throughout the industry. Any idea that is generally accepted is fairly unlikely to have one definitive accepted source. Sure, many of these concepts have a known originator (Chen for ERDs, Jacobson for Use Cases, and so forth) but those ideas have been built on and modified by hundreds of people since they were first developed. Trying to tie it back to one and only one source is often impractical and probably undesirable.
Why undesirable? Well, keep in mind the primary goal of the BABOK. Our objective is to create a common definition and understanding of what business analysis is. But we don't want that understanding and the field to be frozen in time. Our hope is that people will build on that understanding and develop new works that will enhance the profession.
And if we did include direct references, what then? As a practical matter, that listing would rapidly become thought of as a study guide for the certification exam, no matter how much we protested that it shouldn't be. So what happens when those books go out of print (as many of the works referenced during the development of the BABOK are)? Does that mean that the IIBA needs to make sure everyone has access to those works? What about new books or books that we didn't happen to read during development, but which are still valuable? And God help us, what about sources on the Internet? Given that the BABOK will soon move to a much-longer term update cycle (roughly every five years is the plan) including a reading list simply isn't practical.
Finally, in all sincerity, it's impossible to develop a single reading list that will be useful to all BAs. Does a BA who primarily develops requirements for in-house software applications need to read the same books as a BA who specializes in process analysis? In practice, everything out there right now only meets the needs of a portion of the business analysis profession. As BAs get a better understand of both their commonalities and their differences that may change to some extent, but right now there's very little that I could recommend to every BA out there, and most of those wouldn't be books that are generally considered business analysis books (Smart Choices, for example).
That's not to say that the IIBA won't develop this kind of material. We can certainly see the value in it. It's just to say that the BABOK is not the right place for it to be kept and maintained.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Thursday, June 12, 2008
AGM 2008 Presentation and Slideshow
For those of you who couldn't be there, here is the IIBA's 2008 AGM. The presentation lasts for about 90 minutes. The synchronization isn't perfect (Slideshare doesn't let you go back, as far as I can tell) but you can always download the slides themselves from the IIBA's website. Thanks again to Julian for recording and editing the audio.
UPDATE: As Julian points out in the comments, if you click the little link on the bottom right of the presentation window, it will take you to the hosting site. From there you have the option to play in Full Screen - which is much easier to read.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
UPDATE: As Julian points out in the comments, if you click the little link on the bottom right of the presentation window, it will take you to the hosting site. From there you have the option to play in Full Screen - which is much easier to read.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
AGM Audio Now Available
Audio of last night's AGM is now available from the IIBA website (courtesy of Julian, who did the recording and cleaned up the audio). We hope to have a video (showing the slides as well) up soon.
In the meantime, please download it and the slides if you missed the AGM last night.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
In the meantime, please download it and the slides if you missed the AGM last night.
Kevin Brennan, CBAP
VP, Body of Knowledge and VP, Membership Services
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