In today’s dynamic business environment, agility is no longer just a buzzword; it’s a necessity. As organisations strive to stay competitive and responsive to ever-changing market demands, the traditional approaches to business analysis are undergoing a significant transformation. In this article, we explore the need for adapting business analysis techniques and frameworks to thrive in an agile landscape.
Agile methodologies, with their iterative and incremental approach to project management, have revolutionised the way teams collaborate, innovate, and deliver value to customers.
However, this shift towards agility has profound implications for business analysts who play a critical role in understanding business needs, defining requirements, and aligning solutions with strategic objectives.
One of the key challenges in adopting agile practices lies in reconciling the structured nature of traditional business analysis with the fluidity and adaptability demanded by agile methodologies.
While traditional business analysis frameworks such as BABOK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) provide a comprehensive guide to best practices, they may not always seamlessly integrate with agile workflows.
So, how can business analysts adapt their techniques to thrive in an agile landscape?
1 – It’s essential to embrace a mindset shift towards flexibility and collaboration.
Unlike the linear, sequential approach of traditional waterfall methods, agile encourages continuous feedback and collaboration between cross-functional teams. Business analysts must actively engage with stakeholders, product owners, and development teams throughout the project lifecycle, fostering open communication and rapid adaptation to changing requirements.
2 – Business analysts should leverage agile-specific tools and techniques to enhance their effectiveness in delivering value.
Techniques such as user stories and prototyping enable business analysts to capture requirements iteratively, prioritise deliverables based on customer feedback, and maintain alignment with evolving business goals.
3 – Business analysts must adopt a “just-enough” documentation approach in agile projects.
Although detailed documentation has its advantages, having too much paperwork can slow progress and hinder teams from being creative and working quickly. Instead, business analysts should concentrate on producing concise materials that give enough information without unnecessary extras.
4 – Continuous learning and adaptation are essential for business analysts operating in an agile environment.
As agile methodologies evolve and new tools emerge, staying abreast of industry trends and best practices is paramount. Engaging in professional development activities, attending agile conferences, and seeking mentorship from experienced industry professionals can help business analysts hone their skills and stay ahead of the curve. View our Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme
The transition to an agile landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for business analysts. By embracing flexibility, collaboration, and iterative refinement, business analysts can adapt their techniques to thrive in agile environments while continuing to deliver value to their organisations and stakeholders.
As the pace of change accelerates, agility isn’t just an option; it’s a prerequisite for success in today’s business world!
Ready to enhance your business analysis skills for the agile era?
Explore our range of business analysis courses designed to equip professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to excel in agile environments. Click here to view our courses and take the next step in your professional development journey.
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As an employer, you want ‘best of breed’ training providers to meet your skills gaps. Metadata Training understands how to help you get the most value from your levy funding while minimizing the impact on your precious staff time.
We asked some of our customers why they chose us compared to other providers. Below are Eight key features that make Metadata Training’s Business Analyst Apprenticeship programme stand apart.
Our curriculum has been developed by experts in the industry who’ve taught, worked and trained in business analysis for 20+ years. It has been developed out of our passion for business analysis and is not just another trendy programme in our portfolio as it is for many other apprenticeship providers.
We are a specialist provider and our customers appreciate this. Our programme covers everything in the apprenticeship standard and beyond (we include agile and user experience courses). We push our learners to not only pass but get a distinction (some providers don’t cover the whole standards leaving your learners with skills gaps).
The learner gets access to 15+ expert BA mentors and trainers. Our teaching staff have the knowledge and commercial experience that goes way beyond syllabi and can advise on their application to organisations’ environment (some providers only offer access to 1 expert and that is on an ad-hoc basis).
Our learners also meet 1-2-1 monthly with their allocated expert BA mentor to learn how to apply theory in practice & build their portfolio of work. Some providers offer on-demand access to a mentor and the responsibility is left with the learner to schedule, which can affect learner engagement and completion of the programme. We ensure learners receive the right quality of training and support!
We offer extras in our apprenticeship programme – that other providers don’t offer. We offer 6 accredited qualifications (5 business analysis and 1 agile qualification) and all the exam fees are included. Other providers offer no certification or perhaps one or two.
Including these exams, fees save the employer approx. £1400+VAT per learner.
Our courses are delivered virtually on zoom and are facilitated by our expert trainers. Which means they are engaging and interactive. Our learners don’t have to struggle with long hours of self-learning and watching online videos without any real-time guidance and support.
Our courses are run with apprentices and non-apprentices with a mix of backgrounds and levels of experience. The conversation and sharing of experience facilitated by our training are some of the best learning experiences our learners tell us in their feedback. Drawing from real life experience of trainers and other experienced delegates is what makes the learning interesting and insightful!
Some providers run courses with a size of 40+ learners which can make it hard for learners to get personal and individual attention from the trainer. That’s why we choose to deliver training in small group sizes (max 12) which allows learners to ask questions, clarify concepts and receive the focused support that they need to excel.
Benefit from a flexible programme – we make it easy for the learner to fit the training into their life. We run 2 courses a month which are delivered in 3 day blocks or 1-day workshops so apprentices can arrange and change their course dates to fit around their work commitments so they don’t miss important training.
We are flexible with our eligibility criteria too, we accept apprentices that have between 0 to 5 years of experience.
We focus on progression at work rather than ticking the skills to the standard which some other providers tend to do – we do this by offering 1-2-1 monthly/fortnightly meetings with expert BA mentors and skills coaches who help the learner apply what they learnt during the courses on work projects.
That is why focusing on upskilling current staff who understand the business, but need to develop the technical business analysis skills, would fit better for our programme. It will allow them to become quickly efficient in their work and for the organisation to see tangible benefits from working with us. We’ve worked with some employers who initially upskilled current staff on our apprenticeship and then started employing new entry-level staff and upskilling them on the programme.
We can also customise our BA apprenticeship curriculum to address your organisation’s specific needs.
And finally, the best thing about our BA apprenticeship? You can start the learner at any time – no need to wait months for a cohort to be available.
What separates a mediocre business analyst from a good one? What makes the good business analysts the best at what they do?
A good analyst is appreciated by stakeholders, coveted by recruiters and hiring managers, and has a wide variety of career options available to them.
We’ve broken down 5 secrets to being a successful business analyst:
A strong foundation is key, so make sure to cover the skills that are at the core of business analysis. Good communication, problem-solving ability, and critical thinking – these underlie and branch into the more BA specific skills like creating requirements specifications, analysing requirements, creating visual models, facilitating elicitation sessions, and using the necessary business analyst tools.
The BCS Foundation in Business Analysis qualification is great start to learning the core concepts, tools, and techniques of business analysis.
Remember this is just the foundation…it doesn’t stop there.
Waiting for answers to come to you can waste a lot of time, especially with looming project deadlines. Knowing how to actively find the answers to questions differentiates a successful business analyst from a…business analyst.
Find alternative paths through the organisation and know when to involve the right people at the right time. A successful business analyst takes the initiative to work through challenging situations to come through to a solution.
Doing the same things the same way every time can hinder your progress as a business analyst. Developing the ability to apply a wide variety of business analysis techniques increases your marketability and work efficiency.
A successful BA is someone who can identify and select the right tool for the job instead of relying on their go-to tools and attempting to make it work for every situation (which often doesn’t work very well).
It’s likely that you’ll be less brushed up on tools and techniques that you use less often, attending lunch and learn webinars are a good way to get a refresher on specific BA techniques and their effective use.
Attend our upcoming webinar on storyboards
Check out our pre-recorded webinars
As a new BA, you might be in a role where you are expected to be the one who writes down stakeholder requirements or where it’s the biggest contribution you can make at first. Every BA starts somewhere!
But to be a successful business analyst, prepare to go the extra mile. Learnt to put yourself forward to resolve stakeholder conflicts. This way when the solution is delivered, you can ensure that the business truly owns that this is what they wanted and is prepared to use it.
Understanding the business process or the underlying problem to be solved can lead you in this direction. So can creating clarity.
Business analysts bring a unique blend of critically important soft skills and analysis skills. Combination of these skill sets help the business analyst create clarity. And clarity does not simply mean that you get sign-off on the spec.
Rather than relying on just sign-offs and hundred-page documents, using analysis techniques to drill into details and ask relevant questions is what elevates project clarity. Focus less on sign-off and more on buy-in, get into the appropriate details to ensure true clarity emerges.
The BCS Diploma in Business Analysis is an internationally-recognised qualification that works to close any of these skills gap that you or your team may have, whilst developing a detailed understanding of business analysis best practice. Learn to deliver quality work and gain trust with stakeholders to excel as a successful business analyst!
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Agile is a trendy topic at the moment. To keep up with a fast-changing world you need to be agile. But first, you need to understand agile. Below, we have put together a brief overview of the key principles of Agile Business Analysis.
This is about looking at the entire system. Analyse the need in the context of the big picture. The focus is on understanding the business context and why a change is necessary.
Understanding the customer means you can better empathise with the customer. Analyse the problem by putting yourself in their shoes, this gives you a better chance to understand the problem and then reach effective solutions.
A business may have multiple needs, focus on understanding the values provided by the sub-needs to help you prioritise them better. A core competency of Agile Business Analysts is being able to continuously assess and prioritise work to be done. This will allow you to maximise the value being delivered at any point in time.
Agile emphasises the importance of using real life examples. This principle guides in building a shared understanding of the business need and how the solution will satisfy that need. Competent Agile Business Analysts will engage the stakeholders regularly by creating different models to elaborate on these models (for example personas, user actions, data, etc.)
It is crucial to understand how to deliver a solution within given constraints. Constraints can be derived from factors like technology, time, or resources.
For example, a new requirement on an ongoing application development may not be feasible by the current technology platform in use. Or due to low availability of certain key resources.
Collaboration is the foundation to a continuously changing agile environment – it keeps everyone aligned with the current context and relevant information. Implementation of this principle is visible when Agile Business Analysts create and contribute to an environment where all stakeholders contribute value on an ongoing basis.
This principle guides Agile Professionals to avoid waste wherever possible. All activities that fall into the below categories are considered waste:
This links back and reiterates the importance of the third principle: Analyse to determine what is valuable.
Being able to effectively balance the project goals against the project deadline is imperative! Delays can impact the desirable outcomes for a business with respect to market opportunities or legal deadlines. Therefore, delivering the projects on time is one of the key principles that agile professionals should keep in mind.
Clients changing requirements during the development process of a project is more common than not. A core principle of agile is the ability to accommodate these changes.
Providing support and motivating your team members is the main ingredient for facilitating efficient work and delivering better results.
Focus on matching your project tasks to the working capacity of the team members. Actively taking the steps to prevent an overload of work by focusing on more specific tasks will help you achieve good results.
Any successful agile team will make it a work ethic to self-reflect upon their work processes. Actively taking the steps to continuously improve their skills and techniques will help in increasing the work productivity.
Keeping the key principles of agile business analysis in mind can help you successfully achieve the goals and objectives of an agile project as these principles act as a guide for the teams to perform more efficiently and sustainably.
Metadata Training offers APMG-accredited qualifications in Agile Business Analysis which teaches a business analyst how to work in an agile environment, and will provide and in-depth introduction to agile concepts and way of working.
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Our apprentice, Alex Challis, shares how the business analyst apprenticeship has changed his life and career.
Alex has been upskilling on the Business Analyst Apprenticeship for the last 9 months when he shared his experience in an interview with Metadata Training. The Business Analyst Apprenticeship is an 18-month programme so he has 9 more months to go. He is already seeing significant transformation in his approach and he explains in the video below.
His increased confidence and knowledge has motivated him to take initiative on projects to benefit his organisation. He can co-create and facilitate better business outcomes for the organisation and the stakeholders he’s working with.
In this short video, he shares how the Business Analyst Apprenticeship has changed his career and life. To watch the full interview please click here.
Want to become a business analyst expert or give your team the opportunity to develop the confidence and skills to create better business outcomes for your business?
Download our business analyst brochure and find out how we can support you and your team.
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Alex shares his experience upskilling on the Business Analyst Apprenticeship. Full interview available.
Watch the video to discover:
Alex is a business analyst currently working for Queen Mary, University of London. He has been working as a business analyst for the past 2/3 years. He was interested in upskilling in his role and was originally looking to do the Business Analysis Diploma but when he heard of the opportunity for a government-funded BA apprenticeship, he put himself forward for the programme with the help of his manager at the time. Alex talks about how the apprenticeship has allowed him to uplift his skills to a level expected for business analysts.
You can watch the full recording of our interview with Alex below.
“Guidance from experts to uplift your skills and qualifications to the level expected from business analysts.” – Alex Challis, current apprentice on the programme
The Business Analyst Apprenticeship is a level 4 apprenticeship spanning over 18 months with off-the-job training (averages to 6 hours a week). It is a government-funded programme of training, coaching, mentoring and professional qualifications. The programme is an opportunity for professionals to become better at their job and advance in their role and for the business to get better competent people in business analyst roles.
In addition to the Apprenticeship Standard certification, the programme includes the BCS Business Analysis Diploma and an agile qualification (most of our learners have achieved the APMG Agile Business Analysis qualification) – which are standalone qualifications. We are happy to discuss options with you so do get in touch.
Our programme also contains soft skills and mentoring activities which are delivered through one-day workshops. Besides getting industry-recognised qualifications and having your skills assessed against industry’s best practice, apprentices get their own mentor and coach that they will meet 1-2-1 fortnightly. Having someone impartial to talk to and to guide you is really valuable and something only high executives get the chance to experience. Apprentices will be able to fast-track their career and become effective and a valuable asset to their organisation.
An apprenticeship is a great way to learn for anyone at any age. Our apprentices range in age from 19 to 50+ and range in educational backgrounds from level 3 apprenticeships, A-levels, and to degree level and above. Some have limited business and no BA experience, some are transitioning into BA roles and others have up to 3 years of BA experience but no formal qualifications. It’s ideal for someone that is just starting out in a business analyst role, or is looking to transfer skills from another job that requires a similar skill set or responsibilities.
We have considerable experience with councils with apprentices from Solihull, Leicestershire and particularly with Coventry City Council.
Our current apprentice, Alex Challis has kindly agreed to share what the business analyst apprenticeship is to him and how he thinks it differs from completing the Business Analysis Diploma on its own.
Join us on our upcoming webinar to find out more about the programme and to ask questions to our Apprenticeship Director, Mike Goodland. Register below for our webinar Building the future with a BA Apprenticeship – special Apprenticeship Week event
Join us to find out more about the programme and to ask questions to our Apprenticeship Director, Mike Goodland.
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We’ve created this article to give you more information on:
The first step – Talk to the person who manages the levy
If you are a manager looking to enrol a staff member on the Business Analyst Apprenticeship you need to identify who manages the apprenticeship levy within your organisation.
A good starting point is to reach out to HR and Learning & Development. In some organisations, there is a dedicated Apprenticeship Manager who manages the levy.
Make sure you download our business analyst apprenticeship brochure which provides information on the levy and also on the programme – cost, duration and what is included.
The person who manages the levy in your organisation will be able to tell you:
The second step – Receive approval
We can provide all the documentation you need a brochure, a sample apprenticeship agreement, a sample commitment statement and a detailed description of our business analyst programme. We have attended meetings with the Learning & Development or the Apprenticeship Manager to discuss how our programme works and how we can support our learners upskill and progress in their role. Contact us to schedule a call or a meeting.
The third step – Enrol employee
Once the approval is received from HR/L&D or the Apprenticeship Manager the process of actually enrolling the learner can be as short as 1 week if we hear back from you quickly.
We will need to:
Once these hav been done the apprentices can start their training as stated in their plan of training.
If you are a professional:
then we can help you fast-track your career on the business analyst apprenticeship programme.
Some professionals are already doing business analysis work without realising it. Download our skills gap analysis to see how many transferable skills you have to transition into a business analyst role.
If you are an administrator who understands how the business operates or a subject matter expert then you are a good candidate for transitioning into a business analyst career.
Our apprentice, Alex Challis has kindly agreed to share how he managed to convince his employer to support him upskill on the business analyst apprenticeship. He initially contacted us to enrol on the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis and he was going to self-fund but when we told him about the Business Analyst Apprenticeship he went to have a chat with his manager and the Apprenticeship Manager in his organisation and he got the approval to enrol.
We can help you put a business case together and identify the people you need to talk to, just get in touch with us today using the form below. We will send you the brochure and arrange to have a chat with you.
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Do you manage business analysts and need to upskill them?
If your training budget doesn’t allow you to send your team on courses so they can develop skills and confidence then the Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme might be the answer for you.
It’s an opportunity that few people are aware of because:
1) It’s a relatively new programme.
2) There is a misconception that apprenticeships are for school leavers and young professionals only.
The Business Analyst Apprenticeship is now used to up-skill all professionals who need a career change or want to be better at their job. Introduced 4 years ago, the Business Analyst Apprenticeship is a level 4 programme that allows professionals to enrol in a comprehensive, structured and flexible 18-month programme that will allow them to develop the skills needed to perform at a high level and to produce high quality results for the business.
When you first notice skill gaps, you might want to instinctively hire new staff but up-skilling your existing business analysts is what gives you a better chance of enabling long-term, cost-effective growth in the team.
5 reasons why you should up-skill your own talent before you hire new staff
We can deliver the business analyst apprenticeship programme to levy-paying and non-levy paying companies. If you work for an employer who has an annual wage bill of over £3 million then they pay a 0.5% levy as part of their PAYE tax bill (this started in April 2017). This money goes to a digital account which your organisation can use to fund training their own apprentices so essentially, it’s at no extra cost!
Even if your business is not paying the Levy, the government will still foot 95% of the bill, meaning that your team members would receive a high quality Business Analyst qualification for just 5% of the cost.
As a specialist business analyst company, we adapt our programme to your apprentices’ level of expertise. Rather than having a career coach who is focused on ticking boxes and following a pre-defined process, apprentices on the programme will work with a mentor (who has real-life business analysis experience) to guide them through their learning journey.
Mentors play a crucial role in fine-tuning the learning process to better suit the employer/organisation, as they fully understand both the business needs and the Apprenticeship process.
Find out more on how a mentor can increase your team’s success
Every apprentice has a different level of expertise and specific training needs. We adapt to your needs so you get the most out of the programme. We won’t box you in a programme to waste your business and the apprentice’s precious time.
There are a few business analyst programme out there but if you are not knowledgeable about what is available you might end up getting less than you pay for and waste your precious time.
Interested to find out more how we can help? View our Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme
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While training professionals over the years, we’ve come across a common experience where BAs sometimes feel to just get “things” done without the proper time and analysis. Many have succumbed to this at times in their career – and from talking to delegates on our courses, it is always to their ultimate regret. Especially for BAs that start in their role without a formal qualified background, it can be difficult to be the one that keeps asking questions when it feels like everyone else in the team has things figured out.
When self-doubt creeps in, you need a structure to fall back on. A framework to guide you forward and re-affirm that you are on the right track.
In developing our business analysis training, we often have to refer to the key principles of business analysis, these in turn highlight the attitude and mindset needed by a BA. A principle can be defined as an underlying fundamental law or concept. Therefore, business analysis principles are the basic rules that should be followed to manage changes in an organisation successfully.
Below is a brief summary of the 6 key principles, outlined by BCS, that we share with our delegates which helps them form a framework to refer back to throughout their career.
Solving business problems is the main responsibility of a business analyst. Effective problem solving requires you to first distinguish between the symptoms of problems and the root causes. Once you have identified this, you can start investigating and come up with a plan to address these root causes of business problems. This saves you from wasting time and the organisation from wasting money, on creating solutions that only touch the surface of the problem and not eliminate it.
Today’s business environment changes rapidly – change is continuous and at an increasing rate. To become and remain successful and competitive, businesses must continuously improve their processes. Failure to do so is likely to result in higher costs, lower revenues, less motivated employees and fewer satisfied customers.
A good BA should analyse opportunities for business improvement using IT systems and prioritise problem resolutions that enhance the customer experience.
Having the ability to challenge pre-determined solutions. It is important to understand that there can be several solutions to a business problem. This is where a BA comes in to identify and evaluate these options for meeting the business’ needs.
Always be aware of financial and timescale constraints. At the start of a project, a BA will work with an organisation to understand their requirements and often this results in a long list, which can easily complicate the solution process. It is important to identify those out of the list of requirements that are not feasible and essentially do not contribute to the business objectives.
Always evaluate stated requirements against business needs and constraints.
Just providing and implementing solutions that meet the requirements is not enough! To support the effective development of a solution a BA should partake in the following stages: testing, deployment and post-implementation review of solutions.
Evaluate: Is the solution benefiting the business?
With multiple stakeholders involved in a project, it’s likely that conflicting stakeholder views and requirements will surface during the process. A skilled BA should be able to recognise and negotiate these conflicts between stakeholders, to finalise a mutual path forward for the business.
These are the core principles that clarify why business analysis is so relevant in today’s business world and set out the responsibilities that business analysts should recognise and accept.
To gain a more detailed understanding of business analysis best practice and develop the skills and knowledge to support successful business change within your organisation, view our BCS Business Analysis Diploma.
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Asking your employer to fund your training may seem daunting, but you have less to worry about than you think. Apart from in rare cases, most employers will be thrilled to hear that you want to broaden your knowledge base and skills of the job that they’re paying you to do, ultimately helping them to further succeed. Training should be a part of common practice for businesses that want to keep their employees happy and confident, and perform better in their roles.
Here’s everything you need to cover when building a business case for training:
Start with the basic information about the course you want to do; the name of the course, the accredited provider, how much it will cost, how long it will take, the dates you’re proposing to do the course, and what the payment options are.
When writing this section, consider what’s important and interesting to your manager and/or boss. Relate each point back to a business objective, such as sales goals or efficiency targets. If you can, include quantifiable benefits such as how much time or money exactly you expect to be able to save after completing your training. Be as clear as possible about how training will enhance your ability to deliver on these important aspects of your role, so make sure to include here:
Focus on the outcomes and results of this training. You don’t need to focus on being better at an area you’re weak in too – perhaps training will make one of your strengths your superpower within the business.
By including the course syllabus, your manager will have a clear overview of everything that you’ll be learning and the course will be less of an abstract idea to them but instead a solid investment of training budget.
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Professional networking isn’t about walking into a room full of strangers and trying to charm them into being your best friends. Nor is it about identifying the most senior people in the room and agreeing with everything they say. It’s about consciously and gradually building up a list of contacts, while being part of a mutually supportive group.
As we all know, networking within your organisation can benefit you in your current role and make you a potential candidate for promotions in your workplace. However, often forgotten is the fact that making professional contacts outside of your organisation can also help you excel in your career.
Now the question that arises is, what is the best way to develop these external connections? You could attend networking events but why limit yourself to formal events only? From our experience as a training provider, we can confidently say that professional training courses are a great opportunity to build a peer support network!
1. Career Opportunities
One of the most obvious advantages to building a professional network is the possible career opportunities that come with it. Having contacts in the right places will ensure you have a heads-up about the latest openings, and a well-placed word could help you secure that interview.
Research shows that 70% of all jobs are not published publicly on job sites and as much as 80% of jobs are filled through personal and professional connections. So, start building that professional network and become part of that 80%!
2. A source of BA knowledge
A lot of the people you meet on business analysis courses are in similar roles or deal with similar projects so they often encounter similar problems at work! By building a network with fellow learners on the courses, you create a support group where you have the chance to discuss your problems together.
Your network can be an excellent source of new perspectives and ideas to help you in your role. Exchanging information on challenges, experiences and goals is a key benefit of networking because it allows you to gain new insights that you may not have otherwise thought of.
The Association for Talent Development reported that among people who are put in an environment with other professionals, 42% are inspired to think in new ways and 36% of people show increased creativity!
Put yourself in these environments and see your career develop. Get started on building your peer support network by attending a professional training course.
“The course was a very good environment to network and meet other practitioners.” – Kanima
To find out more about what courses we offer – Download our business analysis guide
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Getting started on your professional BA training can be hard when you’re not sure which route is best for you. Most of our delegates ask about qualifications that will help them make that big career change they have been holding out for. We have narrowed down to two qualifications that we think will take your career to the next level!
The Diploma in Business Analysis was developed by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT and has become the widely recognised qualification for professionals wanting to become a business analyst or looking to get accredited. It’s becoming expected for all professionals working in the industry to hold this qualification, so whether you are new to the sector or have years of experience this course is something you can’t do without.
The BCS diploma in business analysis consists of one foundation and three practitioner qualifications followed by an oral exam. Each qualification stands alone and, in various combinations, leads to the International BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
As a training provider, we see a lot of our delegates excelling in their career after getting the Diploma qualification. Let’s talk about some of the major life changes we have seen.
Better job satisfaction
The Business Analysis Diploma teaches you the key knowledge and skills that is necessary for BAs. Of course you could consider that having experienced senior BAs in your team allows you to pick up this knowledge and skills. However, it’s likely you will fall into a cycle of dependency on these senior colleagues to give you time to learn about the role and understand it.
This habit of relying on another colleague prevents you from developing a feeling of certainty in your own decisions and working approaches. This can lower your confidence in your own ability and eventually working on projects become increasingly stressful and start to feel like a chore. Having insecurities at work can make it hard to focus on your development and future success.
The Business Analysis Diploma helps you build your own skillset with industry-approved techniques. This helps you build confidence in yourself and your abilities to help you to feel good, eventually increasing your job satisfaction, and builds up your all-around happiness in your role.
Research by Fadilah (2018) shows that increased self-efficacy and self-esteem leads to improved results at work, and increased success at work is positively related to increased job satisfaction!
“I already had a lot of business analysis skills but doing the diploma re-enforced and really gave me the confidence and improved my job satisfaction. I am now confident that what I am doing is, in fact, the accepted model of tackling problems.” – Angela, Business Analyst
Better employment opportunity
Putting job satisfaction aside, this new gained confidence can make a difference to whether you actually get your first role as a business analyst or not. And this is why professionals new to business analysis tend to choose the Business Analysis Diploma in hopes of getting a new role.
Completing the Diploma involves passing an oral exam and this exam is often described as similar to job interviews for business analyst roles. The preparation for the exam and doing the exam is great practice so alongside the professional qualification, you also gain the skills and confidence to go to an interview and convince the employer that you are the one for the role.
“The oral exam really solidified my knowledge and enabled me to prepare properly” – Imtiaz, Business Analyst
“really helped me gain an understanding of what a BA does but also the different variants of a BA. I am very new to the industry and looking to break into it with no experience” – Jamie on reviews.co.uk
Not to mention that the demand for qualified business analysts in the workforce has increased. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the need for business analysts to increase 14% by 2024. This is one of the highest average percentages among growing occupations.
Find out more about the BCS Business Analysis Diploma
For managers with limited training budgets, the business analyst apprenticeship is the best option for your staff!
The IS Business Analyst Apprenticeship is a level 4 apprenticeship spanning over 13 -18 months with 20% off-the-job training. The programme aims to help apprentices develop business analysis skills. The best part is it includes the BCS Business Analysis Diploma and Agile qualifications.
If your staff are new to business analysis and your company is paying the apprenticeship levy, then we recommend that the Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme is a better option for professional training. Now, let’s talk about how completing the apprenticeship can change your BA team for the better!
Personal mentoring and increased productivity
As part of the apprenticeship programme, each apprentice is paired with an experienced BA mentor. These one-to-one coaching sessions with a mentor allow apprentices to reflect on their training to ensure that their learning actually fits with the problems that they are facing at work, it helps the apprentice with connecting the theoretical with the practical. All forms of professional training teach you the theory but the apprenticeship programme helps you integrate your new knowledge into your work projects for better success.
Hurst (2014) reviewed that investment from training will increase by 4-fold when you combine training with mentoring to bring the theory to life.
“I use the skills I have learnt during my apprenticeship to identify and analyse problems and inefficient processes, find ways to resolve these problems and set realistic timeframes to ensure these problems are resolved on time, on budget and in scope, with the aim to bring in more efficient working processes for my team and organisation.” – Kerry
Find out more about how a mentor increases your BA team’s success
Promotions and Higher-paying jobs
In the field of business analysis, higher paying jobs are more commonly offered internally to their own staff when vacancies are available. Though experience in the company and a portfolio of successful projects is acknowledged and plays a role, many companies still require staff in these higher positions to hold formal qualifications.
As an employee, you may have the skills to work effectively as a business analyst, but the only thing preventing you from moving up the career ladder in your organisation is your lack of accreditation. The Business Analyst Apprenticeship fills these gaps and helps you to build a stronger candidate profile for yourself. With the the practical experience and industry-recognised certifications, you will be in a better position to secure a promotion or a higher-paying role.
“The apprenticeship allowed me to get the job that I wanted.” – Victoria, Business Analyst
“While my skills were recognised, I was restricted in being able to move my career forward formally.” – Kerry, Business Analyst
In 2020, LinkedIn listed Business Analysis as “one of the careers with the fastest salary growths”. Forbes also reported in 2020 that business analysis will move towards implementing agile work practices to embrace business change. Considering that the apprenticeship programme incorporates both BCS courses and agile qualifications, it is likely to enable future success for BA’s in such a fast-changing industry.
Find out more about the Business Analyst Apprenticeship
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No matter what level you are in your career as a business analyst, there are always going to be key skills that don’t necessarily come naturally to you, just like in any other area of life.
Perhaps you’re great at conceptualising a project, but struggle to consider stakeholders during this process. Or maybe you’re a whizz at structured techniques for investigating, but find it hard to redesign process models.
The first step to being a better business analyst is knowing which skills you’re missing, which can be difficult to analyse without someone senior walking you through everything that you should know.
To make this process easier we’ve created a Business Analysis Skills Gap Analysis worksheet that anyone can use to easily identify which skills they might need help with developing to do better business analysis.
Just fill out the worksheet (and answer honestly!) using the self assessment rating guidelines included. And if you need don’t know where to go from there, we’re here to help.
On October 28th 2021, we will be introducing new pricing plans. Our prices have remained the same over the last three years, meaning that every time there has been a price increase from suppliers we have absorbed that cost. Unfortunately, this is no longer sustainable and due to increasing exam prices and changes in the syllabus, our pricing will now have to reflect this.
These increased prices mean that we can continue to serve our delegates with 5* service that keeps pass rates high and that will reflect the needs of our delegates better.
Below is a quick overview of the pricing changes:
The price plans shown below apply to our following courses: BCS Business Analysis Practice, BCS Requirements Engineering, BCS Modelling Business Processes, BCS Agile Systems Development Essentials, BCS Foundation in Business Analysis, BCS Foundation in Business Change, BCS Organisational Behaviour.
Our current prices:
New prices from 28th October 2021:
Standard Business Analysis Diploma Bundle (Virtual) – It is currently priced at £2695+VAT. From 28th October 2021, it will be priced at £3495+VAT (save £900).
Standard Business Analysis Diploma Bundle (Classroom) – From 28th October 2021, it will be priced at £3895+VAT (save £1300).
Weekend Courses Bundle (Virtual Only) – From 28th October 2021, it will be priced at £4295+VAT (save £1700).
Limited time offer: If you purchase any business analysis course or bundle package by 28th October 2021, you will receive the product at the current price, no matter when you decide to take the course or exam. Book ahead of time now to save some money!
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We are aware the pandemic has brought challenges for all professionals including our customers and delegates.
We want to support the business analysts community and all professionals looking to develop business analysis skills and expertise to prepare for the future. We have been working hard to find a safe way to restart classroom based courses again in line with government advice. Nevertheless, the safety and security of our customers and team is always our top priority.
In order to do to make your training experience with us safe, stress-free, and enjoyable, we implemented the following initiatives:
You can attend engaging courses run by experienced trainers from anywhere!
Trying to train and up-skill your business analysts with a limited training budget is a challenge – even more so when it’s a struggle to find that talent in the first place.
We’re seeing time and time again that demand for skilled Business Analysts is only continuing to grow, while the pool of talent dries out. Training your existing staff can be expensive and time consuming – but it’s often still cheaper than hiring in new talent when you don’t need to.
Building yourself a team of superstar business analysts doesn’t have to be so costly though; we’ve put together this handy guide with 8 tips on how to grow your business analysts without breaking your budget.
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If you heard about a project that came in a year late, twice its original budget, and every single major player swore that they would never work with the person in charge ever again, you’d assume that that was a failed project.
Well, it may surprise you to find out that that project was actually the film Titanic, and I think we can all safely say that as a project it was a success. Just because it came in over budget and overtime doesn’t mean to say it failed.
When we talk about failed projects, it’s more important to consider whether or not it delivered business benefits. Titanic was a success because it delivered business benefits.
So how do we stop projects from not delivering on business benefits, and therefore failing?
The first stage is to make sure that your project is solving the right problem. Far too often in businesses we see people implementing a project because they have spare budget, or because it sounds like a good idea, or they have been sold the idea by another company. Don’t just do a project for the sake of it.
What needs to be done as an organisation is to put in place an understanding of how to create projects that deliver benefits. This means first acknowledging where the problems exist in the organisation at this moment. Next, you need to uncover the root causes for these problems, not just attempt to solve the symptoms.
From there, it can be decided where the organisation wants to be in the future, bringing light to the gap between where the organisation is now and where it wants to be. Once you have a clear view and understanding of this gap, you can decide on and design the best technique to bridge that gap. A well-crafted business case is key to this.
When you are creating this business case, you need to ensure clear stakeholder involvement in addition to well thought through solutions. As a Business Analyst, it is not your job to tell your organisation which is the right solution. Your job is to present several solutions to them and let them have the choice.
Once the project has been completed, it’s then necessary to engage in a business benefits realisation process. Without this, you are just assuming that the benefits were achieved. When you undertake this process you’re able to categorically prove if the benefits were achieved or not – and if not, what lessons can be learned for the future.
It’s a safe bet for us to say that many of you reading this will have been involved in a post project review that focused on how the project was run, but didn’t touch on whether or not the project achieved the benefits that you had hoped for.
There is no point in starting a poorly conceived project. For a number of organisations this may be the default, and it is the path to failure.
A lot of time is spent making the project deliver within budget, but if that project is the wrong project then the question to ask is this: would that time have been better spent choosing the right project in the first place?
As a Business Analyst, it can be easy to land in the mindset of “How does this apply to me as a BA? I have no say in how my company chooses its projects”.
The next time a project goes astray due to poorly conceived ideas, it may be your chance to speak up and say “We should be thinking how to start better projects, rather than trying to solve them when they’re going wrong”.
The best way to avoid failure of a project is to start it the right way.
With there now being several ways for business analysts to build skills and knowledge in the workplace, It is completely reasonable to seek out the benefit of professional training and question how much more value could it really bring to your work? It is an undeniable truth that business analysis training comes at a price, often a large one, and this can concern many individuals whether this money spent is truly an effective investment for their career?
Being a training provider, there are 3 key things that both; we and past trainees, have seen as a great outcome of business analysis training:
Of course in many workplaces there are other more experienced senior BAs who have done a lot of BA work before on similar projects. So you have the opportunity to learn from them and understand how to approach tasks. However, the problem with this is that you then become dependent on these senior colleagues to give you time to learn about the role and understand it.
This can often leave you second-guessing and being unsure of your own decisions and approaches. Professional business analysis training works to steer you away from this overdependence by building your skillset with industry-approved techniques. Thus, ultimately increasing your confidence in your own ability as a business analyst to lead projects.
“Completing an apprenticeship has really made a difference to my confidence, improved my job satisfaction and really made a difference to the projects that I am leading. It has improved my leadership skills and the depth of my technical knowledge.” – Jodie, Business Analyst, Coventry City Council
“I already had a lot of business analysis skills but doing the diploma re-enforced and really gave me the confidence that – this is the right way of doing things. I am now confident that what I am doing is, in fact, the accepted model of tackling problems.” – Angela, Business Analyst
A lot of companies don’t have the experienced senior BAs or are limited in the numbers that they do have. This can make it difficult to implement such a knowledge sharing environment in the workplace.
This is where business analysis training can be useful in guiding you. It provides you with a structured framework and essentially a process to follow when working on projects.
As a business analyst, your role will involve working across multiple projects that may sit at different stages of a typical project lifecycle. Professional training will develop your understanding of where you sit within each project, what a typical project lifecycle looks like, where you are expected to be involved and where you could be involved. The theory works hand in hand with practical application and essentially trains you to meet the expectations of your role.
“If they don’t have other BAs to talk to, to understand the role and what the expectations are, then I’d recommend the diploma for sure. It’ll give them a good long-term view of what a BA actually does, what value they offer to organisations, where they sit and the type of work they can do” – Rory, Business Analyst
“It’s easy to work in a business analysis role without understanding how to connect all the moving parts together, like joining up the dots. However, my apprenticeship has helped me to bring all those things together, developing my business and personal skills and Business Analysis knowledge to another level.” – Harpal, Business Analyst
It’s become common for companies to hire internally from their own staff when vacancies in higher positions are available. Despite this, as important as the soft skills are for the right candidate, many companies still require formal qualifications.
You may have the skills to work effectively as a business analyst, but the only thing preventing you from moving up the career ladder in your organisation is your lack of accreditation.
Taking on professional BA training fills these gaps and helps you to build a stronger candidate profile for yourself. With the right certifications, you will be in a better position to secure a promotion.
“I did the diploma over the past couple of years. It’s definitely helped me in terms of the progression of my role. I’ve been able to progress into a senior consultant position” – Rory, Business Analyst
“So, when I started I was in a junior BA role and that has changed now to BA. Having had the knowledge from the courses, that enabled me to make a good case for promoting my role so I have now gone up a level.” – Angela, Business Analyst
Every month, we host Lunch & Learn sessions with one of our expert trainers. These sessions are hands-on, practical, and help you develop business analysis skills for free. Each session focuses on teaching you a specific business analysis technique that is essential for you as a business analyst.
These sessions cover everything from 25 Modelling Techniques To Get Stakeholder Buy In, to How To Create A Customer Journey Map. You can see previous recordings here.
Each session is divided into 3 sections: introduction of the technique by the trainer, a practical group exercise (have a go at applying the technique on a scenario given by the trainer), followed by a Q&A at the end.
You can attend the session virtually over zoom from anywhere, on a weekday between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm. Grab your lunch and learn something new! We encourage you to go back to work and start applying these techniques to your projects.
Sign up to our newsletter in the form below to find out when our next Lunch & Learn will be, and we look forward to seeing you there!!
Our sessions will focus on a variety of techniques – we are in the process of organising topics for 2022.
Check out our previous lunch and learn recordings
“I have really enjoyed the two lunch and learn sessions that I have attended. I think they are a really great way to refresh yourself on some of the tools and techniques, plus they give a great opportunity to catch up with tutors / discuss with other BA’s.”
If you are interested in business analysis training, find out how to get free training.
As the name suggests, the sessions take place on weekdays from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm. We run one Lunch & Learn each month.
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Business analysis training can be expensive, especially if you are self-funding. The pressure of the expenses can often shy you away from pursuing the professional training that you want and need to push your career in the right direction.
There are a few ways that you can get trained without having to dig into your own pockets though. We have options across varying levels of training depending on whether you just need a refresh on some vital practices for your day to day work, or a complete career boosting course.
Every month, we host Lunch & Learn sessions with one of our expert trainers. These sessions cover everything from 25 Modelling Techniques To Get Stakeholder Buy In, to How To Create A Customer Journey Map. You can see previous recordings here.
If you have colleagues in your company that are also interested in business analysis training, a corporate training option may be suitable for you.
Metadata Training offers corporate discounts for bookings of 5+ people – Get in touch for a quote
Depending on the size of your business, you could receive apprenticeship training for free or at a reduced cost.
The Apprenticeship Levy is a levy on UK employers to fund apprenticeships and help their staff up-skill. Many businesses don’t use the levy and end up wasting the money.
To find out if this funding is available to you, ask your HR team whether your organisation pays the levy or not.
If you work for an employer who has an annual wage bill of over £3 million then they pay a 0.5% levy as part of their PAYE tax bill. This money goes to a digital account that your organisation uses to fund apprenticeships. This means an organisation of about 1000 staff paying an average salary of £30,000 will have a levy pot of about £150,000 available. All this money can be used by your organisation to fund training for their own apprentices, and if you don’t use it then you lose it.
Even if your organisation is already spending to the limit of their levy pot, remember that the employer only contributes 5% of the cost of additional apprenticeships and the government contributes a further 95%.
So, you can get the training you need and your company doesn’t have to worry about a limited training budget!
With the business analyst apprenticeship, besides training, you also get access to a mentor that helps you fast-track your skills and become an efficient and high performing business analyst.
The qualification is tailored to every apprentice so you will progress from where you currently are to reach a higher level of expertise.
We know that as a BA manager, training your staff is one of the most difficult parts of managing your team. Training can be a hit and miss for some and a common problem for many is that the training that staff receive is not translating back into the workplace. In simple terms, employees go on courses but struggle to apply it back into the workplace.
So, why are your trainees not performing at the level that they need to perform despite having training?
The three keys to success during and after training are:
Now how can you provide these key aspects for your trainees to improve their performance after training?
The answer is to implement a mentor alongside the training.
Mentors are experienced professionals who:
In other words, it’s a personalised form of one-to-one coaching.
This regular one-to-one coaching alongside attending training courses helps trainees to bridge the gap between theory and workplace practice. Mentors play a role in fine-tuning the learning process to better suit the employer/organisation as they fully understand both the business needs and the Apprenticeship process.
Coaching sessions with a mentor allow your team members to reflect on their training to ensure that their learning actually fits with the problems that they are facing at work, and can help the mentee with connecting the theoretical with the practical. Learning the theory and being able to pass the exam are just one side of the coin when it comes to the success of your team.
Recent studies have shown that your investment from training will increase by 4-fold when you combine training with mentoring to bring the theory to life. Let’s get down to business and talk about how you can put this into plan.
There are two main ways to do this:
You could find an experienced business analyst, within the company, to support the employee as a coach during training. Schedule regular sessions for both of them to discuss and reflect on recent learning and they can work together to think of an action plan for tasks at work. It’s important to define what the mentee should expect from the mentor in the short term and long term, and how they will monitor their progress.
However, this route can be a challenge for companies that don’t have the resources or experience to implement this kind of time consuming programme. This is where option two could prove to be a better route for these companies.
While studying for a Business Analysis Apprenticeship, apprentices are appointed a Metadata mentor to work alongside them and provide them with a structure for evaluating themselves. This allows them to reflect on the work that they have done, while finding links to real life challenges that they face within their job role, and how everything that they’re learning while studying can be applied to their work straight away.
Mentoring begins right away for Apprentices; after they have been assigned a mentor they will get to meet their mentor during their induction at the beginning of the programme. For the entirety of their apprenticeship, they will have access to their mentor for an hour a month split up into whatever time increments suit them best. That may work out to be be 30 minutes together twice a month or a more intensive hour of coaching once a month. Their mentor will also guide them through the final exam preparations, meaning that support doesn’t end as soon as they finish their courses.
We see this mentor-mentee relationship as something deeper than just coaching a delegate through the process of the apprenticeship. Due to the longer nature of the apprenticeship programme in comparison to most courses, the mentor truly helps the apprentice to gain confidence through personal development, not just to build a specific skill set.
“Contact with my mentor has been great – sometimes we speak daily, and sometimes only once every couple of weeks. I know that if I have any BA query at all, I can email Mike and he will always come back with advice quickly. The expertise from Metadata has been absolutely brilliant, I couldn’t fault it.” – Kerry, BA Apprenticeship graduate
A study compared performance before and after training (both with and without mentoring). Employees who did not receive mentoring during training were only improving at a rate of 24%. On the other hand, employees who received mentoring were improving at an impressive rate of 88%!
Are you willing to miss out on a 64% productivity improvement?
If you are a business analyst, we know that working on complex business improvements & change projects can lead to misunderstandings and confusion. When we present confusing data our stakeholders can’t make decisions and we don’t get their buy-in. No one wants to invest time & money in developing solutions that fail.
Some research from McKinsey & Company found that 70% of change projects fail. The BIG problem is stakeholder buy-in and management support.
Stakeholder engagement and management is about knowing who your stakeholders are, understanding them and knowing how best to involve them in your change project. You need to take into consideration the different interests and values stakeholders have and address them throughout the project or campaign.
Planning specific stakeholder campaigns are important of course, but working with stakeholders isn’t a one-off activity. It is an ongoing process. You need to keep your stakeholders involved and informed about what’s going on. The key point here is; it is often the skill with which you communicate, consult and involve these people is what will determine the success of your change project.
So how are going to communicate your plan with them? What you need to do is; bring clarity to stakeholders and using modelling techniques can help you bring this clarity.
Our experienced trainer, Rod Simpson, recently ran a lunch and learn webinar on 25 modelling techniques to get stakeholder buy-in, you can watch a short recording of the session below.
To get access to the full recording of the webinar, fill in the form below.
Learn:
We cover modelling techniques in more depth on our Modelling Business Processes course – Find out more
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When it comes to building a superstar team that can exceed all of your expectations as a manager, you might instinctively want to hire in new talent that will close skill gaps that you’ve noticed crop up in your existing team time and time again. Below, we give you five reasons why that instinct is leading you astray, why you should invest in the team that you already have now, and how you can enable growth in your team.
As a manager, you know that hiring in new talent isn’t exactly an inexpensive process; whether you use a recruiter or choose to find someone yourself, you’re either paying in time or money.
In fact, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that hiring a new salaried employee can cost from six to nine months worth of their salary on average. The average salary in the UK is £27,721 which would mean that recruitment would cost from £13,000 to £20,000.
Not only will you need to find the room in your budget for a whole other salary, but you then have to consider recruiters fees, the cost of the hours that you and several other people in your business would have to spend during the recruiting process, and getting the new recruit up to speed with how your business runs.
SHRM also found, with data from a study of 32 million people on LinkedIn, that employees who are not only given the opportunity to rise through the ranks but also the opportunity to move laterally are 70% and 62% respectively more likely to stay at a business for more than three years than their counterparts that aren’t. Without this opportunity, that number decreases to just 45%.
In fact, it seems that businesses that don’t afford their employees opportunities to advance their career internally only have a long term employee retention rate of 38%.
When you train and up-skill your team members, they stick around.
Bringing in new team members means delays in results as they get to grips with their new role, new team, and new company. According to Training Industry Quarterly it can take one to two years before a new employee is ‘fully productive’ and is able to be as productive as current team members. That’s a lot of time – and results – lost.
There are many reasons why new recruits can take so long to become productive, including a lack of encouragement and management having the time to support them fully. By up-skilling and closing skill gaps with current employees through training, you’ll miss out on months – maybe even years – of less results while a new team member gets to grips with their new job.
The previous point leads nicely into reason number four; the amount of time that it takes managers or senior team members to get new recruits up to speed will not only mean wasted money by paying them to do something that isn’t their day to day job, it also means less productivity from the entire team.
The Boston Consulting Group found that the on-boarding and training experience is the second most influential when it comes to new employee success and productivity, so if you or senior members of your team don’t have the time to invest in this then you’re likely to face the same problem some months down the line.
As we’ve already discussed, a new team member is going to need training on the job anyway, even if they possess a skill that plugs a gap in your team.
The likelihood of a new recruit joining your team and working to the same level of your existing team members and getting the same results is minuscule… so doesn’t it just make more sense to close the skill gaps in your existing team?
Research from the World Economic Forum has shown that employers can re-skill up to 25% of their employees themselves, but with help from the government that number can increase to 77%.
The Apprenticeship Levy does exactly that – it is essentially a pot of money that your business is likely paying into but not utilising for free training. Even if your business is not paying the Levy, the government will still foot 95% of the bill, meaning that your team members would receive a high quality Business Analyst qualification for just 5% of the cost.
At the moment, the cost of training your new recruits on the job or enrolling them in an apprenticeship in Business Analysis is almost the same. Depending on the size of your business, enrolling your team in an apprenticeship could be free, or could cost you as little as 5% of the original fee, with the Government paying for the remaining 95%.
On-the-job training means that trainees are not technically taking time away from work but this can mean work needs to be re-done during this process, whereas an apprenticeship means that one day a week is spent studying but less mistakes are likely to be made. With on-the-job training, managers tend to train new recruits the way that the business has trained in the past, which isn’t always the best way – remember that progress can only come through change!
Whether you’ve hired new staff or you’re giving existing team members more training, doing it yourself may seem like the best option when the following factors are your priority:
During an apprenticeship, the manager still has an input with training and supporting their team, but the recruits receive a more unbiased approach. They also receive theoretical training alongside practical, as opposed to just practical training like on-the-job. Another benefit is that apprentices are still working while studying, and therefore, they can apply these new skills to their job as they work.
An apprenticeship in Business Analysis isn’t just for new recruits or school leavers; it’s a great option for anyone looking to gain a formal qualification alongside practical training. Whether it’s someone on your team who has the responsibilities of a BA without the job title, or a BA who has been working for years but never got certified, an apprenticeship can change their career.
The advantages that come with a BA apprenticeship include:
To summarise the key points about BA apprenticeships:
If you would like to discuss training for your team – Get in touch for a quote
Continued
Rory completed the business analysis diploma with Metadata Training last year. He managed to take some time to share his experience with us.
What made you decide to take the diploma?
“Well it was when I started at my company. I worked for consultancy so we can be put in different types of roles and there was an opportunity to join a project where, the role was a business analyst and I was keen to do that. I was actually lucky that I was surrounded by other business analysts who weren’t necessarily on the same project or the same client, but we all worked together in the same location and so therefore I had that support network to learn about what the role was really about. The problem with that is, you then become dependent on these people to give you time to learn about the role and understand it.
Whereas I thought and did a bit of research. I looked into what sort of qualifications existed around the role as a way of getting some formal training, to understand what the role is all about. I think lots of people can do the work and be a business analyst and have the skills and knowledge to do so but they won’t necessarily know what the best practices or the best way or approach to take when doing that analysis. Now, obviously every client is different and BAs will do things in their own ways and you can learn from them. But I wanted to understand the bigger picture, what people had recommended as the best way to approach certain situations and all the analytical work that needs to get done.
So, I found that the BCS was a potential pathway to follow. There are obviously other bodies out there that offer business analysis routes and pathways of progression but I just thought that the BCS one was a good choice. It made it really clear on how you could choose different modules and sort of, specialise in areas that interested you. So, I knew it would be a good thing to really learn the best practice and obviously you get some certifications on top of it as well to formalise my experience. So, it was a fairly easy decision and I wanted to build that toolbox of techniques to bring to certain projects and situations and have the confidence to use those, knowing that they’re industry-led and industry-recognised, as opposed to doing things how I think it should be done or how other people think it should be done, which might not necessarily be the best way it can be done.”
What were you doing before starting the training?
“I had a chance to get into a BA role where I was doing it with the help of other BAs. So, there were other more experienced senior BAs who’d done lots of BA work before, on the same project. So, I could learn from them and understand how to approach things and approach tasks. So this whole BA diploma gives people confidence, definitely for me, with how to approach things especially from a holistic point of view. The diploma forces you to do and to think wider than initial assumptions and not jump ahead.”
How do you think that studying for the diploma and achieving it has changed the way you approach your work?
“I think it’s provided me with a proper structured framework and essentially a process to follow whenever I’m doing my work. With my work I’m involved in different types of things. So I work across projects and they all sit at different stages of a typical project lifecycle. Sometimes, I’ll be doing like non-traditional BA work, but a lot of my work will be sort of classic BA work. But for any projects where I’ve been involved end to end, the diploma has been really useful for understanding where I sit within the wider project, understanding what a typical project lifecycle looks like, and then understanding where I’m involved and where I’m expected to be involved and where I could be involved.
It’s opened my eyes in terms of understanding, as BAs we could really be involved at pretty much any stage of the project life cycle, because we’re often involved in the weeds and the detail. Therefore we can be useful from an end to end project perspective, whether it’s right at the beginning where you’ve been chucked into a situation where you’re just doing some investigative work and understanding the situation. But then you might be working on that project all the way through to when it’s actually being implemented.”
What tips would you give to anyone thinking to study for the diploma? Would be your advice?
“It totally depends on their position but if they’re new to the role and they’ve got some people around them that they may be able to talk to, who might’ve done that diploma before or done like a similar certification, they should definitely talk to them to get some feedback and advice on it. If they don’t have other BAs to talk to, to understand the role and what the expectations are, then I’d recommend the diploma for sure. It’ll give them a good long-term view of what a BA actually does, what value they offer to organisations, where they sit and the type of work they can do, and they’ll also be able to match up with it.
If they’re thinking about it, there’s so much information in terms of what the BCS provide around the various modules – what they have to do and then the various optional ones. So they should look at those and explore those. They should think about the type of work that they might be getting involved in the future and if they want to go towards a more specialised route, then they might want to tailor their modules in the BCS pathway towards those opportunities.”
Were you scared of exams before you started and looking back now, how do you feel?
“I wasn’t too apprehensive based on the fact that I sort of enjoyed all the modules I’d done and I was pretty happy with the previous exams that I’d done. I guess the new part was the fact that it’s an oral exam. So all the previous exams were written exams but this was an oral one. I hadn’t really done that before for a long time. When you first look at it, it can be quite overwhelming. In reality, it’s a test of stuff you’ve actually already been examined on. I put in a few weekends worth of work beforehand to make sure that I was on top of things and I could revise everything again.
I guess I was uncertain in terms of, I wasn’t quite sure what kind of questions they’d ask or the format of those questions, how many I’d get and what the format of the exam is. I reached out to people that had done it before and got some advice. I got some information that helped me understand what kind of questions I was going to be asked, which gave me the confidence in doing it. If you don’t have a network or a support network around you, maybe with your company or with your client or whatever position you’re in, I would just say use something like LinkedIn. It’s easy to find people who might’ve been involved a bit or might know something. And if they don’t know, they can usually point you in the right direction.”
How has metadata helped you to get the BCS diploma?
“There’s like a big differentiation between the way that metadata delivered their courses relative to other providers that I used. I think it’s just little things like the trainers always have a decent amount of experience themselves, especially in business analysis. So they understand exactly the workings of the role and they’ve got a lot of experience that they can draw from. So that’s really useful when they’re trying to teach and explain things because it puts things into context. They’re also really good at understanding who’s on the course and what their own backgrounds are. So I’ve found that they often drew what they were trying to explain into the context of our own industries and backgrounds. So, that was a useful way of helping us understand things better as part of the syllabus and the way they teach is really engaging and interactive.
I love that you could speak to other BAs who are in completely different industries and work on different projects. So you’re not just learning from the trainer, you’re all also learning from each other; the different approaches that they take and techniques that they use.”
You didn’t do all the courses with us, what made you decide to change from them to us?
“Choosing your providers can be a minefield. The courses are the same but the providers are different and therefore, the format slightly differs across them all. So I found that there was a difference in terms of the quality of the training. I thought, well, if I’m going to continue, I’d like to at least make a better effort at finding out which are the better-rated providers based on people’s experience and feedback. I was chatting to people at my company who had done courses with metadata before and their feedback was always really, really good. I was thinking about that relative to the courses I did and I thought, okay, maybe I’ll give metadata a go. It was particularly good and that’s why I did the next one with metadata.”
If you wouldn’t have achieved the diploma, how would your working life have been different?
“I did the diploma over the past couple of years. It’s definitely helped me in terms of the progression of my role. At first, I focused on one project and then over time, I’ve now been able to focus on multiple projects at once. As I said earlier, they’re currently at different stages of the project change life cycle. So the diploma has helped me understand where I fit in across each project. It also provides you with techniques and tools to use where appropriate. So it’s definitely given me confidence. I’ve been able to progress, sort of ,into a senior consultant position. So,this all helped towards that.”
We wish Rory all the best in his career!
Find out more about the BA Diploma
Continued
We know that having skilled, trained business analysts on your team who understand your business is crucial to business success. Rather than hiring qualified professionals from outside the company, it has recently become a common practice for organisations to upskill their existing staff.
However, the process of training your staff can easily seem overcomplicated when there are multiple training routes out there to choose from and so, it can be exhausting for managers to extensively research and narrow down to the right option for their team. Fear not, we want to ease this struggle and reduce the stress that comes with organising formal training for your staff – in this article, we will cover the two well-known paths to getting certified as a business analyst and which would be best for your team.
The Diploma in Business Analysis was developed by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT and has become the widely recognised qualification for professionals wanting to become a business analyst or looking to get accredited. It’s becoming expected for all professionals working in the industry to hold this qualification, so whether your staff are new to the sector or have years of experience this course is something they can’t do without.
The BCS diploma in business analysis consists of one foundation and three practitioner qualifications followed by an oral exam. Each qualification stands alone and, in various combinations, leads to the International BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
More information on the BA Diploma
We understand that, as a manager who values learning, a limited training budget can make it difficult or even impossible to build talent to deliver business change. This is where the option of an apprenticeship comes in handy.
The IS Business Analyst Apprenticeship is a level 4 apprenticeship spanning over 13 -18 months with 20% off-the-job training. The programme aims to help apprentices develop business analysis skills. The best part is it includes the BCS BA Diploma and Agile qualifications.
If your staff are new to business analysis and your company is paying the apprenticeship levy, then we recommend that the Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme is a better option for professional training.
The Apprenticeship Levy is a levy on UK employers to fund apprenticeships and help their staff up-skill. The new apprenticeship standard was introduced in April 2017 and the aim is to address the skill gaps and the low productivity in the UK. If your organisation has an annual wage bill of over £3 million then you are paying a 0.5% levy as part of your PAYE tax bill. This money goes to a digital account that your organisation can use to fund apprenticeships.
Even if your organisation is already spending to the limit of their levy pot remember that the employer only contributes 5% of the cost of additional apprenticeships and the government contributes a further 95%.
There are thousands of apprenticeship providers out there but if you are looking for expert trainers with experience in business analysis who will care and guide your apprentices to success then let’s have a chat.
Note: Metadata Training now work with non-levy providers to upskill their staff in business analysis.
Continued
Want to train in business analysis but struggling to fit it into your working schedule?
Continuing professional development is a great way to advance your career but the common problem is making time for it in an already-busy work life. Let’s talk about the 5 ways that the BCS Business Analysis Diploma can work around your routine!
The BCS BA Diploma consists of 4 courses (3 practitioner + 1 foundation) and the training is spread out over a year. These courses are ran regularly with multiple dates to choose from so if the upcoming date doesn’t work for you don’t worry there are always more available. This takes away the pressure of having to cancel other priorities just to attend specific training dates.
Even with options of dates, it can be difficult for professionals working the typical 9-5, Monday-Friday. We advise looking for a training provider offering courses that are ran over the weekend. Weekend courses are slightly more intense considering that they are held over a shorter time (weekday courses are held over 3 days and weekend courses are held over 2 days). For some, it can be a hassle to request holiday for BA training so this way busy professionals can continue their professional development without having to take time off!
Exam timings can often put professionals in a sticky spot but the beauty of the BA Diploma is that you take the exams when it is convenient for you. Take the exam at the end of the course or take it a few weeks later. Pick a time that’s suitable for your schedule, it’s all down to YOU. There’s no longer a need to worry about an exam clashing with a project meeting.
If your organisation needs to train other staff too, an in-house course is another way of incorporating BA training to fit into your work schedule and is also cost-effective for your organisation. We can deliver any of our public courses on your site (currently online due to COVID-19 pandemic). Training a group of staff can put even more pressure on time restraints and we understand this, that’s why we often work with organisations to develop a personalised time schedule that is most suitable for them. Can’t do a 3-day course from 9am-5pm? Let’s split it into a 6-day course from 9am-1pm.
We can combine training with consultancy and examine how you can improve your business analysis and agile practices. We can use examples from your recent projects to illustrate to your staff potential improvements. Training sessions have sometimes become workshops geared towards improving the business analysis, requirements specification, and software development processes.
The final oral exam is probably the toughest part of the Diploma but well-organised preparation can help minimise the nerves and increase your chances of success. Having a full day preparation course is great but if that doesn’t fit your schedule? Evening trainer-led revision sessions are a perfect way to get that prep in after a full day of work. We run regular online prep sessions in the evening for our delegates preparing for the exam, not to mention we also provide access to a library of previous oral prep recordings!
If you are interested in learning more about the BCS Business Analysis Diploma and what it can do for your career, join our free online open evening on 14th April from 18:30pm – 19:30pm. You can register in the form below.
Continued
If you are a business analyst or a business change professional, Swimlane Diagrams will help you model business processes. We recently ran a session on this as part of our Lunch & Learn Programme and you can now access the recording by filling the form below.
It is a really practical and engaging session that we highly recommend. You get access to the presentation and the demonstration on how to create the Swimlane Diagram based on a scenario, Rod Simpson is using the virtual Miro board in the session.
Learn how to:
This session is for beginners and assumes you don’t have any experience of using the tool. You don’t need any business analysis knowledge to attend the session.
A swimlane diagram documents the steps or activities of a process flow or workflow. It visualises a process from beginning to end, but it also divides these steps into categories to help distinguish which departments or employees are responsible for each set of actions. It allows departments to know what their counterparts are doing.
Swimlanes can represent many categories of information such as actors who perform the activities (i.e., role or department), the stage of the process in which the activity takes place, or whatever else the creator of the document feels should be emphasised and communicated by the swimlane diagram. Moreover, swim lane diagrams are able to distinguish the teams’ limits when it comes to abilities and capacity.
Continued
If you are a business analyst or a business change professional, customer journey mapping will help you increase the success of your projects. We recently ran a session on this as part of our Lunch & Learn Programme and you can now access the recording by filling the form below.
It is a really practical and engaging session that we highly recommend. You get access to the presentation and the demonstration on how to create the Customer Journey Map based on a scenario, Nick de Voil is using the virtual Miro board in the session. This session is suitable for beginners and assumes you don’t have any experience of customer journey mapping.
Customer journey mapping (also called user journey mapping) is the process of creating a customer journey map, a visual story of your customers’ interactions with your brand. This exercise helps businesses step into their customer’s shoes and see their business from the customer’s perspective. It is just as important for small and medium-sized enterprises as it is for larger companies. Customer journey mapping makes your projects more successful by helping you take your customers’ needs into account.
The tool helps with:
Access the recording by filling in the form below.
Continued
Meet Victoria Gorrell
Before Vickie started the apprenticeship, she was working as a project support officer for Coventry City Council. She was interested in business analysis so when the opportunity for a BA apprenticeship came up in 2019, she put herself forward for the programme with the help of her manager at the time. She worked as a systems improvement officer whilst on the apprenticeship programme and in the October of 2020, secured the position of a business analyst in her organisation as she continued to complete the apprenticeship. She is now a qualified business analyst. Vickie talks about how the apprenticeship has allowed her to progress to the career she wanted without having to give up her day job to study somewhere else.
You can watch the full recording of our interview with Vickie below.
We wish Victoria all the best in her career!
Interested in our BA apprenticeship programme? Find out more
Not sure if an apprenticeship will benefit you? Get some advice here
Continued
Meet Barry Keegan
Barry had been thinking about moving into a business analysis role for a couple of years. He initially considered self-funding for the BCS qualifications but then he heard about the apprenticeship and being able to gain practical experience while studying. The apprenticeship coordinator in his organisation at the time had informed him as Barry had expressed his interest in business analysis earlier. The coordinator matched his skillset and encouraged him to apply. The apprenticeship programme highlighted how transferable and diverse the skills of a business analyst are. Near the end of the programme, he secured a promotion as a Business Systems Development Officer in the Council, where the job role is much more project oriented with a large element of business analysis involved. The apprenticeship played a huge role in giving him that knowledge and skillset in order to secure that promotion. Barry talks about how he applies a BA mindset and uses the skills he learned to help solve problems in his day-today role working within user queries.
You can watch our full interview with Barry below.
We wish Barry all the best in his career!
Interested in our BA apprenticeship programme? Find out more
Not sure if an apprenticeship will benefit you? Get some advice here
ContinuedBack in February, we hosted a virtual graduation ceremony for our apprentices from Coventry Council, Vickie, Barry and Jodie, to celebrate their completion of the business analyst apprenticeship.
All 3 of our graduates achieved distinctions and obtained the BCS Business Analysis Diploma qualification & 1 Agile qualification. Our apprenticeship director, Mike Goodland hosted the event. We took a brief look at the journey our apprentices have been on for the past 18 months. You can watch the recording of the graduation ceremony below.
Important sections in the graduation video:
9:48 min to 13:24 min – Joe Sanson, Transformation Programme Manager at Coventry City Council talks about the value the business analysis skillset has brought to design new services at Coventry City Council and help the council digitalise and improve its processes
14:05 min – 17:13 min – Vickie Gorrell, Business Analyst Apprentice at Coventry City Council, shares her experience on the BA Apprenticeships & how the flexibility of Metadata Training help her continue her studies during the Covid period. Vickie started the BA Apprenticeship as a Project Support Officer and got promoted to a Business Analyst role 3 months before she completed the apprenticeship.
17:39 min – 21:45 min – Barry Keegan, Business Analyst Apprentice at Coventry City Council, shares his experience on the BA Apprenticeship.
22:05 min – 24:12 min – Jodie Ward, Business Analyst Apprentice at Coventry City Council, shares her experience on the BA Apprenticeship. Jodie just came back from her maternity leave when she started her business analyst apprenticeship and she had to juggle her work at the council, with the BA Apprenticeship and raising a baby. She’s done that incredibly well and achieved amazing results for the council.
Barry Keegan
Barry had been thinking about moving into a business analysis role for a couple of years. He initially considered self-funding for the BCS qualifications but then he heard about the apprenticeship and being able to gain practical experience while studying. The apprenticeship coordinator in his organisation at the time matched his skillset and encouraged him to apply. Near the end of the programme, he secured a promotion as a Business Systems Development Officer in the Council, where the job role is much more project oriented with a large element of business analysis involved. The apprenticeship played a huge role in giving him that knowledge and skillset in order to secure that promotion. Barry talks about how he applies a BA mindset and uses the skills he learned to help solve problems in his day-today role working within user queries.
Vickie Gorrell
Before Vickie started the apprenticeship, she was working as a project support officer for Coventry City Council. She was interested in business analysis so when the opportunity for a BA apprenticeship came up in 2019, she put herself forward for the programme with the help of her manager at the time. She worked as a systems improvement officer whilst on the apprenticeship programme and in the October of 2020, secured the position of a business analyst in her organisation as she continued to complete the apprenticeship. She is now a qualified business analyst. Vickie talks about how the apprenticeship has allowed her to progress to the career she wanted without having to give up her day job to study somewhere else.
Jodie Ward
Jodie began the apprenticeship after returning from maternity leave. She was balancing her current role with completing her apprenticeship. She has previously been working on transformation programmes in Children’s Services, Residential Services and the Fostering Service. This includes helping to implement an online system for Residential Services and working to support Fostering Service projects. For the last 5 months, Jodie has been working on the ICT & Digital roll out of LFT Covid testing centres across Coventry. She talks about how the quality of teaching and the immense support network has helped her get through the past 18 months and essentially over the finishing line.
We wish you the best in your careers!
Interested in our BA apprenticeship programme? Find out more
Not sure if an apprenticeship will benefit you? Get some advice here
Continued
National Apprenticeship Week 2021 aims to shine a light on the amazing work being done by employers and apprentices across the country. It will take place from 8 to 12 February 2021 – check what we have planned for the week!
If you are interested in the Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme we’ve prepared a few events for you during the National Apprenticeship Week 2021.
Monday 8th February: Launch Day – #NAW2021
Tuesday 9th February: #AskAnEmployer
Wednesday 10th February: #AskAnApprentice
Thursday 11th February: Thank You Thursday
Friday 12th February: Friday Graduation Day
Interested in attending the virtual apprenticeship events next week? Register your space in the form below. Please be informed that by subscribing to the session you are added to our newsletter (it is easy to unsubscribe).
ContinuedCould you benefit from an apprenticeship to advance or change your career? Let’s look at the common misconceptions and how they no longer fit today’s fast-changing workplace.
Learning is at the heart of everything we do. We need to learn new skills, how to use new tools and software, and how to do our jobs better. We can’t afford to ignore our skills. Outdated skills will soon spell disaster for our careers and for the survival of our organisations.
Before we look at misconception let’s consider the objective of an apprenticeship.
The aim of the business analyst apprenticeship is to take you from your current level to the next stage in your career. Our programme is customisable to your unique situation so you decide on what skills to focus on.
With Metadata Training you get mentored by one of our BA expert trainers every month. This means you decide what skills to improve, how quickly you get there, and how far you take your career.
One thing we promise you if you show up to the training and the mentoring sessions you won’t stay at your current level. You’ll see a new, more skilled, and confident you.
Now let’s look at the general questions people have that sometimes stops them from considering the apprenticeship as a viable option for them.
You don’t need to go and find an apprentice role to benefit from an apprenticeship programme. Most of our apprentices were already working in their current roles with their organisations before enrolling in the business analyst apprenticeship.
Apprenticeships aim to upskill professionals to prepare them for the future. They are addressing the current skills shortage and the low productivity of the UK workforce compared with other European countries.
Organisations are also looking to upskill or re-train experienced employees who know the business and would make an excellent business analyst e.g. junior BA, an SME or someone from non-BA project work. In our view this is the best way to upskill the future workforce.
Anybody regardless of age can become a business analyst apprentice. It is no longer true that apprenticeships are only for 18-year-olds who prefer an apprenticeship to university.
There are no age restrictions so don’t let this stand in the way.
If you are worried that an apprenticeship would mean you need to accept a low-level salary this is not the case.
If you think you need to be paid less to do an apprenticeship, think again because this is not the case.
The business analyst apprenticeship is best suited for people with 0 to 5 years of BA experience.
If you have over 5 years of experience you can still benefit but it is best to have a chat with your manager and your HR team.
There are no specific pre-requirements that are set in the apprenticeship standard. Some organisations might have certain conditions so it is best to speak with your HR or manager about your suitability for an apprenticeship.
Your opportunities are endless. Most apprentices get to do more challenging and rewarding projects for their companies. Some get new better-paid jobs.
Business analysis skills are in demand and they offer a secure, stable, and highly paid role.
After finishing the apprenticeship programme, typical roles you can expect are: IS Business Analyst, IT Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Requirements Analyst/Engineer, Business Process Analyst.
Anyone can be a business analyst apprentice however not everyone will consider it the best training option for them.
If you have less than 5 years of business analyst experience and want to upskill, be recognised for your achievements and move to the next stage in your career then it is worth having a look at the detailed programme.
Harpal is one year in to his IS Business Analysis Apprenticeship Programme journey, and shares his experiences of the programme so far.
Before starting his apprenticeship, Harpal was working as a Business Analyst, and had been in a BA role for three years.
“Knowledge. It’s easy to work in Business Analysis role without understanding how to connect all the moving parts together, like joining up the dots. My apprenticeship has helped me to bring all those things together, developing my business and personal skills and Business Analysis knowledge to another level.”
“As a Business Analyst, it gives you the opportunity to deliver to a widely-recognised framework and qualification, which allows everyone to be on the same page.”
“There’s a clear framework to help me manage my time. It’s no extra work, because when you’re preparing your portfolio and doing the work, it’s cementing the knowledge you need, and aligning it for the diploma. The balance is easily achievable with the right mindset and dedication. You can also work at your own pace – if you’re getting through it, you can move ahead – if you’re struggling a little, you can slow down a bit. Don’t be put off by the timeline.
Every day helps me to build on the last, meeting stakeholders, understanding perspectives, building the blocks.”
“Metadata’s groups are nice and small, which really helps with our learning. A small, manageable group gives us the opportunity to ask questions and tailor the learning to what we need. If you were in a group of say 30 people, you won’t know people’s names, you won’t find it personal – I’m sure you’d be reluctant to ask questions.”
“I’d say be prepared to work hard, you’ll get out what you put in. Ask for help when you need it. The support, mentorship and knowledge gained is so much more than just the word apprentice.
If you want a steady career, and to improve yourself drastically, then this apprenticeship is for you. The knowledge gained is massive. I’d say, do it.”
If you’re interested in apprenticeships for yourself or a member of your team, you can find out more.
Continued
Jodie works as a Business Analyst for Coventry City Council and is also a mum to a two year old daughter. Jodie was looking for flexible ways to further her education and become a qualified Business Analyst. It was when Jodie returned from Maternity leave, she was offered the opportunity to undertake an apprenticeship alongside her role. She spoke to us about her experiences.
“As a mum of a small child, getting back into my stride when I returned to work was so important to me. I love my job and have always wanted to complete formal qualifications for my role. I was looking for a way to further my education alongside my working role and my family life. Building on my experience and self-taught business analysis skills, this apprenticeship has really given me confidence in my ability and helped me build upon my skill-set. It’s given me the tools and techniques and techniques to apply to my role, a range of soft skills as well as the business analysis framework.
Completing an apprenticeship has really made a difference to my confidence, improved my job satisfaction and really made a difference to the projects that I am leading. It has improved my leadership skills and the depth of my technical knowledge.”
“Apprenticeships have had such a positive impact for not only myself but my whole organisation. I’d challenge the stereotype of an apprentice – anyone can be an apprentice. It doesn’t matter if you’re a school leaver, or approaching retirement – it’s a fantastic modern way of learning whilst you are working. There are so many advantages to apprenticeships. You have the ability to learn on the job and put your new skills immediately into practice for the benefit of your organisation. I was able to complete my apprenticeship flexibly during working hours with the full support of my organisation. As a Mum to a young daughter, this flexibility enabled me to further my education, an opportunity I don’t think I would have had otherwise. I would encourage anyone to complete an Apprenticeship.”
“YOU’D BE SURPRISED HOW ACCESSIBLE AN APPRENTICESHIP IS FOR ANYBODY, AT ANY AGE.”
“We have an organisational development department within HR who specialises in the education, training and up-skilling of staff. They currently have a broad range of apprenticeship programmes running right the way through the organisation, from senior leadership teams, through to specialisms like Business Analysis.
The apprenticeship programme is aligned to our organisational strategy and our annual appraisal process. The apprenticeship programme has revolutionised the organisations approach to training. We are now a more skilled, more equal and diverse workplace focused on our objectives.
The apprenticeship programme has also helped to raise the profile of certain roles, like Business Analysis, leading to new roles being created, and much more interest in this skill set.”
“From the start of the apprenticeship, the timetable for the 18 months duration was shared with us. This was positive for everyone, as we could discuss work milestones and commitments and agree to these dates with the support of our manager. Being organised and having these dates in the diary early is really beneficial with balancing work and apprenticeship commitments.”
This interview was taken when Jodie was halfway through the apprenticeship programme. Jodie began the apprenticeship after returning from maternity leave. She was balancing her current role with completing her apprenticeship. She had previously been working on transformation programmes in Children’s Services, Residential Services and the Fostering Service. This includes helping to implement an online system for Residential Services and working to support Fostering Service projects.
Since the interview, Jodie has graduated and achieved Distinction for her apprenticeship. She has worked on amazing projects for the Council including ICT & Digital roll out of LFT Covid testing centres across Coventry.
We wish Jodie all the best in her career!
If you’re interested in apprenticeships for yourself or a member of your team, you can find out more
Continued
Kerry is currently completing the Business Analyst Apprenticeship programme and shares her experience.
“I’m a Business Analyst for East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service (ESFRS), but have only been officially working in this role since March. Before then, I was working as a project administrator.”
“I spent many years as a Project Administrator, but when a role in a new department opened up and an external BA was employed, I realised everything they were doing as a BA used skills I had built up over the years and suddenly my future career path identified itself.
Somebody then suggested looking at BA apprenticeships, as it’s a good way to shape skills on your CV.
Working with the HR team apprenticeship leads and following our procurement rules, we researched BA apprenticeship providers and narrowed it down to two suppliers. It seemed Metadata would offer much more flexibility to shape the apprenticeship to suit my needs than the other provider, so we decided to go ahead with them.
When the need for a BA role came up in the HR department of my organisation it was suggested that I go for it as a development opportunity. After an interview process I was successfully appointed on a 2 year secondment, in a development capacity, and I am loving the challenges that this BA role is bringing me.”
“Contact with my mentor has been great – sometimes we speak daily, and sometimes only once every couple of weeks. I know that if I have any BA query at all, I can email Mike and he will always come back with advice quickly. The expertise from Metadata has been absolutely brilliant, I couldn’t fault it.”
“If you find the right supplier, it’s brilliant but it’s much more intense than you realise. It’s a big commitment but it’s definitely worthwhile if you’re considering it. There’s no way without the apprenticeship I would have been able to align my skill set with my CV.”
“BA work as an Administrator was to help out busy team members but while my skills were recognised, I was restricted in being able to move my career forward formally. I felt I was basically just a minute taker picking BA type work up for fun.
Now, as a BA, I use the skills I have learnt during my apprenticeship to identify and analyse problems and inefficient processes, find ways to resolve these problems and, working alongside PMO project guidelines, set realistic timeframes to ensure these problems are resolved on time, on budget and in scope, with the aim to bring in more efficient working processes for my team and organisation.”
Continued
The Apprenticeship Levy is a levy on UK employers to fund apprenticeships and help their staff upskill.
The new apprenticeship standard was introduced in April 2017 and the aim is to address the skill gaps and the low productivity in the UK.
Many businesses have not used the levy and wasted the money. Many professionals still don’t know the apprenticeships are an option for them to train and upskill regardless of their age.
Apprenticeships are still associated with young adults who choose not to go to university and instead learn on the job.
The best way is to ask your HR team whether your organisation pays the levy or not.
If you work for an employer who has an annual wage bill of over £3 million then they pay a 0.5% levy as part of their PAYE tax bill. This money goes to a digital account that your organisation uses to fund apprenticeships. This means an organisation of about 1000 staff paying an average salary of £30,000 will have a levy pot of about £150,000 available. All this money can be used by the organisation to fund training for their own apprentices. In other words, upskill your team for free!
If your organisation is spending to the limit of their levy pot, then they will need to pay 5% of the total cost of an apprenticeship while the government pays 95%.
Your staff can still become apprentices.
95% of the apprenticeship cost is paid by the government and 5% is paid by your organisation, meaning that an apprentice would receive a high-quality Business Analyst qualification for just 5% of the cost!
An apprenticeship provider works with an employer to provide the training for the apprentices. Organisations can choose to upskill their staff or recruit a new person for the apprentice role. The apprentices need to be 18 or over, be employed by your organisation, have lived in the UK for more than 3 years or more, and must live and work in England.
Employers select ‘best of breed’ training providers to meet their needs, agree on the fees and a programme before signing a contract with the provider. Once the apprentice has started the programme, payments are approved by the employer and paid monthly from the account to the provider. The levy payments for the business analyst apprenticeship are spread over 18 months with 20% of the total being held back by the government until the learner has completed.
If you are not a levy payer, the cost for the business analyst apprenticeship comes to at approx. £900 per learner. This is invoiced by the apprenticeship provider in 4 quarterly instalments.
Some companies allow the apprentices to choose their own provider while others are already working with a preferred supplier.
Not all business analyst apprenticeships are created equal and there is no one size fits all. We recommend you review the content and the delivery of an apprenticeship before enrolling in one because there is a huge time commitment to make the wrong decision for your apprentices.
Flexibility
We can help you create a flexible programme for your apprentices that they can fit into their work schedule. That is why our programmes work very well for mature apprentices.
Start any time
Some apprenticeship programmes have cohorts and you have to attend the training at certain times which can be a problem if you have to work on a project and there are deadlines.
That is why we made it simple and easy for you not only to start when you are ready but also to choose your training days.
Get industry-wide qualifications – all exams paid for
Most apprenticeship providers don’t offer qualifications as part of their programme. Yet many apprentices want these qualifications as proof of their expertise and recognition.
Metadata includes all exam prices for 5 industry-recognised business analyst qualifications & 1 agile qualification.
Be mentor by BA experts and not your BA colleagues
Not all apprenticeship providers will provide you a mentor who has business analyst apprenticeship experience.
Some apprenticeship providers will provide a skills coach with no experience in the field you are working in, while the expectation is for your organisation to find you a BA mentor. This can lead to struggles for the apprentices as the mentors might not be familiar with the apprenticeship content and the portfolio that the apprentice needs to complete to finish their programme.
Note: The Business Analyst Apprenticeship has a funding band of £18,000. If the learner already has some BA skills the cost is reduced. We have an initial discussion to understand needs before we can provide exact costs and programme length.
Contact us to discuss your training needs.
Continued
If you are a business analyst or a project manager or a professional who works on delivering projects, the Project Scope Diagram tool helps you present the required work to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.
We recently ran a session on this as part of our Lunch & Learn Programme and you can now access the recording by filling the form below.
It is a really practical and engaging session that we highly recommend. Our trainer, Rod Simpson created the Project Scope Diagram with the help of the attendees. You get access to the presentation and the demonstration on how to create the scope diagram based on a case study, Rod is using the virtual Miro board in the session. This session is suitable for beginners and assumes you don’t have any experience of using project scope diagrams.
For a project manager or business analyst, managing the expectations of the stakeholders and clients is one of the most challenging tasks. With a definite project scope, managers can easily stay on track and ensure that all the deadlines are being followed. Effective project scope management gives a clear idea about the time, labor, and cost involved in the project. The diagram is an excellent way to explain to the business what is the project and how it will do for the business when finished.
The tool helps with the following issues:
Access the recording by filling in the form below.
Continued
If you are a Business Analyst, Business Change Manager or work in Project Management, Benefits Dependency Networks are a useful technique for understanding how a project will deliver business benefits.
According to the BCS, a benefits map is “A diagrammatic representation of what needs to be done on a project/program in order to achieve its expected benefit”. The idea is simple – link project activities to the benefits they directly impact.
We recently ran a session on this as part of our Lunch & Learn Programme and you can now access the recording by filling the form below.
It is a really practical and engaging session that we highly recommend. Our trainer, Rod Simpson created the Benefits Dependency Network with the help of the attendees. You get access to the presentation and the demonstration on how to create the Benefits maps based on a case study, Rod is using the virtual Miro board in the session.
This is a session suitable for beginners and assumes you don’t know how to create a Benefits Map.
Benefits maps are a useful technique for understanding and communicating the impact of a project from different stakeholder perspectives. Large projects/programs can consist of many moving parts, making it difficult for individual staff to see why certain activities or deliverables are considered important. It can also be difficult for business stakeholders to understand why they may need to change, and for managers to understand why certain activities are important. Benefits maps can support understanding across stakeholder perspective by allowing:
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A swimlane diagram documents the steps or activities of a process flow or workflow. It visualises a process from beginning to end, but it also divides these steps into categories to help distinguish which departments or employees are responsible for each set of actions.
Swimlanes can represent many categories of information such as actors who perform the activities (i.e., role or department), the stage of the process in which the activity takes place, or whatever else the creator of the document feels should be emphasised and communicated by the swimlane diagram. The term swimlane was adopted due to the visual similarity between the horizontal rows of the diagram to that of the swimlanes found within a swiming pool.
A swim lane is typically used for projects that extend over various departments and distinguishes channels according to a specific set of objectives. By organising the responsibilities in various directions, it can clearly distinguish the objective of each department and individuals inside the team.
Swimlane diagrams also make it easier for departments to work with each other, as they not only help identify the bottlenecks in a process, but also which department is responsible for them.
Moreover, swim lane diagrams are able to distinguish the teams’ limits when it comes to abilities and capacity. It allows departments to know what their counterparts are doing. Which in turn helps avoid collision and repetition of work by multiple figures.
Our highly skilled trainer, Rod Simpson, recently ran an informative Lunch & Learn session on how to create Swimlane Diagrams to model business processes.
You can access Rod’s presentation from the session below:
Once you’ve had a go at creating your own Swimlane Diagram based on the case study scenario given in the video above, you can take a look at this exemplar that our trainer, Rod Simpson, created.
Click to View Example Swimlane Diagram
Attend our next Modelling Business Processes course.
Why not try some Modelling Business Processes sample questions and see how you would do in the exam?
A Rich Picture is a simple way of communicating ideas, or expressing issues or problems visually. Peter Checkland included Rich Pictures as part of his analysis of the current situation within Soft Systems Methodology. The rich picture is a technique for documenting a chaotic situation for which no other modelling technique can suffice. Checkland originally meant for the rich picture to document the current situation, however some people have found other uses for it.
If you want to learn more about how to use Rich Picture successfully at work to solve the right problems then join our next free virtual Lunch & Learn session.
Why are Rich Pictures important?
Some people think Rich Pictures are hard work and not something they can use because they can’t draw. With the richness of tools available online, drawing skills are not mandatory anymore. And we show you how you can do it.
If you want to find out more about Rich Pictures and how to use them to solve problems for your organisation then join our next free session on Rich Pictures.
Our very skilled trainer, Rod Simpson, will help you learn how to create one so you can go back to work and solve the right problems for your organisation.
It will be engaging, fun, and interactive. It will also give you an opportunity to test our virtual course environment and get a taste for our virtual training.
Register your interest in the form below. You can unsubscribe anytime. You can have a look at our Privacy Policy here – click to view
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The IS Business Analyst Apprenticeship is a level 4 apprenticeship spanning over 13 -18 months with 20% off-the-job training. The programme aims to help apprentices develop business analysis soft skills. It Includes the BCS BA Diploma and Agile qualifications.
Individual employers will set the selection criteria, but this is likely to include:
The IS Business Analyst will be able to undertake the following responsibilities in line with organisational procedures and where appropriate under supervision:
Are you thinking to enroll in the Business Analyst Programme and want to know how much time you will have to spend learning and if it is something you can achieve considering your work commitments?
We are providing you in this article an estimate of the type of learning activities you are expected to do as part of your apprenticeship.
What is the off-the-job training?
Off-the-job training is defined as learning which is undertaken outside of the day-to-day work duties of the apprentice. This training takes place within the apprentice’s normal (contracted) working hours. It averages out to a minimum of 6 hours a week. The off-the-job training must be directly relevant to the apprenticeship and support the apprentice to learn to do the work and take on more responsibilities.
The learning activities explained below represent the off the job training that apprentices are required to do if they do the business analyst apprenticeship with us.
The learning activities that the apprentice will do are:
We will explain each learning activity in detail below and show the number of hours you need to dedicate to each activity across the 18-month programme so you can calculate the amount of time you need to dedicate to each.
Please be aware that excluding the certificated training that needs to be attended in blocks of 1, 2, or 3 days (as shown below) the rest of the learning activities can be fitted within your working day. All the learning activities need to be completed during your working hours, but you do have the flexibility to schedule them and fit them around your work.
We know fitting learning activities can be challenging in some situations that is why we created this flexibility for our apprentices to make it easier for them to complete the programme and progress in their career.
As part of the programme, you have the following training days:
BCS Business Analysis Practice – 3 days
BCS Foundation in Business Analysis – 3 days
BCS Modelling Business Processes – 3 days
BCS Requirements Engineering – 3 days
BCS Oral Exam Prep – 1 day
Data Modelling – 2 days
Agile Certification of Choice – 3 days
You can attend these dates when it is convenient for you and we don’t impose specific dates. We have courses every week so there are plenty of dates to choose from and you can take more courses when your work is less demanding.
Total Recommended Off-The-Job Hours: 140 hours of training
There are 1-day skills development workshops on specific BA skills that you need to attend as part of the programme. These workshops run thought the year and you can choose the dates that fit best with your work schedule. The workshops are delivered face to face or virtually.
Total Recommended Off-The-Job Hours: 34 hours of workshops
You will also be assigned an expert mentor with BA practical experience that will support you throughout your programme.
You will need to attend 2 mentoring sessions every month.
These sessions are a great opportunity for you to discuss with an expert your individual work challenges and the skills that you want to improve and as it relates to the business analysis competency standard.
A mentor is a valuable resource for you to progress to the next level in your career and be more confident and efficient and is something that you don’t get with a BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle.
Total Recommended Off-The-Job Hours: 15 hours of mentoring
The work-based learning means applying the tools and techniques you learn on the courses to your work on practical projects that are useful to the individual and to the organization.
You apply what you learn to your work, reflect on the result you got, and during the mentoring session, you discuss how you could have done it better.
The mentor is there to support you learn how to apply theory and answer any questions that arise during the process.
You will have the opportunity to challenge yourself and create an impact at work.
Total Recommended Off-The-Job Hours: 127 hours of work-based learning
A significant part of your apprenticeship is the learning that you do in your own time while you review your learning journey and your progress. Each apprentice has access to an electronic portal that contains copies of materials used in training sessions; curated links to blogs, videos, and other information helpful to Business Analysts; pre-reading for the classroom courses, and quizzes and question banks. You will also get two BCS business analysis books: “Business Analysis” and “99 Techniques”.
Total Recommended Off-The-Job Hours: 32 hours of self-managed learning
By enrolling in our apprenticeship programme, the apprentices will get structure and guidance to learn and know what their responsibilities as a business analyst are and how to do the job without having to second-guess themselves or be unclear about the activities they need to perform.
They will gain confidence in their skills and knowledge and they will be able to take on more responsibilities.
Metadata Training has been delivering professional business analysis and agile training for over 30 years. Since 2017, we’ve been working with companies to provide the business analyst apprenticeship training. If you have specific requirements, we can adapt the programme to your organisation needs so you get the maximum benefits.
We’ve developed a flexible programme that is delivered by expert trainers and that draws from our fast experience of delivering business analysis training.
If you are:
Then let’s have a chat.
We can adapt it to your organisation needs. As a specialist apprenticeship provider, we work in a flexible way and adapt to your needs so you get the maximum benefits. Please get in touch to arrange a chat with our Apprenticeship Director. Run courses with mixed del
We can help you:
Please click here to fill in this form to arrange a call or call us on 020 7272 3726.
Want to find more details? View our apprenticeship page or Click to download our brochure
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Are you or one of your staff looking to move into a business analyst role and have no or very little experience?
You might be wondering where to start your training and we are providing more information in this article.
If you are looking to train your staff in business analysis and your company is paying the apprenticeship levy, we recommend you have a look at our Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme.
Where to start your business analysis training if you are new to business analysis?
If you are new to business analysis a good introduction to the topic is the foundation course BCS Business Analysis. It is a course rich in theory that will give you an overview of the business analyst role, the process, and the techniques you need to perform business analysis activities as part of your role.
At the end of this course, you will take a multiple-choice exam that will test your knowledge of the theory and will provide you with a recognised certification.
This course is also included in the BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle.
Now that you understand the basics it is time to develop core business analyst knowledge. You will need to take the 2 core courses that are required to achieve the higher-level certification, the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
The core courses are:
Both of these courses are included in the BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle.
Next, you need to choose your specialism course. You can choose between:
We had delegates who have taken both courses. One of these courses is included in the BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle.
If you reach this step you are not ready to take the oral exam to achieve your certificate for the BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle
The most rewarding experience in the career of all professionals who want to develop business analysis expertise is achieving the high-level qualification the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis. You don’t need any business analyst experience to take this qualification, 40% of our delegates had no experience.
Want to find out what to expect when studying for the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis with Metadata Training? Why not read about our delegate Angela who started studying for the diploma as soon as she started a new role as a business analyst – read more
If you are new to business analysis and your company is paying the levy, we can support to progress in your business analyst career and become a great asset to your organisation by providing our Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme.
The Business Analyst Apprenticeship Programme is a better alternative to professional training however it will not suit all professionals and all organisations – to find out more click here to download our brochure.
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Agile is a trendy topic at the moment. To keep up with a fast-changing world you need to be agile. But first, you need to understand agile. So getting a recognised qualification seems like the best place to start in your journey to prove to employers that you can work in an agile environment. The APMG Agile Business Analysis is a good qualification to get if you are a business analyst who needs to understand how to work in an agile environment.
The BCS Diploma in Business Analysis is a widely recognised qualification, so recognised that most recruiters even add it as a pre-requirements to call you for a business analyst job interview.
In an ideal world, you would aim to get both qualifications because they teach you complementary skills. None is better than the other, it all depends on your career goals.
The APMG Agile Business Analysis teaches a business analyst how to work in an agile environment, and will introduce you to agile concepts and way of working.
The BCS Diploma in Business Analysis helps you understand the role of the business analysts and teaches you tools and techniques to do your job.
A delegate once told me that she regrated having done the APMG Agile Business Analysis course before doing the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis because she didn’t have the understanding of the BA role and the BA techniques and she thought it would have been helpful to benefit from the course.
Need to speak with a course adviser? Please contact us on 020 7272 3726 or email us at info@metadatatraining.co.uk. We are happy to help you decide on a qualification that will help you achieve your career goals.
A customer contacted us because he did the 2 core modules of the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis and now he was looking for a role as a business analyst. He talked with a career adviser and was recommended to do the APMG Agile Business Analysis qualification. But he was unsure as he didn’t know which qualification will help him get a job as a business analyst without any business analysis experience.
Both qualifications are valuable and teach complementary skills.
In the long term, either one or the other would have been a good choice.
But because he was looking for short term goal of getting a role and he had no business analyst experience, I recommended him to finish the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis because that will help him prepare for his job interview.
To achieve the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis you need to pass a 50-min oral exam with BCS examiners. At the moment, due to COVID, you can take this online from anywhere.
BCS Diploma in Business Analysis represents a great practice for your next interview whether you are looking to change careers or get your next business analyst role.
The oral exam is a great way to learn to speak the business analysis language at interviews, draw on your transferable skills, and convince them that you can add value as a business analyst.
From the feedback we collect from our delegates most of them report back an increase in confidence. They now understand their responsibilities as a business analyst and have the tools to perform the role.
This new gained confidence can make a difference to whether you get your first role as a business analyst or not. And this is why professionals new to business analysis come to us to help them get a new role.
We don’t just help you gain your qualification (our trainers offer personal advice and support until you pass your exam) but you also gain the skills and confidence to go to an interview and convince the employer that you are the one for the role.
Want to find out what qualifications are available to develop your business analysis skills? Click to check this post
Want to find out our past delegates experience training with us to achieve the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis? Click to find out more
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We are aware the pandemic has brought challenges for all professionals including our customers and delegates.
We want to support the business analysts community and all professionals looking to develop business analysis skills and expertise to prepare for the future.
In order to do this we implemented the following initiatives to make your training experience with us stress-free, insightful and enjoyable:
We recommend attending our virtual Lunch and Learn sessions. These sessions are hands-on, practical, and help you develop business analysis skills for free. Each session is delivered by an expert trainer and focuses on teaching you a specific business analysis technique that is essential for you as a business analyst.
Each session is divided into 3 sections: introduction of the technique by the trainer, a practical group exercise (have a go at applying the technique on a scenario given by the trainer), followed by a Q&A at the end.
You can attend the session virtually over zoom from anywhere, on a weekday between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm. Grab your lunch and learn something new! We encourage you to go back to work and start applying these techniques to your projects.
Our sessions will focus on a variety of techniques, some examples below:
“I have really enjoyed the two lunch and learn sessions that I have attended. I think they are a really great way to refresh yourself on some of the tools and techniques, plus they give a great opportunity to catch up with tutors / discuss with other BA’s.”
As the name suggests, the sessions take place on weekdays from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm. We run one Lunch & Learn each month.
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A professional qualification is a significant investment in your career and it is important to have a clear understanding of what is available so you can make the right decision.
We are reviewing in this post all the qualifications available, who are they for, and what you will learn.
The most popular qualification for business analysts is the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis. The qualification is accredited by the BCS, the Charted Institute for IT.
The BCS Business analysis diploma is aimed at all professionals who want to develop business analysis skills. It will suit all professionals who want to work in roles that help organisations deliver change initiatives to achieve business goals. If your work involves talking to stakeholders or clients to gather requirements, needs, and issues to deliver solutions for them then you need business analysis skills.
From the delegates that attend our courses, 40% are completely new to business analysis and the rest have some experience.
There are no pre-requirements to achieving the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
At the end of the programme you would be able to:
The qualification will help you :
The BCS diploma in business analysis consists of one foundation and three practitioner qualifications followed by an oral exam. Each qualification stands alone and, in various combinations, leads to the International BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
We are listing here the courses that you need to take if you want to achieve the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.
1. Mandatory Modules
BCS Business Analysis Practice
2. Optional Modules
Practitioner Optional: BCS Modelling Business Processes or BCS Agile Systems Development Essentials
Foundation Optional: BCS Foundation in Business Change or BCS Organisational Behaviour or BCS Foundation in Business Analysis
3. Oral Exam
Click here to find out more about the diploma
Two courses that are part of the BCS Business Analysis Diploma Bundle are optional: one practitioner and one foundation.
Practitioner Optional
BCS Modelling Business Processes (the most popular option)
BCS Agile Systems Development Essentials
Foundation Optional
BCS Foundation in Business Change
BCS Foundation in Commercial Awareness
BCS Foundation in Business Analysis
What past delegates new to business analysis say after achieving the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis?
“I studied four modules with Metadata as part of the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis. I’m new to the field of BA so I was apprehensive about diving in at the deep end, especially as I planned on doing the more intensive weekend courses. There’s a lot of content to get through including plenty of new terminologies, techniques, and concepts. However, the entire experience was an absolute pleasure. The content delivery by the Metadata trainers was fantastic and, together with an extremely professional and responsive support team. I got through it all and passed the BCS interview on the first attempt. Highly recommended!”, Matthew, past delegate, submitted on reviews.co.uk
The other popular certification for business analysts is the CBAP qualification developed and accredited by IITBA, the International Institute for Business Analysis.
This qualification is based on the BABOK standard and it represents a very structured approach to business analysis that fits well with teams and organisations who want to have a clearly defined business analysis process and standard to follow.
In contrast, the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis offers more flexibility and you can choose optional modules to fit with your career direction or role.
You need to prove you have 5 years of business analyst experience to take the CBAP exam.
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