Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell, MP Good Decisions, Good Business - This Keynote will focus on the importance of building the circumstances that enable good decisions to be taken in a timely, transparent and value-led way.

In Collaboration With:

Keynotes

Europe’s Leading Independent Conference

irmuk.co.uk/ba2015

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT & IIBA® UK Chapter Developing the Business Analysis Profession

7th Annual Conference21-23 September 2015

Victoria Park Plaza London, UK

The Business Analysis Conference Europe 2015 provides an unparalleled networking opportunity for Business Analysts from across Europe and beyond. Whether you are just starting your BA journey, you are an experienced BA or you would like to understand the role of BAs further, this conference is for you.

Benefits of Attending:

• Learn from your peers. The conference provides an interactive forum where practitioners of Business Analysis can meet, discuss and debate how best to rise to the challenges faced by their organisations today and in the future. In 2014, conference attendees had the opportunity to network with and learn from over 420 fellow Business Analysts.

• Twelve Pre-Conference Workshops. Choose from an unparalleled range of workshops on specific topics to get quickly up-to-speed or fine tune your performance.

• BCS Certification: Two full day pre-conference workshops covering the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change and the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis.

• Five Conference Tracks with More Than 40 Sessions with a Focus on Company Case Studies. Learn from other BAs past successes and challenges from a wide range of case studies. Broaden your knowledge and gain insights from internationally renowned experts. The tracks for this year are:

• Business Analysis: Shaping the Organisation • Increasing the Effectiveness of Business Analysis• The Human Side of Business Analysis• Information & Technology for BA’s• The Expanding BA Toolkit

Nigel ChambersChange Portfolio DirectorOld Mutual Wealth Being a Change Maker - This Keynote will focus on the important soft skills required to be seen as a Change-Maker – a leader, role model, inspiration – in the eyes of others.

Caspar Berry: Black Swans and Butterflies - Dealing with Uncertainty in Poker, Business and Life - In this keynote, former professional poker player, Caspar Berry, uses the metaphor of poker to consider the way in which we take risks and decide what action to take in a world which is much less certain than many of us know.

Neil Mullarkey, Comedian and Actor Engaging and Collaborating (or Whose Moment is it Anyway?) - This keynote will illustrate what Business Analysts can learn from improvised theatre including listening, taking on board what others say then using that as a springboard for your response, teamwork, coping with uncertainty, thinking on your feet and waiting for the best idea to emerge.

The prestigious Business Analyst of the Year 2015 Award will

be presented at the Conference.

• James Archer• David Baskerville• David Beckham• Sarah Fitton• Lynda Girvan• Filip Hendrickx• Davina Hesmer• Georgiana Mannion• Chris Matts

• Martin Maya• Dirk Morgenroth• Penny Pullan• Adrian Reed• James Robertson• Suzanne Robertson• Craig Rollason• Alec Sharp• Corrine Thomas

• Google• Lloyds Banking

Group• Visa Europe• Yorkshire Water• National Assembly

for Wales• Barclays• National Grid• trainline• Tesco• BBC• Sky Bet• ASOS.com • Health and Social

Care Information Centre

• LateRooms.com• NHS Blood and

Transplant

• Old Mutual Wealth• Rabobank • John Lewis• Aviva• Capita• Allen & Overy• European Bank for

Reconstruction and Development

• Specsavers• Atos• Skipton Building

Society• Skanska• Turkcell• Sheffield Hallam

University• AssistKD• Atlantic Systems

Guild

For Practitioners, By PractitionersCase Studies &

Contributors include:

GROUP DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE!

Technology Evaluation Centers

Two full-day pre-conference workshops covering the BCS Foundation Certificate in

Business Change and the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis; both include

the certification examination. Places limited to 20 delegates per workshop.

Speakers Include:

BCS Foundation Certification

Founding Sponsor: Gold Sponsor:

Standard Sponsors:

Supported By & Media Sponsors:

2015

Event Overview

irmuk.co.uk/ba20152

CONFERENCE SESSIONS – 22-23 SEPTEMBER 20155 Comprehensive Tracks to Choose From Over 2 Days

Business Analysis: Shaping the Organisation Business Analysts are involved in ensuring that their organisations invest wisely in business change initiatives. This may require the Business Analysts to investigate situations and identify relevant solutions for their organisation, ensure the business strategy is executed effectively, and take a holistic cross-functional view of processes in order to ensure that business value is delivered to customers. This track offers sessions that cover the development of the business analysis practice and the work performed by business analysts in enabling organisations to be agile, strategically-aligned and value-focused in today’s global and competitive environment. Case studies include: Yorkshire Water, John Lewis, Visa Europe, Sky Bet, Health and Social Care Information Centre, National Assembly for Wales & trainline.

Increasing the Effectiveness of Business Analysis The Business Analyst does not work in isolation and needs to understand a wide range of related disciplines and approaches. In addition to gaining an awareness of these, the Business Analyst may also choose to specialise in one or more of them in support of their core competency of business analysis. This conference track focuses on some of the established and emerging areas that the Business Analyst may wish to consider in order to extend the contribution they can make to business effectiveness and improvement. Case studies include: Lloyds Banking Group, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Turkcell, Aviva Life, UK Government, Skipton Building Society & Rabobank.

The Human Side of Business Analysis This track focuses on human dynamics within the Business Analysis discipline and the ability to handle those critical moments that hinge on a deftness of personal skills. It provides insight and case studies into how best to work with others to successfully facilitate change. Case studies include: Specsavers, Aviva and Sheffield Hallam University.

Information & Technology for BA’s The remit of Business Analysis has become wider than its roots in ‘gathering’ requirements for technology projects. However, understanding and leveraging information and technology remains one of the keys to successful Business Analysis. This conference track examines how technology and information can be used to understand problems, support creativity and discover potential solutions. It explores the importance of understanding how people, process and technology intersect and examine if the role of Business Analysts is changing, being redefined / re-imagined, in technology and information driven projects. Case studies include: Tesco, BBC, LateRooms.com & Google.

The Expanding BA Toolkit There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to Business Analysis. As practitioners, we benefit from having access to a wide range of tools and techniques; the challenge is in choosing the best techniques or approach for a given circumstance. Having well-proven tools to hand gives BAs the confidence to tackle business problems and take the lead role in making sense of complex change. This conference track focuses on demonstrating and showcasing relevant analysis techniques. Practitioners will share their real-life stories of where techniques have worked, and will reflect on lessons learned. This track covers a wide range of tools and techniques whether new or well established, formal or informal. It will be of interest to both new and experienced BAs. Case studies include: Barclays, National Grid, Specsavers, NFU Mutual, ASOS.com, NHS Blood and Transplant & Skanska.

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change Martin Maya, AssistKD AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change qualification. This covers the landscape of concepts, life cycle and techniques relevant to Business Change. It provides a foundation for the range of specialist modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis and Consultancy. In addition, it provides foundation-level Business Change knowledge for specialists in other disciplines.

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis Davina Hesmer, AssistKDAssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis qualification. This covers the breadth of concepts, approaches and techniques relevant to Business Analysis. It provides a foundation for the range of specialist modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation-level Business Analysis knowledge for specialists in other disciplines.

Using the Benefit Map for Lean Strategy ExecutionFilip Hendrickx, AE NVBusiness stakeholders want project results fast. They often come to the business analyst armed with a solution, leaving not much room nor time for challenging and proposing alternatives. The classic benefit map, when used creatively, is a very useful and visual tool in opening up the conversation with your business stakeholders quickly. In this interactive workshop, participants will: a) Learn how to create room for discussing the strategic context and alternative solutions for project initiatives b) Learn how to bring hidden assumptions to the surface, so that they can be pulled forward and tested early in order to lower the investment risk c) See several case examples from multiple companies of how the benefit map has served as a continuous check point in projects to align strategy and execution.

Creative, Visual FacilitationPenny Pullan, Making Projects Work LtdFacilitating groups and handling complex human dynamics are at the core of business analysis. Yet, facilitated sessions too often miss the mark, leaving participants uninspired and disengaged, especially in virtual teams. In this interactive workshop, Penny Pullan will focus on how you can achieve great outcomes through inspiring and engaging visual facilitation.

Business Analysis in BI and Analytics ProjectsDirk Morgenroth, AtosWith the advent of data-driven organizations, requirements naturally change to increasingly data-centric entities. However, specifying data and data analysis needs is not an easy task for either one of the stakeholders involved, no matter how mature the organization already is. This session sheds light on how to adapt to these environments and project contexts as a Business Analyst and provides the necessary basics.

Better Thinking Skills for Better Business AnalysisJames Archer, Public World & Suzanne Robertson, Atlantic Systems GuildThe Business Analyst helps a wide variety of people to identify the real business problem and to find the most effective solution. To do this, the BA needs thinking skills that enable him/her to think differently, raise questions, expose new ideas and elevate the calibre of thinking on the project. This workshop focuses on specific thinking skills that help the BA to be an effective thought leader.

Analysis of a User StoryPeter Aveyard & Michael Sylvain, Capita Customer ManagementUser stories are ubiquitous; most BA’s are writing or working with user stories these days. Despite their widespread use in the agile world, a user story is a structured piece of narrative. Despite this structured approach, user stories can still be interpreted, which can lead to re-working of solutions, which in turn introduces waste. A lack of analysis rigour can also lead to missed requirements, again resulting in waste. The audience will be introduced to new techniques based on categorical and

propositional logic. These techniques have been thoroughly tested and proven to deliver clear unambiguous requirements. Used in conjunction with BA techniques and standards such as BAMs and UML, they are an extremely effective way uncovering the unknown knows, that are often the root cause of cost and quality issues.

Making Remote Co-Location WorkMark Lewing & John Stuart-Clarke, AvivaAgile means co-location; developers sat with customers prototyping solutions and copying them live; Yes? Not often. In large organisations the customers sit hundreds of miles away from you, the BA. The Developers are offshore, the Designers are on 5 other projects and the Product owner is trying to run a business unit as well as being available to you. This workshop will simulate an Agile inception and first sprint where the BA, Developers, Customers and Product Owner are remote from each other. Using technology to simulate remote co-location we will demonstrate how to modify each of the major Scrum ceremonies to allow for, and exploit the technology. Based on working methods being used on a daily basis at Aviva this workshop will provide real world help in making remote co-location work.

Business Playground: Games and Play for the Effective BAGeorgiana Mannion, Process In ColourPlay can improve communication, docu-mentation and facilitation. It is a powerful addition to existing Business Analysis skill sets. In this workshop you will learn how to incorporate playful techniques and games into different stages of your project life cycle and analysis work. To ensure it is functional as well as fun, we will incorporate meth-ods from the BABOK® and BCS Body of Practice courses with an added playful side. You’ll learn more about why businesses are turning to these techniques and the benefits from applying them.

Designing Compelling and Engaging Data VisualisationsTom Shanley, Business Analyst, Redvespa New ZealandThis workshop will arm you with various tools that you can use to present complex

data to your stakeholders, so that they’re more compelling, engaging and ultimately more useful. You will learn about which data visualisations tools are available, how to use their own data to build useful data visualisations & how to design data visualisations so that they are truthful, compelling and useful.

Resilience - The Hidden Tool to See You Through the Most Challenging SituationCorrine Thomas, Choices Consulting & Coaching & Sarah Fitton, Allen & OveryChange projects can be hard; we must understand the real problem that the organisation is seeking to solve, whilst also handling challenging and difficult stakeholders. Often the BA feels stuck in the middle of a multitude of project and organisational challenges and under fire from all angles. At times like this, having the capability not to take things personally, keep the project going and seek practical ways forward is a valuable thing to be able to do. Being resilient means remaining strong in challenging situations. This workshop will help you develop the skills and capacity to build personal resilience in all areas of life by exploring what being resilient means and introducing you to some tools and techniques to use.

Process Modelling and Analysis – Practical Techniques and FrameworksAlec Sharp, Clariteq Systems ConsultingOrganisations around the globe are making serious efforts to improve and even transform their business processes. They know they must understand what they do, and how they do it, if they are to improve in a sustainable way and adapt to constant change in the environment. Unfortunately, many will struggle, coming up against the common pitfalls in working with business processes. This session is specifically designed to help you avoid those common problems. It’s packed with practical frameworks, techniques, tips, and real-life examples from a variety of disciplines. It covers an end-to-end set of techniques including introducing business process concepts to your sometimes-sceptical colleagues, discovering true end-to-end processes, scoping and modelling a process, and improving processes.

21 SEPTEMBER 2015: PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS – FULL DAYS AND HALF DAYS

AgendaMONDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 2015: Pre-Conference Workshops

FULL DAY HALF DAY - Morning HALF DAY - Morning HALF DAY - Morning HALF DAY - Morning HALF DAY - Morning

09:30-17:30BCS Foundation

Certificate in Business Change

Martin Maya, AssistKD

09:30-13:00 Using the Benefit

Map for Lean Strategy Execution

Filip Hendrickx, AE NV

09:30-13:00 Creative, Visual

Facilitation Penny Pullan,

Making Projects Work Ltd

09:30-13:00 Business Analysis in BI and Analytics Projects

Dirk Morgenroth, Atos

09:30-13:00 Better Thinking Skills for Better Business AnalysisJames Archer, Public World &

Suzanne Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild

09:30-13:00 Analysis of a User Story

Peter Aveyard & Michael Sylvain,

Capita Customer Management

FULL DAY HALF DAY - Afternoon HALF DAY - Afternoon HALF DAY - Afternoon HALF DAY - Afternoon HALF DAY - Afternoon

09:30-17:30BCS Foundation

Certificate in Business Analysis

Davina Hesmer, AssistKD

14:00-17:30Making Remote Co-

Location WorkMark Lewing &

John Stuart-Clarke, Aviva

14:00-17:30 Business Playground:

Games and Play for the Effective BA

Georgiana Mannion, Process In Colour

14:00-17:30 Designing Compelling

and Engaging Data Visualisations

Tom Shanley, Redvespa New Zealand

14:00-17:30 Resilience - The Hidden Tool to See You Through

the Most Challenging Situation

Corrine Thomas, Choices Consulting & Coaching &

Sarah Fitton, Allen & Overy

14:00-17:30 Process Modelling and

Analysis – Practical Techniques and

FrameworksAlec Sharp,

Clariteq Systems Consulting

TUESDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2015: Conference Day 1 & Exhibits

08:00-09:00 REGISTRATION 09:00-09:10 WELCOME: Jon Buttriss, CEO, BCS Learning & Development09:10-09:55 KEYNOTE: Good Decisions, Good Business, Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell, MP09:55-10:10 BUSINESS ANALYST OF THE YEAR AWARD 201510:10-10:40 NETWORKING BREAK & EXHIBITS Business Analysis: Shaping

the Organisation Increasing the Effectiveness

of Business AnalysisThe Human Side of

Business Analysis Information & Technology

for BA’s The Expanding Business

Analysis Toolkit10:40-11:35 “We Don’t Need BA’s…”

A Journey from Denial to Building a Business Analysis

PracticePeter Neal, Yorkshire Water

Between Business Demands and Thriving Technology: The

‘Modern Day BA’Dr. Claudia Michalik, European Bank for Reconstruction and

Development

Creating the Perfect Storm: The Butterfly Effect of BA

Behaviour Jess Powell & Jan La Porte,

Specsavers

Business Analysis for Big Data

Bert Brijs, Lingua Franca bvba

Facilitation Skills for Wider Organisational ImpactCraig Rollason, National Grid

11:40-12:35 Strategy: The Elephant in the Room

Adrian Reed, Blackmetric Business Solutions

Designing New Demand Management Process Burcu Buyuksar, Turkcell

But What About BA Contractors? A Case Study

in Skills and Leadership Development

John Mee, Bath Business Analysis & Improvement & Mercy Obi, First

Plus Consulting

Insight to Innovation, The Role of User Experience

in Defining Product and Organisational

Transformation and SuccessIan Worley, Morgan Stanley

Don’t Fall Down Pit Holes – the Risks of Neglecting the

NFRsLynda Girvan, AssistKD

12:35-13:55 LUNCH, EXHIBITS & PERSPECTIVE SESSIONS13:55-14:50 The Omni Channel

Challenge - Delivering Customer Convenience in an Omni Channel WorldJulie Turner & Sophie Penny,

John Lewis

Requirements Re-use - What Does it Take?

Terri Lydiard, Lloyds Banking Group

Stakeholder Management in a Multicultural Environment - a New Zealand Perspective

Caroline Faircloth, Contractor, Wellington, New Zealand

How Do Business Analysis, UX and Agile Play Together

Smoothly? Chris Matts, Tesco

Who Wants to BA Millionaire? A Toolkit to Hit

the BA JackpotChris Evans & Andy Whatling,

Specsavers

14:50-15:20 NETWORKING BREAK & EXHIBITS15:20-16:15 Pre-Project Analysis

Tudor Costigan, Visa EuropeKeep Calm & Automate – a Case Study Illustrating the Power of Agile Automation

Karen Hunt & David Cossey, Aviva Life

Leading the Way as a Lead BA

Jim Hope, IPL

Building a Business Intelligence Competency

Peter Staunton, Google

In High Spirits - A Sensory Analysis

Jonathan Bryant, NFU Mutual

16:20-17:30 KEYNOTE: Engaging and Collaborating (or Whose Moment Is It Anyway?), Neil Mullarkey, Comedian and Actor17:30-18:45 IIBA® UK Drinks Reception Sponsored by AssistKD

WEDNESDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2015: Conference Day 2 & Exhibits

09:00-09:10 WELCOME: Adrian Reed, IIBA® UK Chapter09:10-09:55 KEYNOTE: Being a Change-Maker, Nigel Chambers, Change Portfolio Director, Old Mutual Wealth09:55-10:25 NETWORKING BREAK & EXHIBITS

Business Analysis: Shaping the Organisation

Increasing the Effectiveness of Business Analysis

The Human Side of Business Analysis

Information & Technology for BA’s

The Expanding Business Analysis Toolkit

10:25-11:20 From Projects to Investment Themes: How Sky Bet Deliver

Continuous Business Value Through Hypothesis Driven

Development & Kanban Craig Watson, Sky Bet

User Research – Revolutionising Service

Design in UK Government and Beyond

Richard Shreeve & Jason Cooper, IPL

Make Yourself Obsolete - The BA’s Role in

Transferring Skills Across an Organisation. Are You Ever Going to Become Obsolete

as a BA?Jo Solecki & Claire Ward, Sheffield

Hallam University

Writing the Right Agile Stories

James Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild

A BA Project Without an IT Spec: Identifying What

People Do With Their TimeSara Galloway, NHS Blood &

Transplant

11:25-12:20 Change Begins With MeChristina Lovelock & Kathryn Pow, Health and Social Care Information

Centre

Effective Partnering - Business Analysis from a Software Supplier’s

PerspectiveAndrew Robertson, CHP Consulting

Saboteurs - What Can You Do About Them?

Liz Calder, Blue Raccoon

A Business Analyst’s Role in Data-Driven Decision

MakingNdidi Alaneme & Dave Baines, BBC

Professional Presentations Made Easy (and Making Microsoft Office Work

For You!)David Baskerville & Richard Patrick,

Barclays12:20-13:40 LUNCH, EXHIBITS & PERSPECTIVE SESSIONS 13:40-14:25 KEYNOTE: Black Swans and Butterflies - Dealing with Uncertainty in Poker, Business and Life, Caspar Berry, Former Professional Poker Player14:30-15:25 Business Analysis with

Benefits Management, More than the Sum of Their PartsPhil Turner, National Assembly for

Wales

Embedding Lean – One Route to Process

ImprovementJo Smith & Adam Aldridge, Skipton

Building Society

The Power of Change – A Personal JourneyDavid Beckham, Aviva

Going Beyond ‘What Success Looks Like’ – Using Data to Achieve Successful

ProjectsJamie Clouting & Joanne Latham,

LateRooms.com

Use of Roadmapping to Shape Agile Development

and to Manage Early Benefits Delivery

Peter Kapitsa, ASOS.com

15:25-15:50 NETWORKING BREAK & EXHIBITS 15:50-16:45 Going Lean -

thetrainline.com StoryAteek Hussain & Alex Vishal,

trainline

Standardisation in an Agile, Dynamic Environment:

Contradiction or Efficiency Potential?

Edwin Buitenhuis & Roderick Uitdehaag, Rabobank

Managing Difficult Stakeholders to Ensure

Project SuccessJeff Hurst, Alternative Minds Ltd

Code-Free App Development – BA

Opportunities and ThreatsChris Moran & Richard Johnston,

Karona Consulting

Business Process Tangles: Finding, Removing &

Preventing ThemBrian Hunt, Skanska

16:50-17:00 CONFERENCE CLOSE: Lawrence Darvill, UK BA Manager Forum & AssistKD

irmuk.co.uk/ba2015 3

Pre-Conference Workshops : Monday, 21 September 2015

irmuk.co.uk/ba20154

Full Day Workshops09:30 – 17:30

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business ChangeMartin Maya, AssistKD

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change qualification. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study is strongly recommended.

Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Change covers the landscape of concepts, life cycle and techniques relevant to Business Change. It provides a foundation for the range of specialist modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis and Consultancy. In addition, it provides foundation-level Business Change knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• Overview of Business Change

• Business Change Techniques

• Business and IT Alignment

• Business Improvement Definition

• Business Change Design

• Business Change Implementation

• Benefits Realisation

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 16:30 on the workshops day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

BCS Foundation Certificate in Business AnalysisDavina Hesmer, AssistKD

AssistKD and BCS present an intensive workshop covering the syllabus for the BCS Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis qualification. Delegates will be able to sit the examination at the end of the workshop and get their results on the same day. Pre-workshop personal study is strongly recommended. Pre-registration is required for this workshop and examination.

The Foundation Certificate in Business Analysis covers the breadth of concepts, approaches and techniques relevant to Business Analysis. It provides a foundation for the range of specialist modular certificates provided by BCS in the areas of Business Analysis, Consultancy and Business Change. In addition, it provides foundation-level Business Analysis knowledge for specialists in other disciplines. Topics covered include:

• The role and competencies of a business analyst.

• Strategy analysis.

• Business system and business process modelling.

• Stakeholder analysis.

• Investigation and modelling techniques.

• Requirements engineering.

• Business case development.

• Implementation of business change.

BCS will be providing and running the examinations. The exam takes 1 hour and will take place at 16:30 on the workshops day.

Please note only delegates who have signed up for all 3 days of this event will be entitled to attend this workshop and be certified. A fee of £100 will be added to your invoice for the certification. Places are limited to 20.

Morning Workshops09:30 – 13:00

Using the Benefit Map for Lean Strategy ExecutionFilip Hendrickx, AE NV

Business stakeholders want project results fast. They often come to the business analyst armed with a solution, leaving not much room nor time for challenging and proposing alternatives. The classic benefit map, when used creatively, is a very useful and visual tool in opening up the conversation with your business stakeholders quickly.

By making explicit the business goals at different levels, it helps shift focus from project output to business outcome. This gives us a better compass for implementation: What is the link to the company strategy? Will the stakeholder’s solution suggestion suffice? By reformulating the project requirements in a solution independent manner, it will help create room for alternatives.

On top of that, it can highlight the assumptions we make for the project to actually deliver business value. These assumptions can then be tested early on in the project, effectively supporting a lean start up approach.

In this interactive workshop, delegates will:

• Learn how to create room for discussing the strategic context and alternative solutions for project initiatives;

• Learn how to bring hidden assumptions to the surface, so that they can be pulled forward and tested early in order to lower the investment risk;

• See several case examples from multiple companies of how the benefit map has served as a continuous check point in projects to align strategy and execution.

Creative, Visual FacilitationPenny Pullan, Making Projects Work Ltd

Facilitating groups and handling complex human dynamics are at the core of business analysis. Yet, facilitated sessions too often miss the mark, leaving participants uninspired and disengaged, especially in virtual teams. In this interactive workshop, Penny Pullan will focus on how you can achieve great outcomes through inspiring and engaging visual facilitation.

You can expect to:

• Discover how to bring visual aspects into your facilitated sessions, with both face-to-face and virtual groups

• Be challenged to try new things, such as drawing

out a process in an engaging way, i.e. by hand. (If you can draw the letters of the alphabet, then you have the artistic skills required!)

• Learn how to listen out for the visual language that your stakeholders already use and to tap into these metaphors with your visuals.

• Learn how to use visuals to gain a shared, holistic view of complex context and stakeholder relationships.

• Leave with a creative plan for your next facilitated session, including a range of visuals you can use.

Business Analysis in BI and Analytics ProjectsDirk Morgenroth, Atos

With the advent of data-driven organizations, requirements naturally change to increasingly data-centric entities. However, specifying data and data analysis needs is not an easy task for any of the stakeholders involved, no matter how mature the organization already is. This session sheds light on how to adapt to these environments and project contexts as a Business Analyst and provides the necessary basics.

At the end of this session BAs should understand the:

• Changing requirements, project and tool landscape in companies on their way to data-driven organizations

• Need to have a toolkit tailored for BI and Analytics requirements analysis

• Approaches to tackle BI and Analytics projects as a Business Analyst

Better Thinking Skills for Better Business AnalysisJames Archer, Public World & Suzanne Robertson, Atlantic Systems Guild

The Business Analyst helps a wide variety of people to identify the real business problem, and to find the most effective solution. To do this, the BA needs thinking skills that enable him/her to think differently, raise questions, expose new ideas and elevate the calibre of thinking on the project.

This workshop focuses on specific thinking skills that help the BA to be an effective thought leader.

The subjects included are:

• Running a thinking meeting – Listening, Feedback, Reflection

• Using systemic thinking to discover the real problem

• Having the courage to say what you really think

• Becoming better at making abstractions

• Helping other people to discover their own answers

• Using alternative ways of expressing your thinking

• Using double loop learning to challenge assumptions

This workshop identifies the socio-technical skills needed by thinking business analysts. Participants explore and experiment with these skills, and the most effective ways to apply them in their own projects.

Pre-Conference Workshops : Monday, 21 September 2015

irmuk.co.uk/ba2015 5

Analysis of a User StoryPeter Aveyard & Michael Sylvain, Capita Customer Management

User stories are ubiquitous; most BA’s are writing or working with user stories these days. Despite their widespread use in the agile world, a user story is a structured piece of narrative. Mike Cohn describes them as:

User stories are short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. They typically follow a simple template:

As a ...

I want ...

So that...

Despite this structured approach, user stories can still be mis-interpreted, which can lead to reworking of solutions, which in turn introduces waste. A lack of analysis rigour can also lead to missed requirements, again resulting in waste.

The presentation will introduce the audience to new techniques for decomposing user story into its atomic parts to:

• Discover hidden scenarios

• Reduce interpretation

• Improve right first time

The audience will be introduced to new techniques based on categorical and propositional logic. These techniques have been thoroughly tested and proven to deliver clear unambiguous requirements. Used in conjunction with BA techniques and standards such as BAMs and UML, they are an extremely effective way uncovering the unknown knows, that are often the root cause of cost and quality issues.

Afternoon Workshops14:00 – 17:30

Making Remote Co-Location WorkMark Lewing & John Stuart-Clarke, Aviva

Agile means co-location; developers sat with customers prototyping solutions and copying them live; Yes? Not often. In large organisations the customers sit hundreds of miles away from you, the BA. The developers are offshore, the designers are on 5 other projects and the product owner is trying to run a business unit as well and be available to you.

If this is familiar you need to be able to use collaboration tools, story repositories and online information stores to get through the task at hand.

This workshop will simulate an Agile inception and first sprint where the BA, developers, customers and Product Owner are remote from each other. Using technology to simulate remote co-location we will demonstrate how to modify each of the major Scrum ceremonies to allow for, and exploit the technology. Based on working methods being used on a daily basis at Aviva this workshop will provide real world help in making remote co-location work.

• Make Remote Co-Location work

• Use technology to deliver better stories

• Keep using Agile ceremonies and drive better outcomes

Business Playground: Games and Play for the Effective BAGeorgiana Mannion, Process In Colour

Play can improve communication, documentation and facilitation. It is a powerful addition to existing Business Analysis skill sets. In this workshop you will learn how to incorporate playful techniques and games into different stages of your project life cycle and analysis work. To ensure it is functional as well as fun, we will incorporate methods from the BABOK® and BCS Body of Practice courses with an added playful side. You’ll learn more about why businesses are turning to these techniques and the benefits from applying them.

From this session, you will have a better understanding of your own learning and listening styles, how to adapt your analysis environment to incorporate playful methodologies and the tools to create your own games as well as a set of ready-made ones to try at home! There will be toys, prototyping tools and stationery. These play skills can transfer into other areas including business change, enterprise architecture, training and testing, management and all those other things that BA’s are often required to take on.

Designing Compelling and Engaging Data VisualisationsTom Shanley, Business Analyst, Redvespa New Zealand

This workshop will arm you with various tools that you can use to present complex data to your stakeholders, so that they’re more compelling, engaging and ultimately more useful. We will look beyond the normal office tools, but which can be applied in your workplace today.

• Learn about which data visualisations tools are available

• How to use their own data to build useful data visualisations

• How to design data visualisations so that they are truthful, compelling and useful

Resilience - The Hidden Tool to See You Through the Most Challenging SituationCorrine Thomas, Choices Consulting & Coaching & Sarah Fitton, Allen & Overy

Change projects can be hard; we must understand the real problem that the organisation is seeking to solve, whilst also handling challenging and difficult stakeholders. Often the BA feels stuck in the middle of a multitude of project and organisational challenges and under fire from all angles. At times like this having the capability not to take things personally, keep the project going and seek practical ways forward is a valuable thing to be able to do.

Being resilient means remaining strong in challenging situations. This workshop will help you develop the skills and capacity to build personal resilience in all areas of life by exploring what being resilient means introducing you to some tools and techniques to use.

Participants in this workshop will learn to:• Identify what being resilient means• Practice tools and strategies to implement a

more resilient approach at work

• Stay in control when under cross-fire from all directions

• Respond effectively to challenging events

Process Modelling and Analysis – Practical Techniques and FrameworksAlec Sharp, Clariteq Systems Consulting

Organisations around the globe are making serious efforts to improve and even transform their business processes. They know they must understand what they do, and how they do it, if they are to improve in a sustainable way and adapt to constant change in the environment.

Unfortunately, many will struggle, coming up against the common pitfalls in working with business processes. This session is specifically designed to help you avoid those common problems. It’s packed with practical frameworks, techniques, tips, and real-life examples from a variety of disciplines. It covers an end-to-end set of techniques including introducing business process concepts to your sometimes-sceptical colleagues, discovering true end-to-end processes, scoping and modelling a process, and improving processes. Highlights include:

• What a business process really is, why they are so often misidentified, and the consequences.

• The cross-functional minefield, and the issues that have to be addressed

• Making the need for process change visible and compelling, yet blame-free

• Getting out of procedural details and seeing the whole

• “Flow first, detail later” - the basics of “human-oriented” process mapping.

• Taking a holistic view of processes – factors that are under and overemphasized

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Keynotes

KEYNOTES

Good Decisions, Good BusinessRt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell, MP

This Keynote will focus on the importance of building the circumstances that enable good decisions to be taken in a timely, transparent and value-led way. Where a bad decision has been made, it is rare

that the basis for making a good decision can be retrofitted in order to improve the outcomes or mitigate the impact. Changing circumstances may require a reframing of the decision, but this is very different from retrofitting a better decision where there has been a bad beginning. Good decision making has to focus both on the content - what the decision is about - and the process of how the decision is reached. Subsequently, there is the third stage which focuses on implementation and follow through, to help ensure a decision stays true to its original objective.

This session will explore the importance of:

• Making the right decisions from the outset. Good decisions can rarely be retrofitted.

• Setting the right processes in place; these are vital for a successful project.

• Building decisions for sustained long term impact.

Engaging and Collaborating (or Whose Moment Is It Anyway?)Neil Mullarkey, Comedian and Actor

What can business analysis learn from improvised theatre? Plenty. The roots of “Improv” are in Chicago in the 1920’s. Viola Spolin, a social worker, was working with inner city children to enhance their communication skills.

This led her son to create Second City Theatre in the 1950’s, from which so many talented writers, performers and directors have graduated - not least Dan Aykroyd, Steve Carell, Tina Fey and Mike Myers.

Improv is about listening, taking on board what others say, then using that as a springboard for your response, teamwork, coping with uncertainty, thinking on your feet, waiting for the best idea to emerge (wherever it came from), and, um, having fun. Business Analysts need to engage with the business, assert themselves and co-create innovative solutions. Neil Mullarkey’s unique, high energy, interactive style will guarantee that you will both laugh and learn.

You will Learn:

• The key skills of improv theatre

• How not to be stuck for words ever again

• How to engage and influence people

Being a Change-MakerNigel Chambers, Change Portfolio Director, Old Mutual Wealth

We hear more and more how organisations are in a state of ‘Transformation’, on a journey to a future state. But what does this actually mean and how does an organisation transform? In reality, it is

people that transform and it is the change-makers amongst us who set the examples for others to follow. Transforming an organisation is often a cultural issue, where soft skills such as influencing, motivation, inspiration and passion mean much more than traditional analysis skillsets.

More and more we are being asked to be the change we want to see, but what does this mean?

This discussion will focus on the important soft skills required to be seen as a Change-Maker – a leader, role model, inspiration – in the eyes of others. Using real-life examples of recognised Change-Makers to provide a view on how we can all become Change-Makers in our own right and really make a difference in a business and personal environment.

Black Swans and Butterflies - Dealing with Uncertainty in Poker, Business and LifeCaspar Berry, Former Professional Poker Player

Former professional poker player, Caspar Berry, uses the metaphor of poker to consider the way we take risks and decide what action to take in a world which is much less certain than many of us know. He takes us on

a winding journey from the flap of a butterfly wing to the upheaval of the Arab spring. Why open-mindedness can help us predict the future and what skills can be taken from the poker table to the boardroom table. Ultimately he argues that the best thing we can do in the face of external risks is be prepared to take more risk on ourselves, and that the task of leadership is to welcome the right risks into our businesses... and lives.

• How uncertain the world really is

• The best mindset to predict the unpredictable

• Why failing regularly is mathematically the surest way to long term success.

““

“This is really a great event to share ideas and learn from the industry. I will definitely come to the next one!”Isha Jain, BA Best Practice & Standards Lead, National Grid

“So glad I got the opportunity to attend. Brilliant to meet so many people in the same profession and to learn from them”Annette O’Donovan, Senior Business Analyst, Genworth

“Inspiring and energising. Love it!” Jonathan Bryant, Business Analyst, NFU Mutual

“One of the key highlights of my BA career to date!” Stuart Peek, Business Analyst, Specsavers

“Another year, another great BA Conference. Roll on 2015!” Jean Gibney, Program BA, Gen Re

“Loved it, re-energised, re-charged”Andrew Gilbert, Principal Business Analyst, Virgin Media

“Fabulous – well run, interesting range of speakers and topics”Tony Toombs, BA Manager, A J Bell Ltd

“Genuinely one of the best events I’ve ever attended”Adrian Beckham, BA Manager, ASDA

“Excellent. Would definitely like to come back”Shelina Khan, Business Analyst, Legal & General

“Overall, hugely impressed. Very much exceeded expectations” Alan McPherson, Business Analyst Manager, Thomson Reuters

“I am not alone. That is good to know! I really welcome the opportunity to share experiences with other BAs”Iona McMillan, Business Analyst, Global Energy

“Well organised, with a very good range of topics and speakers. First conference I have attended but am already looking forward to the next one!” Imran Mirza, Business Analyst, The Bank of England

Conference Sessions

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Business Analysis: Shaping the Organisation

“We Don’t Need BAs…” A Journey from Denial to Building a Business Analysis PracticePeter Neal, Lead Business Analyst, Yorkshire Water

Peter joined the organisation as a ‘Senior Developer’ as “We don’t need Business Analysts, everyone should understand the business” (quote from now retired IT Director). After some years of requirements gathering, process modelling and writing business cases, the role began to be recognised, although at first it was ‘what the Project Manager and Technical Lead don’t do’.

Re-organisations have led to the emergence of a number of teams across the organisation:

• Business Process Management Team

• Change Team

• Business Relationship Managers and Business Analysts

This talk takes you on a sometimes bumpy, sometimes pleasurely ride towards building the core of a Business Analysis Practice. Utilising principles of the Operational Excellence methodology adopted at Yorkshire Water and the collaboration technology in the business, the Business Analysis team at Yorkshire Water are moving to virtual visual management as the community / practice begins to become a reality.

• The journey from BA denial to BA Practice

• Competing with other teams for the BA high ground

• Utilising Collaboration Technology to communicate more effectively

Strategy: The Elephant in the RoomAdrian Reed, Principal Consultant/Business Analyst, Blackmetric Business Solutions

The words “strategy” and “strategic” are frequently used in organisations and might be seen by some as “corporate buzzwords”. Yet in reality, having a clearly articulated strategy is a crucial enabler for organizational alignment and success. As BAs, we need to ensure that our projects and programs align with strategy - else we may end up with different departments and teams pulling in different directions (and we may get caught in the cross fire!)

The BA toolkit is broad, and there’s a huge opportunity for us to contribute. If we seize this opportunity we may get involved in shaping or defining organisational, project, program or business unit strategy.

In this presentation, Adrian Reed explores strategy through a Business Analysis lens, covering:

• What is strategy?

• The role of strategy and strategic thinking in Business Analysis

• What can we do when strategy is “cloudy”?

• Strategic analysis tools and techniques

The Omni Channel Challenge - Delivering Customer Convenience in an Omni Channel WorldJulie Turner, Business Analyst & Sophie Penny, Business Analyst, John Lewis

John Lewis is a successful Omni Channel business. In 2014 John Lewis outperformed the high street and saw around 30% of sales through their Online channel.

Key to this success is ensuring their proposition is market leading which requires investment in IT. They have seen this investment increase five fold since 2007 ensuring a constant pipeline of project demand. Their team, IT Relationship Management, is responsible for shaping projects from an idea through to an approved investment case ensuring the project is strategically aligned and set up for success.

Sophie and Julie’s talk will demonstrate how good quality shaping has helped deliver projects to expand their Click and Collect operation which is increasingly popular with their customers across John Lewis and Waitrose stores.

The session will cover:

• Deciding when an idea becomes a project

• Agreeing High Level Requirements, Scope, Solution Options and Estimates

• IT project set up

Pre-Project AnalysisTudor Costigan, Head of Business Analysis (interim), Visa Europe

Analysts are all familiar with the issues when analysis is brought in late to a running project. What are the issues when analysis is at the forefront of defining change for an organisation? How does pre-project analysis differ from analysis on projects?

Visa Europe is organised with Business Analysis in a change function, separate from the IT function. As well as driving in-flight change, the change function drives co-ordination of new desired change from across the company. New desired change originates from strategy down to renewing existing capabilities, and requires prioritisation and scheduling against the organisation’s change capacity. The emphasis pre-project is on identifying the ‘best’ change initiatives - doing the right things rather than doing things right.

Key takeaways from this session:

• The different aims and challenges of analysis pre-project and in-project

• Prioritisation of change (value v risk) and scheduling

• Collaborating with complementary roles

From Projects to Investment Themes: How Sky Bet Deliver Continuous Business Value through Hypothesis Driven Development & KanbanCraig Watson, Lead Business Analyst, Sky Bet

The traditional maxim that IT projects fail due to poor requirements is a red herring. In fact we’re asking the wrong question in the first place. The whole concept of projects and the associated artifacts and processes that have grown up around

them are no longer fit for purpose. Even with the increasing adoption of Agile methodologies, most organisations are still struggling to maximise the value offered by Information Technology.

We now live in a world of increasing complexity and change and how we approach dealing with that requires a fundamental shift in mindset.

Craig will share his practical experiences from Sky Bet of how BAs are ideally placed to help organisations change the way they think about, conceive and deliver continuous business value.

• Real life examples from an organisation moving away from the concept of projects

• Utilising Hypothesis Driven Development to understand & improve the business situation

• How Kanban helps manage continuous delivery of change

Change Begins With MeChristina Lovelock, Programme Manager - Business Requirements & Kathryn Pow, Business Analysis Manager, Health and Social Care Information Centre

BAs talk about being change agents, and facilitating organisational change – but what happens when BAs will be personally impacted by the changes being made?

BAs at the HSCIC have traditionally been involved in external facing large scale IT projects, but they were asked to turn their hands to a significant internal transformation project, covering flexible resourcing models for BAs and PMs, as well as activity monitoring and visibility.

The organisation strategy included “improving productivity” and being able to “respond quickly to changing priorities”, and this project was asked to make these commitments happen. The project resulted in changes to job descriptions, recruitment, working practices, IT systems, line management and organisation structures.

This session will cover the approaches to change, the role of business analysis and the activities undertaken. It will also reflect on the achievements of the project and lessons learned.

Key Messages:

• BAs influencing change, and being impacted by the change.

• Creating business efficiency by changing the resource management approach for Business Analysis.

Business Analysis with Benefits Management, More than the Sum of Their PartsPhil Turner, Senior Business Analyst, National Assembly for Wales

Centred on the experience of the National Assembly for Wales, this session will explore how the mutually beneficial relationship between the disciplines of Benefits Management and Business Analysis can be leveraged to deliver effective business change. Using the best management practice, Managing Benefits model, the advantages of ‘benefits led’ over ‘activity centred’ change will be examined. The tools, techniques, roles and responsibilities of Benefits Management will

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Conference Sessionsbe summarised with a focus on the role of the Business Analyst and the alignment of the Business Analysis and Benefits Management life-cycles. The session will complete with a look at how Business Analysis can be influential in delivering strategic change through better benefits management. Key takeaways from the session will be:

• How a benefits led approach can deliver more effective Business Analysis

• How Business Analysis can influence change and deliver value to business stakeholders through better benefits management

Going Lean – trainline StoryAteek Hussain, eBusiness Analyst & Alex Vishal, Business Analyst, trainline

At trainline the organisation and Agile processes have evolved over the years. Business Analysts have played a major role in the re-organisation and have worked closely with their clusters to ensure the best most effective, and most relevant Agile approach is applied within their cluster allowing them to move from a 6 week delivery cycle to continuous delivery. In this presentation Ateek and Alex will demonstrate how Business Analysts have played a key part in applying Agile in different ways for different clusters and yet delivering a quality service, as well as innovative features, continuously straight to trainline customers.

From this presentation delegates will learn:

• How Business Analysts can contribute towards shaping an organisation

• How different Agile approaches can be applied within the same organisation

• How Business Analysts can contribute more than just analysis on a project

Increasing the Effectiveness of Business Analysis

Between Business Demands and Thriving Technology: The ‘Modern Day BA’Dr. Claudia Michalik, Hybrid Business Analyst/Project Manager, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Business change no longer happens in isolation but is performed as a combination of business, information systems and technology driven change. Therefore, Business Analysis and Solution Architecture are often married up to deliver successful change. As this happens, the solid application of skills and capabilities required by a Business Analyst subtly shift. But how does the ‘Modern Day BA’ deal with increasing business demands and fast developing technologies?

This session examines the perceived boundaries of Business Analyst and Solution Architect roles and responsibilities; and the increasing need for overlapping skills. It introduces a multi-dimensional model for business change that is based on practical case studies within the financial services industry and its unique set of transitional impact projects.

Attendees will learn:

• A simplified ‘9-box’ model for business change

• The importance of adaptable business analysis skills

• How to overcome ‘skill creep’ and strengthen the ‘voice’ of the ‘Modern Day BA’

Designing New Demand Management ProcessBurcu Buyuksar, Expert Business Analyst, Turkcell

As an Expert Business Analyst working at Turkcell for 11 years, Burcu will share one of her best projects named as Lean Demand Management. The goal of this project is to automate the demand management process and deliver solutions to their Business teams with minimum effort for analysis. During the project, they developed a user-friendly platform for demand management, called DemandBox. The project was initiated by the ICT department and continued its success by the support of the business coordination team at Turkcell. They followed an agile methodology to deliver a fast and accurate solution for their stakeholders. Burcu will describe how they worked closely with developers and business owners by following agile methodology and delivered the solution in less than 3 months.

Requirements Re-use - What Does it Take?Terri Lydiard, Senior Lead Business Analyst, Lloyds Banking Group

Whereas the concept of re-use is a familiar one within the software development world, it is not common within the requirements engineering world either at the knowledge or the artefact level. With the increasing use of Requirements Management Tools, there is an increased expectation of requirements re-use from management. Re-use is seen as offering significant savings in terms of reducing the analysis time, and eliminating redundant development effort.

In reality an organisation must have high requirements management and BA capability to have sufficiently quality artefacts, created at correct level of granularity, with significant management capability and robust traceability, for requirements re-use to work.

This session explores the flavours of requirements re-use, the pre-requisites for re-use, and outlines the key considerations in the cost-benefit case for adoption.

Keep Calm & Automate – a Case Study Illustrating the Power of Agile AutomationKaren Hunt, Principal Business Analyst & David Cossey, Senior Business Analyst, Aviva Life

This session explores the methodology used to achieve significant business benefit on Aviva’s Pensions/Investment demands, on a multi-million pound project. Exploring how the methodology was refined and how further funding was secured by the power of a working prototype.

Karen and David will highlight techniques used to achieve step change in operational productivity using design studio to create a 20/20 vision and system thinking to drive out the “waste” & create lean, low touch processes. Highlighting the value customer journeys bring to ensuring the team understand the vision and how aligning the minimal viable product

ensures focus on delivering business benefit in an iterative manner.

This session will discuss the challenges & lessons learned from delivering with an Agile methodology. This includes the importance of a strong Product Owner, how to define a Minimal Viable Product, when stories are ready to sprint & when they need more refinement to aid clarity.

• How to utilise design studio & System Thinking techniques in process redesign

• The value of using different techniques to engage an Agile feature team

• Benefits of delivering continuous business outcomes

User Research – Revolutionising Service Design in UK Government and BeyondRichard Shreeve, Consultancy Director & Jason Cooper, Head of User Experience (UX) Group, IPL

The User Researcher plays a pivotal role in the design of user-centric digital services and solutions, building a picture of the users and ensuring that the solutions delivered remain centred on their needs. With these roles increasingly filled by Business Analysts, this session explores why user research is so critical to the design of modern digital solutions and outlines the essential skills and practical techniques in the User Researcher’s tool bag, illustrated by real world examples from 2 projects run under the UK Governments’ Digital Services Framework. Delegates will take away:

• An understanding of the User Researcher role, and its importance in digital service design

• Practical User Research tools and techniques and how they can be applied by analysts to ensure that solutions remain user-centric

• Insight into user research under the UK Government’s Digital Services Framework using examples from real world projects

Effective Partnering - Business Analysis from a Software Supplier’s PerspectiveAndrew Robertson, Associate Director, CHP Consulting

Upgrading mission-critical software is the key method of improving efficiency and streamlining business operations. However, replacing those established systems represents a comprehensive overhaul of the way a business operates, and will require fundamental change across the organisation. Implementations that don’t fulfill their potential or fail altogether are depressingly commonplace.

Building an effective, long-lasting partnership with your software supplier is key to helping you succeed in your systems replacement project. Drawing on 15 years of experience in the financial services sector, Andrew will provide stories of lessons learned working with in-house business analysts, as well as guidance on:

• Preparing for partnership

• Surviving beyond the honeymoon period

• Delivering continuous improvement

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Embedding Lean – One Route to Process ImprovementJo Smith, Business Analysis Manager & Adam Aldridge, Business Analyst, Skipton Building Society

Using the Business Analysts to develop and lead training within Skipton Building Society has provided the opportunity to embed Lean techniques across all business areas whilst constantly enhancing the BA skills, our toolbox and perhaps, most importantly to our profession, our presence and the view of the business of the value we bring to our organisation. Requests are now constantly received for BA resource.

Processes are being reviewed and improved; the business has begun to accept ownership of processes, to work on their own initiatives and there has been a marked increase in the level of employee engagement leading to a range of industry awards. At the end of this session BAs should have ideas on:

• A training structure and approach which could be adapted within their own organisation

• What techniques to include in a training programme

• How to raise the profile of the BA whilst increasing engagement levels across your organisation and improving the customer experience

• The challenges they may need to consider and overcome

Standardization in an Agile, Dynamic Environment: Contradiction or Efficiency Potential? Edwin Buitenhuis, Business Analyst & Roderick Uitdehaag, Business Analyst, Rabobank

Edwin and Roderick will elaborate on the environment they are currently in – a fast-paced, agile environment which values fast delivery of products, with a client-centric mindset. They will discuss why they apply standardization in an agile, fast-paced environment. By focusing on added value in standardization and making a very clear scope, BA’s can become more efficient in their work. By using a standardisation maturity model, we were able to identify clear and personalized action points per project to move to a common end goal which realized increased efficiency in our organizations. To conclude, we will provide a short summary of how we implemented these standardisations within Rabobank and what benefits we see in terms of efficiency.

Key take-aways

• Selective standardisation can increase organizational efficiency

• Tools and methods to apply selective standardisation

• Pragmatic example of implementation

The Human Side of Business Analysis

Creating the Perfect Storm: The Butterfly Effect of BA BehaviourJess Powell, Business Analyst & Jan La Porte, Business Analyst, Specsavers

A butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane. A BA alters their behaviour and can shape projects and stakeholders in a whole new direction.

The value of a BA does not come merely from what we do but from HOW we do it. Behaviour is the key to quality stakeholder relationships, first class deliverables and ultimately successful business transformation. Over time behaviours become habitual making it difficult to recognise their impact and to appreciate the need for improvement.

We will use a case study to demonstrate the significant impact BA behaviours have on the success of a Global Practice and on Programme Delivery.

Attendees will learn:

• How to recognise ‘bad’ behaviours and underlying reasons

• Impact of personal behaviours on projects, teams and wider relationships

• Ways to transform your day to day stakeholder interactions

But What About BA Contractors? A Case Study in Skills and Leadership DevelopmentJohn Mee, Senior Business Analysis Consultant, Bath Business Analysis & Improvement & Mercy Obi, Business Analysis Consultant, First Plus Consulting

A significant proportion of Business Analysts are contractors, who have little access to internal development programmes. Despite this, their skills form the basis of whether or not they and their projects will succeed. How can they develop the skills to become trusted advisors and to handle complex stakeholder relationships across multiple clients?

This interactive presentation by two diverse BA contractors tracks their development over 2014-2015. Between them, they pursued the BA Diploma, experiential facilitation training and a virtual group-mentoring program.

The presentation will:

• Explore the challenges of operating as a BA contractor who wishes to develop their skills

• Present the options available to BA contractors for their own personal skills development as business analysts

• Cover the pros and cons of both traditional and experiential training courses, plus group mentoring

• Share case studies of two diverse BA contractors as they develop their skills through multiple routes

• Encourage attendees to reflect on the best ways to develop, whether as contractors or permanent employees

Stakeholder Management in a Multicultural Environment - a New Zealand PerspectiveCaroline Faircloth, Senior Business Analyst, Contractor, Wellington, New Zealand

We work in an increasingly complex environment where teams include individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures and countries. This complexity can present a multitude of issues for the BA to navigate when identifying, developing and building the required deliverables. This session will look at:

• The effect of stakeholder variety in stakeholder management

• The importance of mana to indigenous New Zealand Maori and the considerations a BA will make when managing this relationship

• How the stakeholders’ cultural background will affect how the BA is viewed

Examples from Caroline’s experience will be used to illustrate some of the tactics BAs can use in approaching stakeholder management in a multicultural environment

Delegates will:

• Be able to understand the importance of learning about their stakeholder’s culture when developing and maintaining stakeholder relationships

• Be provided with examples of multicultural stakeholder relationships

• Learn key skills a BA should develop for our multicultural world

Leading the Way as a Lead BAJim Hope, Lead Business Analyst, IPL

It is widely acknowledged that the role of the Business Analyst is one of the most broad and flexible in the IT industry. It is also well understood that good Business Analysis is critical for project success. Combine these facts with the growing variety of project approach and methodology and it quickly becomes clear that the role of the Lead BA to plan and tailor the analysis effort is of vital importance to a project’s success.

This session explores some of the challenges faced by Lead Business Analysts in the workplace today, the benefits that a strong and well thought out BA effort can bring and some of the factors that can help achieve success.

Topics will include:

• Project entropy and other challenges facing the Lead Business Analyst

• Thinking outside of the framework - one size does not fit all

• Turning stakeholder management inwards – knowing and understanding your team

• Planning to deliver value, not just requirements

Make Yourself Obsolete - The BA’s Role in Transferring Skills Across an Organisation. Are You Ever Going to Become Obsolete as a BA?Jo Solecki, Business Improvement Manager & Claire Ward, Senior Business Analyst, Sheffield Hallam University

Over the last ten years the role of the Business Analyst at Sheffield Hallam University has evolved

Conference Sessions

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dramatically. Part of the team’s objectives is to transfer BA skills across the university. We are often working with people who have no idea about some of the tools and techniques we use. But, is that a bad thing? In this session we will share how our skills transfer agenda works alongside our ‘day job’ as a BA. The benefits of it and also the reasons the BA role will never disappear.

The presentation considers:

• Skills transfer in the project environment vs. formal training

• Benefits of working with ‘trained’ people in the organisation

• Whether the need for objectivity will ever disappear

Saboteurs - What Can You Do About Them?Liz Calder, Senior Business Analyst, Blue Raccoon

People behave very differently when faced with change, whether it is small or large in scope. There are people who embrace it with open arms, whilst others automatically reject it. Some of the most difficult stakeholders to deal with are those that try to derail the change effort altogether. These people are commonly known as saboteurs. They draw attention away from the things that the project should be focussing on and have the project team fighting fires that they never expected to be lit in the first place.

Saboteurs can be situated anywhere in your organisation; both within and outside your project and in senior or junior roles. Depending on where they are in the organisation the impact on your project can be significant. Liz Calder will share her experiences of global change projects where the presence of saboteurs created unexpected challenges, along with the approaches used to manage their impact on the project.

The presentation will cover:

• How to identify a saboteur

• Understanding the cause of the behaviour

• What can be done about it?

The Power of Change – A Personal JourneyDavid Beckham, Senior Business Analyst, Aviva

Life is constantly changing and a Business Analyst is continually assisting people through change, whether it be what they do, how they do it or even whether they do it. Whilst in most cases the need for change is a positive one, it can be an unsettling and even frightening experience. Four years ago David was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease and in this session he will explain the personal impact this had on him and the journey he has been through in coming to terms with it. In his own uniquely humorous way David will explore the nature of change, the effects it has on people and the lessons he has learnt from his journey. He will share his own thoughts and philosophy on what motivates him, the inspirational figures who have guided him and how he has applied this to his work and personal life.

David will discuss:

• Two change models: the Change Curve and The Hero’s Journey

• How to discover your own motivation

• Recognising the impact you have on those around you

Managing Difficult Stakeholders to Ensure Project SuccessJeff Hurst, Director, Alternative Minds Ltd

Stakeholder Mapping is relatively simple in theory - defining those needing the most attention. In practice, however, dealing with real people in real-life situations often throws up issues potentially derailing projects when least expected. Fortunately, techniques for successfully managing stakeholders can be learnt and applied to potentially difficult stakeholders. The implementation of the techniques being presented ensures the successful management of various elusive, busy, unprofessional or difficult stakeholders in any organisation. By examining specific scenarios through case-studies which detail the various situations in which problems with stakeholders arose, the techniques are worked into the whole stakeholder mapping process, to highlight which additional skills are required as a BA, and what action is needed if facing difficult stakeholders looks likely. In addition, these techniques will provide insight into what advance preparation will be needed before dealing with difficult stakeholders, and therefore help ensure success of the project.

• How to do Stakeholder Mapping better to identify at the earliest opportunity skills which a BA must use, or find, to ensure project success.

• The various techniques presented can be used to successfully manage ‘difficult’ stakeholders in any organisation.

• Some of the ‘softer’ skills required by a BA, which may appear to be unorthodox, but which can be traced back to the skills needed to deal with real people in real-world situations.

Information & Technology for BA’s

Business Analysis for Big DataBert Brijs, CEO, Lingua Franca bvba

Business Analysis for Big Data requires new skills, new processes and new views on Business Analysis, totally different from analysis for application development of “classical” BI products like data marts, data warehouses, reports etc. In this presentation Bert Brijs, author of the worldwide selling book “Business Analysis for Business intelligence” points out the specific approach to make sure user expectations are met and a consistent design and architecture emerges from the proceedings.

• Think Technology: new technologies require new ways of performing thorough business analysis for Business Intelligence.

• Think Mathematics: Map Reduce is a powerful framework but it is not BI snake oil

• Think Text: the biggest Big Data promise at the moment is improved text mining, so you’d better assess the potential correctly and deal with it in the analysis phase

• Think of the Consequences: Big Data is not just a revolutionary technology stack, it will revolutionise the way business is organised.

• Think Business Cases for Marketing: a send-off with concrete examples of Big Data value creation

Insight to Innovation, The Role of User Experience in Defining Product and Organisational Transformation and SuccessIan Worley, Morgan Stanley

In an age where automation and self-service are core drivers of technological and operational change in organisations, the quality and effectiveness of the experiences we create for users (clients and employees) more than ever determine success.

This talk will introduce User Experience and demonstrate how the tools developed over the last century of human centred design thinking are, now more than ever, essential skills for any organisation to harness if they want to deliver better products and services to customers whilst reducing the cost of their operations and improving employee productivity and satisfaction.

How Do Business Analysis, User Experience (UX) and Agile Play Together Smoothly?Chris Matts, Agile Transformation Coach, Tesco

Chris will explain how Business Analysis, UX (Design and Research) and Agile work together. The session will introduce Feature Injection as a framework to structure how insights are gathered by UX researchers, Wireframes by Designers, Big Data and then provide Agile “specification by example” requirements in the Given-When-Then format.

Feature Injection consists of the following steps:

1. Hunt the Value

2. Work backwards

3. Break the model

Building a Business Intelligence CompetencyPeter Staunton, Business Intelligence Manager, Google

With the continued growth in data volumes and computing power, companies are increasingly looking to leverage these resources to unlock business value through Business Intelligence efforts. This presentation will describe some experiences of building a core BI competency within a business function and the challenges faced along the way. It will cover the core foundational pillars required for BI to be successful and illustrate with some examples how BI solutions have delivered real value to business stakeholders.

Writing the Right Agile StoriesJames Robertson, Principal, Atlantic Systems Guild

Stories are the fundamental building blocks of agile development. This means that the right solution can only emerge if your story is the right story.

Business Analysts are the right people to write the right stories. The right stories are much more than brainstormed features, conjectured functionality and guessed-at solutions. The right stories:

• Solve the real, not the imagined, problem

• Indicate functionality that provides optimal value to the eventual owner

• Encompass the culture and expectations of the

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eventual users and owners of the solution

• Are systemically correct

• Are more than someone’s idea of what they think would be a good thing to have in the product

This talk demonstrates how to write the right stories; how they are rooted in the real business problem; and are the stories that ensure the most valuable solution.

A Business Analyst’s Role in Data-Driven Decision MakingNdidi Alaneme, Business Analyst & Dave Baines, Business Analyst, BBC

This presentation will provide an insightful analysis of the tools and techniques that underpin data-driven decision making in two different areas within the BBC. This session will outline the role that data can play in an agile software development environment and how business analysts can assist, supported by a variety of real-world examples within the BBC. Areas for discussion include the mechanisms in place to provide the necessary data, benchmarking the performance of BBC products using key performance indicators (KPIs), harnessing the power of multi-variant testing to identify best-fit solutions, outlining and assessing success criteria for individual product improvements, and exploiting the wealth of data available to better understand problems, support creativity, and ultimately drive product roadmaps.

The key insights to take away are how data-driven decision making affects:

• Day-to-day agile software development processes

• Product roadmaps

• The business analyst role

Going Beyond ‘What Success Looks Like’ – Using Data to Achieve Successful ProjectsJamie Clouting, Principal Business Analyst & Joanne Latham, Lead Business Analyst, LateRooms.com

Delivering value is at the heart of the Business Analyst role, but how easy is it to identify tangible value and prove the success of a project or program?

In agile projects we’ll often define a “definition of done” or ask the question “what does success look like”. At LateRooms.com, we’ve developed a toolkit for our Business Analysts to support the business in using data to define what success looks like, and track it throughout the project lifecycle.

This presentation will look at the ways LateRooms.com collects, analyses and uses data to better define the problem space, setup up KPI driven Critical Success Factors and present Benefits Realisation.

