IIBA MSP Professional Development Day 2022

Presented by Julie Kowalski 

Emotional Intelligence, also known as emotional quotient (EQ) has become one of the hottest buzzwords in corporate America, yet few Business Analysts use emotional intelligence to get ahead and achieve greater success.  

Come hear speaker extraordinaire, Julie Kowalski, share exactly what Business Analyst EQ is, how to master the EQ competencies, overcome triggers, and avoid the 3 primary Business Analyst causes of career (and life) derailment! Julie will also share specific steps you can take to dramatically improve your EQ, and success at work and in life.

Learning Objectives

Definition of emotional quotient/emotional intelligence

The primary causes of Business Analyst Career (and life) derailment

The competencies needed to succeed

What emotional triggers are, and how to ensure they do not get the best of you

How you as a Business Analyst can use Emotional Intelligence to significantly increase your success 

Take-a-ways

Clear understanding of emotional quotient (EQ)

Clear understanding of the primary causes of derailment and how to avoid them

Specific steps to take to increase your EQ competencies

Identification of your triggers and how to overcome them

Identification of Common emotional outbreaks and how to stop them

Presented by Dave Saboe

A great Product Owner can help organizations achieve amazing outcomes for their customers. As more organizations transform the way they work, many Business Analysts have the opportunity to provide critical support to Product Owners or move into Product Owner roles themselves.

Successful Product Ownership is about more than just backlogs and user stories. It requires a deep understanding of how to find the right problem/solution fit and the right product/market fit. In this session, you’ll understand the product development process and how to discover the right customer problems to solve to maximize the value delivered by your organization.

Learning Objectives

1) Understand the product lifecycle and how to apply different approaches to different product development stages

2) Discover how to find the right products to create to maximize value to your customer and your organization

3) Learn techniques for discovery and experimentation to create products your customers will love

Presented by: Sheila Harris

Working with stakeholders requires a high degree of collaboration and teamwork. This is especially true of Business Analysts due to the degree of exposure to the business and cross-organizational projects and initiatives. The foundation of any successful relationship is trust.

Building trust with stakeholders is a learnable skill and is critical to becoming a trusted advisor to the business. When we collaborate, we can only move forward at the speed of trust. Learn how to travel in the fast lane with trust building strategies.

Learning Objectives

1) Effectively utilizing current agile business analysis tools and techniques.

2) Insight into how human thinking plays a key role in agile business analysis.

3) How business analysis (and agile business analysis in particular) imparts excellence to any initiative.

BAs and Product Owners plan our stakeholder engagement approach carefully to maintain effective working relationships with our stakeholders. While there are many tools and techniques to perform stakeholder analysis, we need to analyze the mindset of our stakeholders – a deeper level of analysis - to understand how they will react in various situations, and how we may best respond to them. This means we must be willing to look within ourselves to understand how our behavior, words and actions may be perceived to adapt as necessary while avoiding causing conflict. This is where mindfulness is needed.

The ‘Stakeholder Engagement Canvas’ helps us perform a deeper level of stakeholder analysis. This new tool examines various aspects of the stakeholders’ mindset in context to the project as well as how we can be more mindful during our engagement with them. Kathy will present how to use this canvas to enable more effective stakeholder engagement.

Learning Objectives

"1) The importance of planning for effective stakeholder engagement

2) Using the stakeholder engagement canvas to plan, monitor and review stakeholder engagement

3) Understand how mindfulness helps build rapport and enhance communication with stakeholders

4) Implement practical mindfulness techniques to build successful stakeholder engagement"

Presented by: Christy Foley

Conflict in the workplace is inevitable. That's why employees and managers need to know how to identify conflict appropriately and navigate it effectively if they want to work productively. After all, a conflict-free workplace is a productive workplace!

Learning Objectives

1) Identify early signs of conflict

2) Gain the confidence to handle conflict

3) Techniques for successfully resolving conflict

Presented by: Trent Leopold

This presentation examines how agile business analysis fosters project excellence and success. The presentation examines current business analysis practices and processes, tools and techniques via a real-world example. Each participant takes with them a toolbox or tools and techniques to begin immediately utilizing in their professional practice. The presentation examines recent relevant research in human directly related human cognitive processes as well as emerging ISO (International Standards Organization) standards showcasing the value of excellence that business analysis imparts to any initiative. In addition to the tools and techniques, the educational and fun presentation includes a giveaway which each participant is eligible to receive.

Learning Objectives

1) Effectively utilizing current agile business analysis tools and techniques.

2) Insight into how human thinking plays a key role in agile business analysis.

3) How business analysis (and agile business analysis in particular) imparts excellence to any initiative.

Presented by: Mindy Bohannon

Asking targeted and probing questions and then actively listening to the answers are top key business analyst skills. During this session, we will review the power we have in questions and the reward we get in the answers. First, understanding the difference in the categories of questions available to us and how each results in different information in responses. Next, we evaluate the different ways we listen, with active listening and other techniques, to continue delving further or begin anew. Together we will practice several techniques and analyze how each benefits our work differently.

