Description: More and more companies are looking to their Sr. Business Analysts to analyze and define solutions that will meet the needs of the business and the overall strategic direction of management.  In order to achieve this, Sr. Business Analysts need the ability to understand the organization’s architecture, how to model current and future states, drive process improvement opportunities, perform customer driven analysis, perform stakeholder analysis, determine the return on the investment, define and perform risk analysis, impact analysis, internal vs. external environments/factors, feasibility studies, and create business cases.

The Sr. Business Analyst needs to understand how all of these things relate to the project portfolio and overall programs that are in place to ensure maximum value to the business, determine how investments made tie to strategy, and how teams are resourced and can be utilized.  The Sr. Business Analyst is also being called on to lead large-scale efforts where they must manage and analyze the work of many business analysts for a given initiative or program.  The strategic enterprise analysis performed by the Sr. business analyst will allow them to understand the inter-dependencies, capabilities and overall strategic direction of a program that are vital to ensuring a reduction in rework, improvement of processes and creation, selection and management of solutions that exceed expectations.

Length: 2-Days

CDU/PDU: Earn 14 CDU/PDU for both IIBA and PMI certification

Prerequisites: We recommend the Introduction to Business Analysis course or equivalent experience.

Intended Audience: Senior business analysts and organizational leaders that need to create organizational goals and align them with specific projects more globally by creating project proposals and business cases.

Objectives

• Understanding how to build enterprise goals and objectives that are measurable and meaningful

• Creating a common vision and understanding of corporate goals and objectives

• Prioritize and diagnose business problems and process improvement opportunities

• Improve the alignment of goals and objectives to projects

• Learn solution and vendor selection criteria and selection techniques

Course Topics

• Understanding business drivers

• Definition of business drivers

• Assess and improve alignment of activities to organizational goals and objectives

• Understanding techniques to evaluate the current state

• Identify trends and shifts in the organization, and at program and project levels

• Identify and diagnose business problems

• Isolate problems from the solution

• Evaluate structure, approach and accuracy of root cause analysis

• Prioritize to prevent recurring problems

• Building a common vision for the desired state

• Reconcile the common state with the desired state into a common understanding of the future state

• Understanding the elements needed for the current, desired and future states

• Establish criteria that ensures solutions meet business needs

• Vendors or Commercial Off the Shelf solution fit gap analysis, selection criteria, prioritization and final selection rationale

• Creating potential solution models for choosing a solution

• Creating cost benefit models for solutions

• Understanding the implementation of the solution on the overall scope and cost

• Evaluate solution/decision options to make the best decision possible

• Development of meaningful metrics for measuring the value of the of the proposed future state

• How to model business analysis to show how organizations create value for customers

• Alignment between IT and business units – creating a common vision of understanding for the organization

• Understanding organizational change techniques

• Organizational change and communication planning to build common understanding and support for organizational changes

• Understanding the industry standard measurements of Payback period, ROI, Internal Rate of Return, and Net Present Value

• Building a better business case utilizing current, desired and future state analysis cost models – understanding the NPV, ROI and other cost measurements

• Understanding the business case purpose and contents

• Review the overall framework for creating a business case

• Understand how the business case fits into enterprise analysis

• Packaging and presentation of the business case for review and approvals

• Removing barriers to effective decision making

• Making the effective decision

• Using decision making tools

Instructors

Upcoming Instructor Led Dates: This course is delivered virtually online or in public classrooms. The delivery method is displayed below each scheduled date.

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Public Course Instructor - Paul has over 20 years of experience with global projects in the finance, insurance, state government, manufacturing and non-profit sectors as a business analyst and project manager. Paul served as President for the IIBA Minneapolis St Paul Chapter. Mr. Crosby has presented and lead workshops at several conferences including BA World Toronto, BA World Chicago, BA World Washington, BA World Vancouver, BA World New York, BA World Atlanta, IIBA Minneapolis-St Paul Chapter Meetings, Minnesota Government IT Symposium and Mind Surf Conference on the topics of Strategic Business Analysis, Leadership, Process Improvement, Kaizen for the BA, Strategic Enterprise Analysis, Project Management for the BA and Portfolio Management. Mr. Crosby is currently the CFO - Chief Paper Pusher for The League of Analysts Inc, a partner and founder of Bob the BA.

Enterprise Solutions Instructor - Bob Prentiss is our fearless leader and innovator. Bob is passionate about helping you think, learn and work differently. Bob is an awesome trainer, speaker, mentor, coach, and author. Collector of all things dragon related and Dr. Who fan. Bob is CBAP certified with 25+ years of experience in corporate America; with a background in managing BA centers of excellence, assessing and managing BA maturity, quality, and competency. Bob is an award winning curriculum developer. Bob has presented numerous keynote, workshops, seminars, conferences, and training sessions across North America. Bob is a founding member and past President of the IIBA MSP Chapter.