The session will cover:

• Leveraging the most out of the data you already have

• Setting up baselines and real-time KPI dashboards

• Making better decisions from your data

• Presenting Benefits Realisation in a way the business will understand

Code-Free App Development – BA Opportunities and ThreatsChris Moran, Principal Consultant & Richard Johnston, Principal Consultant, Karona Consulting

Is it really possible to create a business system in days instead of months? The business demand for digital transformation is driving innovation in code-free development tools which promise to reduce system development time to mere days. This will force a radical rethink of the project lifecycle and will inevitably impact the role of Business Analysis. Do these tools live up to their claims? Do they enhance business engagement? Do they threaten to bypass Business Analysis altogether?

You will learn:

• How these technologies are going to challenge the traditional relationship between business and IT

• How these products can be another tool in your kitbag

• How business analysis techniques are intrinsic to the successful use of these tools

During this presentation we will build an App from scratch and deploy it to the Cloud to allow delegates to interact with it on their mobile devices.

d e v i c e The Expanding BA Toolkit

Facilitation Skills for Wider Organisational ImpactCraig Rollason, UK Business Analysis Manager, National Grid

This session explores the power of using facilitation tools and techniques in business analysis and wider organisation problem solving. It will include:

• Case studies of using a wide range of tools and techniques for facilitation at National Grid, outside the normal BA remit, to help your organisation and enhance the BA reputation

• References to the Facilitative Leadership and International Association Facilitators (IAF), and facilitation industry status

Don’t Fall Down Pit Holes – the Risks of Neglecting the NFRsLynda Girvan, Principal Consultant, AssistKD

Many people believe that focusing on functionality is all that is needed for project success. Yet, in practice, there is nothing more guaranteed to cause stress and annoyance than waiting for software to respond, being timed out when in a queue or finding that your records have gone astray. Projects, and even businesses, fail because non-functional requirements were not considered sufficiently early or even not identified at all. Not only can these delays and omissions result in higher costs, they can also cause reputational damage which, in today’s competitive world, can be fatal to an organisation. Lynda will discuss the importance of early and thorough consideration of non-functional requirements for the entire business solution, and will highlight examples, from her own experience, where poor analysis of non-functional requirements has endangered business change success.

Who Wants to BA Millionaire? A Toolkit to Hit the BA JackpotChris Evans, Business Analyst & Andy Whatling, Business Analyst, Specsavers

Business Analysts are valuable company assets, driving successful business change through effectively adapting their extensive toolkit to the situation. Yet too often we take our toolkit for granted, becoming comfortable with certain techniques and forgetting others that might be perfect for the job.

Think you know your BA skills? Your Boston Box from your Ansoff ’s Matrix? When would you apply value proposition analysis versus value chain analysis?

Come play our version of “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” to win a star prize! Contestants will be challenged to answer questions, followed by discussion about real life examples of the skills in practice including successes and failures.

Attendees will:

• Reinvigorate under-utilised skills and open their toolkit

• Gain new ideas to apply their techniques in different situations

In High Spirits - A Sensory AnalysisJonathan Bryant, Business Analyst, NFU Mutual

Think about Business Analysis in a whole new way! Drawing on examples from the whisky industry Jonathan intends to challenge the way you think about analysis. Learn how to analyse a whisky by considering its colour, nose and taste, and then apply these ‘abstract’ techniques to the real world of business analysis!

The presentation will also provide an overview of the whisky industry and the distillation process. You will see how and why the industry is currently booming, how far it has come in the past 20 years, and then be able to take some of the concepts illustrated and use them as part of your analysis toolkit.

This session will require some audience participation and will contain a few drams of whisky for a complete sensory experience!

Delegates will learn:

• New analysis techniques and be able to apply them to real work situations

• How to think creatively at work

• How to analyse a dram of whisky!

A BA Project Without an IT Spec: Identifying What People do With Their TimeSara Galloway, Senior Business Solutions Analyst, NHS Blood & Transplant

How do you track what 250 colleagues with the same job title do when EACH position is slightly different? How do you know what their customers value most when they have different interests? How do you make recommendations to consolidate and standardise elements, while retaining variation to account for local factors?

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This presentation will share the journey, techniques and lessons used to answer those questions with reference to the Specialist Nurse: Organ Donation role in NHSBT. This role provides one of NHSBT’s key frontline services, supporting the families of organ donors throughout the process, as well as coordinating with all the clinical staff. But there’s another side – building relationships in the hospital and community, raising awareness amongst the general public, monitoring trends within their hospital and intervening to overcome local barriers to organ donation. This side of the role is a vital enabler, but was poorly understood before this project.

• Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to evaluating job roles

• Knowing the limits of your data

• Identifying the key aspects of service to be maintained or improved during role redesign

Professional Presentations Made Easy (and Making Microsoft Office Work For You!)David Baskerville, Lead Business Analyst & Richard Patrick, Lead Business Analyst, Barclays

As Business Analysts, we have a unique set of skills, knowledge and expertise that helps us to elicit Requirements, write Designs, support Agile development and complete other analytical activities.

However, we are not always aware of simple time-saving methods/short cuts that could make our lives, so much easier!

Within this presentation we’ll provide you with hints and tips that will help you to write and deliver superior presentations, whether they are to Senior Executives, Workshops, over the telephone or during 1-2-1 meetings.

We’ll also talk about Excel, Word, and PowerPoint …we will not cover the basics, but will provide time-saving methods and short cuts to take-away and use!

From attending this session delegates will:

• Leave with new hints and tips and feel more confident about writing/delivering presentations to Stakeholders/Staff /Customers.

• Learn how to complete Microsoft Office tasks more efficiently and

• Be aware of ‘traps’ to avoid

Use of Roadmapping to Shape Agile Development and to Manage Early Benefits DeliveryPeter Kapitsa, Senior Business Analyst - E-Commerce, ASOS.com

Agile development frameworks bring benefits of de-risking projects through early incremental delivery and short feedback loop from the customers. To make the best use of agile development, projects need to be shaped to deliver incremental benefits for the business early in the lifecycle. BAs are challenged to ensure phasing of complicated technical delivery allows the realisation of meaningful business benefits in a staged manner. Author uses roadmapping as a primary technique to bring together solution architecture and business processes to shape technically challenging projects. Visual roadmaps help to take technical complexity out of decision making. Mapping dependencies between solution components alongside business changes and goals allows the BA to work out staged deliverables and manage benefits realisation for the business.

Delegates will learn how to:

• Shape benefits delivery of complex development projects using roadmapping

• Communicate up rationale behind development phasing avoiding pitfalls of technical complexity

• Be equipped to respond quickly to challenges or re-sequencing a project delivery

Business Process Tangles: Finding, Removing & Preventing ThemBrian Hunt, Business Process Analyst, Skanska

The symptoms of tangled processes include duplicated activities, discontinuities and errors. These destroy value but are often hidden from management as short term workarounds are created to address immediate problems. These workarounds may be re-used until new ones are required and added, resulting in a process landscape composed of tangled layers of complexity. The resulting cost, confusion and inconsistency can become business critical, with increased warranty and rework costs, customer dissatisfaction and damaged reputation. There is then an urgency to review and simplify processes. But where do you start? This presentation presents case studies and ideas for further development based on the authors own experience.

Delegates will learn:

• Why process tangles evolve and the harm they cause

• Approaches used to untangle and straighten processes

• How to prevent process tangles

“Probably the most relevant and effective conference I’ve ever been to.”Stephen Haarer, Business Analyst, Lloyds Banking Group

“Great to meet like-minded people who understand the BA discipline and can share thoughts, ideas and confirm thinking.”James Devereaux, Senior BA, Financial Conduct Authority

“Excellent opportunity to learn best practice and experiences from other BAs.”Deanne Adam, Senior Lead BA, Lloyds Banking Group

“I really enjoyed all 3 days. It was a great opportunity to meet other BAs from so many backgrounds and learn that we all encounter the same issues throughout the journey of our work.”Michelle Smith, BA, Bron Afon Community Housing

“Very informative and increases the professional standing of BA’s within organisations.”Audrey Bampoe, AVP, Credit Suisse

“Better than ever! Keynote speakers were particularly good this year.”Corrine Thomas, Head of BA Practice, Virgin Media

“Fantastic event. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot from real life examples.”Minal Patel, Lead BA, Gap Inc

“Very informative and widens your thinking.”Bhagwandas Jokotiah, Lead BA, National Grid

“Brilliant forum to share experiences and learn from each other no matter what level.”Jo Parnell, Principal BA, Aveva Solutions Ltd

“Definitely valuable to any BA at any point in their career from junior BAs to senior with 20+ years’ experience.”Ally Ward, Associate Director, Ernst & Young

“Great event - Really thought-provoking and learnt some new skills.”Jade Phillips, Lead Business Analyst, The Home Office

“Exceptional event - I am absolutely re-energised as a BA and BA manager and thoroughly inspired with new ideas for progress.”Danielle Morrison, Business Analyst, Legal & General

“I feel totally inspired, refreshed and can’t wait to use some of the handy tips for myself! I will definitely be recommending the conference to all my BA colleagues and will definitely attend again next year.”Laura Kennaway, Business Analyst, Ernst & Young

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