Learning Objectives

1) Power of Questions

2) Types of Questions

3) Listening Techniques

4) Opportunities to Practice

Presented by Jon Firnstahl

Delta is putting customers at the center of everything we do. We aim to deliver on and exceed their expectations with intentional experiences that build trust, reduce stress, drive satisfaction and create distinction. It is our priority is to reduce traveler friction by delivering a seamless, often touchless, travel experience across a global network of world-class partners. To make your journey as seamless as possible, thousands of complex systems are integrated and connected to get you to your destination.

1) Understanding Domain Driven Design

2) Connecting the lines between capabilities

3) How Delta is used it to move to the cloud

Presented by: Judy Alter

"Many Agile Purists say there is no need for a BA on an Agile team. This opinion could not be further from the truth. The belief appears to have resulted from the fact that Business Analyst was not a job title on an Agile Team. The challenge to anyone is to explain how you can have a successful project without business analysis. Although many companies do not use the business analyst's title anymore, there's no doubt that someone performs the business analysis.

This Business Analysis may be concentrated with one or two resources or distributed among all team members. The best scenario is to have one person dedicated to performing business analysis. If this person is an experienced business analyst, that is a bonus. Still, in any case, it's guaranteed the team could not deliver anything of value to the business area without business analysis.

A case study will share a Strategic Project to replace a customer-facing tool with unsupported software on unsupported hardware. Our Agile team used SAFe and included Business Analysts to create a web-based tool that resulted in several wins for the team.

Learning Objectives

1) Business Analysis is necessary on all project teams to be successful

2) Why Business Analysts should be performing that business analysis

3) Explain why the Business Analyst is the glue that helps the team to succeed

Presented by: Dr. Elizabeth Fleming

Exploration of the Imposter Syndrome phenomenon and how it shows up at work. This session will focus on what Imposter Syndrome is, what it is not, and provide attendees with some tips and tricks to overcoming Imposter Syndrome, an experience we are all likely to have had and are likely to experience again in the future.

"1) Define Imposter Syndrome to better recognize its presence and impact in self and others.

2) Understand the myths associated with Imposter Syndrome.

3) Learn how to overcome imposter syndrome with simple tips and tricks."

Presented by: Len Marchese

What's on Your Menu starts with a metaphor for thinking differently about strategy and capturing the leader position in your industry and concludes with the two key ingredients for agility, sustainability, innovation and leadership.

Leading Through Value presents a model for business analysis, how to not miss requirements and deliver high value and desired outcomes to your stakeholders.

Learning Objectives

1) Rethinking your post-pandemic strategy

2) Key ingredients for capturing Lead position

3) Inspiring others to take the journey

Presented by: Tina Underhill

The skill sets Business Analysts have in their toolbox, are desperately needed today as we continue to lift 3rd generation legacy systems into improved performance ones for data ingestion integrity, as an example. Product Owners lack many of these and justifies the need for that craft. In the same way many Business Analysts were born out of System Analyst roles, the best Product Owners came from being Business Analysts.

This session is dedicated to providing a clear Roadmap in the transition.

Learning Objectives

1) Learn how to inspect the overall value in the BA skills you possess and review what PO skills are in need of a repair or total replacement.

2) Explore driving towards the goals of the product and service instead of towards a project's.

3) Steer towards merging from the city street onto the Autobahn - you can do this and we can help!

4) Remember maintenance is key! How to remain in the know and spread the vision!

Presented by: Michael Roberts

HiPPO, the acronym for “highest paid person’s opinion”, is the manager who pops into your project at the last moment and offers an opinion on what to do to make the project, or product a success. This may or may not be a great idea.

So many times, data-driven decisions are sidelined by the highest-ranking person in the room’s experience and insight. In many instances, this is ok. In others, it’s not. When a HiPPO is in the room and a difficult decision needs to be made but there’s not data or data analysis to determine the right course of action one way or another, the group will often defer to the judgement of the HiPPO. And more and more frequently, decisions not backed by data are guiding your organization in the wrong direction. But how does this change.

In this discussion, we will examine how you can depersonalize decision-making and make the decision about facts, not what the HiPPO thinks. We will investigate healthy conflict, and respectful interjection with meaningful data.

Learning Objectives

1) Examples of bad data-driven behavior

2) History of data decision making

3) Data analysis tools and their use

4) How to build your own data arsenal

5) Soft skills approach to data

6) A simple data visualization demonstration

Moderated by Joe Perzel

There have been tectonic changes to how business analysis is performed and the the role of a Business Analyst in most organizations. The Agile framework has shifted how we gather requirements and design significantly. As the IT industry continues to evolve and change with data science, AI, domain design, capability inventories, and product management, the BA role continues to show it’s value in unique ways. This panel will be discuss the future of the BA role and business analysis discipline.

Panelists

Jen Battan - The Uncommon League

Hans Eckman - Eckman Guides

and more guest announced soon!