This 3-day course is designed to provide Business Analysts with the skills required for involvement in strategy development, pre-project activities, and developing and managing enterprise architecture.

This course is appropriate for experienced Business Analysts who are looking to formalize their experience through education as well as junior Business Analysts or those looking to enter the profession.

During this course you will learn the tasks and techniques outlined in the Enterprise Analysis and Solution Assessment and Validation Knowledge Areas within the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK^®). Through discussions, examples and hands-on exercises, you will recognize business goals and objectives, identify business problem or opportunity, analyze business problems or opportunities, identify viable solutions to these problems or opportunities, evaluate to select the most optimal solution, prepare and defend a business case. In addition, you will prepare procurement documents including a request for proposal, receive and evaluation proposals based on defined decision criteria, assess organizational readiness, and apply data conversion strategy and mapping to existing data.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will gain practical skills to:

• Discuss enterprise analysis tasks and techniques
• Analyze and document a business problem
• Devise a business case
• Contrast viable solutions against developed decision criteria
• List possible solutions approaches
• Evaluate causes through the application of problem analysis techniques
• Isolate major causes of business problem and where to focus resources
• List types of gap analyses
• Assess limitations through the creation of a gap analysis
• Recall the phases of the project life cycle
• Conduct a Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat (SWOT) analysis
• Appraise competitive intelligence through a benchmarking study
• Build on previously learned techniques to develop high level requirements for the business case
• Defend business case recommendations
• List the sections of an RFP
• Describe the steps in RFP development and vendor selection
• Apply data conversion strategy and mapping to existing data

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

The Enterprise and Strategic Analysis course is appropriate for individuals who are:

• Pursuing a career in Business Analysis
• Business or Information Systems managers or staff who is new to business analysis
• Experienced Business Analysts requiring better understanding of the role, or desiring formal recognition through certification
• Project staff or managers currently combining the role
• Business Analyst role with other duties
• Business staff or managers who are working in Business Analyst environments, needing to interact with project managers and business analysts

PREREQUISITE

While there is no formal prerequisite for this course, some experience with business analysis is recommended.

MATERIALS

You will receive a course binder containing copies of presentation slides, case studies, exercises, and suggested solutions.

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN