New Millpond Training Course: Business Analysis Fundamentals

The goal of all project teams is to deliver positive and productive changes that align with the organisation’s strategy and vision. If you are in a project team, your hope is that all that effort put in to deliver the project has made lives better in some way.

But how do we know? There’s many a well-executed project that meets scope, schedule and budget, but does not achieve that true mark of success.

This is where Business Analysis comes in. It is the process of identifying business needs, identifying and recommending solutions, and facilitating the implementation of those solutions, precisely to deliver real value to stakeholders.

No matter what our role is within an organisation, we can benefit from an understanding of how business analysis helps keep projects firmly focussed on ‘outcomes’, rather than just ‘outputs’.

This is why Millpond is growing its Business Analysis practice to provide professional business analysis support to organisations, and it’s also why we have developed this new course.

Millpond’s Business Analysis Fundamentals course is designed for anyone keen to get a foundational understanding of the business analysis profession. If you are:

• a recent graduate who is keen to get started in a career in Business Analysis
• a project team member (project sponsor, project manager, developer, tester or subject matter expert etc) who wants to know more about what that Business Analyst in your team is doing
• or anyone who is keen to move more into a business analysis role within their organisation.

…then this course is a great option for you.

Course Outline

The course will give you a solid foundation for leveraging business analysis principles and practices for project success. Here’s a summary of what’s included:

• About Business Analysis

We start by examining some important concepts about business analysis. What is it, who does it, and when. Understanding the mindset required to succeed as a business analysis professional, and the core competencies and qualities a great BA needs to have, are also discussed.

• The Business Analyst and the Project

The activity of business analysis might be considered ‘business as usual’ for a business analyst who does it all day every day, but the actual analysis of business processes and requirements is external to the processes themselves. The context for business analysis is within some type of ‘project’ framework. It’s important then to consider what constitutes a project and what types of project methodologies are most commonly used, in order to learn how and where business analysis can best assist within it.

• The Business Analyst and the Project Lifecycle

Regardless of the specific methodology used within a project, they have a similar life cycle that includes these major phases:

• Project Proposal/Request – a business need (or opportunity) is reported.
• Project Startup/Planning – a business need is investigated, and a high-level plan is developed and approved that includes what each part of the project will deliver.
• Project Delivery – execution of the project plan, creating the project deliverables.
• Project Closure – verify completion and close out the project.
• Project Monitoring – occurs throughout each stage of the project and involves checking results against the plan and managing any adjustments that may be required.

There are business analysis activities that occur in each project phase, and we will examine many of these activities.

With plenty of time allocated for discussion, experience sharing, exercises and case studies, this course is designed to be practical and fun, as we look at these:

• Building a sound Business Case

Have you ever noticed a great opportunity within your business, or a problem that needs to be solved? You mention it to your manager, and their response is usually something like, ‘state your case and we’ll see what we can do’. We’ll look at how the BA can build better business cases and document them.

• Stakeholder Analysis & Management

Remember that goal of making someone’s life better? We need to know who is affected by a problem, and also how they will be affected by a proposed solution to achieve that goal. We’ll cover how to identify different types of stakeholders and tips for keeping them engaged and happy with the project and with you.

• Business Processes

Identifying, analysing and documenting business processes is a core activity for a business analyst. A good business process document is primarily a communication tool and can quickly provide valuable insights to stakeholders. With an introduction to the de-facto international standard BPMN (Business Process Model & Notation – see BPMN.org) you will get a chance for some practice with some of the free online tools too.

• Business Requirements

Similarly essential to a BA’s role is eliciting, documenting and managing business requirements. We’ll explore what a requirement is, and what it is not, requirement types and levels, and how to gather and write good requirements.

• Where else can a Business Analyst help their project team?

A good business analyst is always on the lookout for opportunities to help wherever they can. We’ll also discuss how a BA can assist with:

• project risks and issues
• release management
• benefits management
• organisational change management.

With 2 days allocated to the course, there is lots of time to explore and discuss these topics in detail, along with practical exercises, example templates which you can take away and a case study to put what we learn into practice. You will finish the course feeling more confident about your capability to provide value to the projects you are involved in.

For more information and course bookings visit:  https://millpond.co.nz/baf

About the Trainer

Richard Coulbeck has been working in the IT industry for over 40 years and a Business Analyst for the last 17. Moving to Christchurch in 2008, he spent 10 years with Canterbury University, and worked on over 50 projects, before accepting Senior BA positions with local consulting companies in 2018, before joining Millpond in January 2024. He brings a wealth of experience in business analysis and a personal passion for supporting people in their IT journey.

Richard produced and trained IT related courses as part of his roles at Otago and Canterbury Universities. He taught courses in Microsoft Office and SharePoint and was the Universities advanced level trainer in FileMaker Pro, a popular database development platform available at the time. At Canterbury University, he provided in-house training in SharePoint (User and Administration) and PRINCE2 (project management methodology) to staff at all levels of the organisation. Participant feedback was always very positive, making Richard a valued member of the in-house training team.

He is a careful, patient and considerate trainer, always determined to make learning accessible and fun to all participant levels.