CCBA® and CBAP® Certifications Study Guide

Expert tips and practices in business analysis to pass the certification exams on the first attempt

Esta Lessing

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781838825263
• eBook ISBN: 9781838828981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Certification Guides in Computer Science
• Index: Computer Science

A handy, on-the-job reference filled with real-life scenarios to help you achieve the Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®) and Certification of Capability in Business Analysis (CCBA®) certifications

Key Features

• Gain expert guidance from Esta Lessing, a CBAP® trainer with over 18 years of business analysis experience
• Understand BABOK® knowledge areas and tasks through examples and real-world scenarios
• Learn business analyst skills such as stakeholder engagement, strategy analysis, and requirement elicitation

Book Description

Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP®) is a certification from the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®) for professionals with extensive experience in business analysis. The CCBA® and CBAP® validates your proficiency in various aspects of business analysis and your ability to tackle challenging projects, work effectively with stakeholders, and identify and deliver business value.

You'll start by learning about the benefits of CCBA® and CBAP® certifications for your career progression before focussing on the six core knowledge areas explained thoroughly in each chapter. These include topics such as business analysis planning and monitoring, elicitation and collaboration, requirements life cycle management, strategy analysis, requirements analysis, and design definition as well as solution evaluation. The book includes the essential underlying competencies and techniques to ensure a complete understanding of the BABOK® v3 guide content. Each chapter delves into the essential concepts and business analysis task considerations utilizing practical examples. Finally, you'll assess your knowledge through mock exam questions based on real-world case studies.

By the end of this book, you'll have gained the business analysis skills needed to prepare for the certification exams and to advance in your career.

What you will learn

• Assess the IIBA® requirements for applying for the CCBA® and CBAP® exams
• Navigate through the sections of the BABOK® v3 Guide
• Understand business analysis concepts, practices and analysis techniques
• Be able to relate concepts, tasks, and techniques to real-world practical situations
• Understand the application of 50 practical techniques concerning the BABOK® v3 Guide knowledge area tasks
• Identify the challenges that could hinder a business analyst from delivering value and effective business solutions

Who this book is for

This book is for business analysts, business consultants, trainers, project managers, and business professionals who are interested in preparing for the IIBA CBAP or CCBA exams. The book assumes business analysis experience.

Techniques (Part 1)

This chapter discusses the techniques that support the successful execution of business analysis tasks in the workplace. It outlines the purpose of each technique and what it entails as well as some example tasks that use each technique to achieve a particular goal.

By the end of this chapter, you will know what these techniques are and understand the common purposes of each technique in the context of practical business analysis tasks.

More specifically, we will cover the following primary techniques:

• Acceptance and evaluation criteria
• Backlog management
• Balanced scorecards
• Benchmarking and market analysis
• Brainstorming
• Business capability analysis
• Business cases
• Business model canvas
• Business rules analysis
• Collaborative games
• Concept modeling
• Data dictionary
• Data flow diagrams
• Data mining
• Data modeling
• Decision analysis
• Decision modeling
• Document analysis
• Estimation
• Financial analysis
• Focus groups
• Functional decomposition
• Glossary
• Interface analysis
• Interviews

You will also understand when to apply each of these techniques as part of different knowledge area tasks and in the context of real-world scenarios.

Ensure you understand each technique's purpose, key aspects, and when it can be applied in practice. Visualize your own practical experiences of business analysis and apply each technique to that context to bring it to life. This will help you gain a deeper comprehension of the content and, therefore, a stronger ability to answer scenario-based exam questions.

Let's now start our journey by understanding each technique in terms of its primary purpose and applicability to everyday business analysis tasks.

Techniques for the exam

As you know, there are many analysis techniques that are applicable to many different contexts and scenarios of business analysis. It is quite a vast topic area and so it can be quite challenging to prepare for the CCBA®/CBAP® exam.

There are a few things to keep in mind in terms of technique when preparing for the exam:

• You don't necessarily have to be proficient in using every technique but it is essential that you understand the purpose of each technique and have a good understanding of what the elements of each technique are. You should be able to tell someone what the technique is, why you use it, and when it should be used.
• You may need to carry out some financial analysis calculations in the exam. Make sure you can apply the formulas described as part of each technique.
• Understand the techniques well enough so that you are able to group them together to apply in a practical scenario or exclude the "odd one out" in a multiple-choice selection.
• The best way to learn about each technique is to try to apply each one to a real-world scenario you have personal and practical experience of; this way, you know you understand it and you can apply it in its relevant context.

Let's now start by taking each technique and understanding its purpose, scope, and when you might use it within the practice of business analysis.

Acceptance and evaluation criteria

When learning about acceptance and evaluation criteria, you need to make sure you are well versed in its primary purpose. You should know what it entails and be able to explain when (that is, in what types of scenarios related to business analysis tasks) it is relevant to apply this technique.

Let's start with the purpose of this technique.

What is the purpose of this technique?

According to the BABOK® v3 guide, the purpose of acceptance and evaluation criteria is as follows:

"Acceptance criteria are used to define the requirements, outcomes, or conditions that must be met in order for a solution to be considered acceptable to key stakeholders...Evaluation criteria are the measures used to assess a set of requirements in order to choose between multiple solutions."

Key things to know when using this technique

The key idea that is portrayed with this technique is that although there are some similarities between acceptance and evaluation criteria (such as value attributes), the way each aspect of acceptance criteria versus evaluation criteria is applied is fundamentally quite different. Review the following diagrams to understand the purpose of this technique and the differences between acceptance criteria and evaluation criteria. The following image shows the diagram for one solution:

The following image shows a diagram for multiple solutions:

Pay attention to the differences between acceptance criteria and evaluation criteria. They are grouped together here but there are some differences to take note of. The preceding diagram which outlines these key differences. You will note that the key difference is that acceptance criteria are always developed with one solution in mind, whereas evaluation criteria are d...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• Dedication
• About Packt
• Contributors
• Preface
• Planning for Success
• Exam Application Requirements
• Study Tools
• What to Expect From the Exam
• Business Analysis Foundation Concepts
• Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
• Elicitation and Collaboration
• Requirements Life Cycle Management
• Strategy Analysis
• Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
• Solution Evaluation
• Underlying Competencies
• Techniques (Part 1)
• Techniques (Part 2)
• Mock Exam Questions: Case Studies
• Mock Exam Questions: Theory
• Your Future with a Success Mindset
• Other Books You May Enjoy