BCS FOUNDATION CERTIFICATE IN BUSINESS ANALYSIS

What You’ll Learn 

• The role and competencies of a Business Analyst. 

• The strategic context for business analysis and the BA service framework. 

• How to investigate the current and target business states. 

• Defining a solution and preparing a business case. 

• Eliciting and managing requirements. 

• Delivering a solution 

Course Requirement 

There are no formal requirements or admission criteria, although candidates should have decent written English skills. 

Course Features 

• 30 hours study time 

• 1 hour assessment examination 

• Physical classes 

• BCS Study materials. 

Exam Format 

60 minutes supervised examination, with 40 multiple choice questions. 

Pass mark is 65% (26/40) 

Course Syllabus 

1. Introduction 

2. What is business analysis? 

• • • What is Business Analysis? 
    • The Development of Business Analysis 
    • The Development of Business Analysis – Outsourcing 
    • The Development of Business Analysis – IT 
    • The Development of Business Analysis – Consultants 
    • The Development of Business Analysis – Business Change Lifecycle 
    • The Scope of Business Analysis Work 
    • Principles of Business Analysis 
    • Principles of Business Analysis – Holistic/Agile 
    • The Role and Responsibilities of a Business Analyst 
    • Variants of the Business Analyst Role 

3. The competencies of a business analyst 

• • • The T-shaped Professional 
    • Competencies of a Business Analyst 
    • Competencies of a Business Analyst – Personal Qualities 
    • Competencies of a Business Analyst – Business Knowledge 
    • Competencies of a Business Analyst – Professional Techniques 
    • Ways of Developing the Competencies 

4. The Strategic context for business analysis 

• • • Business Analysis and the Strategic Context 
    • PESTLE Analysis 
    • VMOST technique 
    • Elements of Performance Measurement 
    • SWOT Analysis 
    • Summary 
    • Techniques used in Strategy Execution 

5. The Business Analysis Service Framework 

• • • Business Analysis Service Framework (BASF) 
    • Investigating the business situation 
    • Technique 1 – Workshops 
    • Technique 2 – Observation 
    • Technique 3 – Interviews 
    • Technique 4 – Scenarios 
    • Technique 5 – Prototyping 
    • Technique 6 – User role analysis 
    • Technique 7 – Quantitative approaches (Surveys, questionnaires) 
    • Diagrammatic techniques used to record a business situation (Rich pictures, mind maps) 

6. Analysis and Managing Stakeholders 

• • • Stakeholder categories using the stakeholder wheel. 
    • The use of the Power/Interest grid technique to analyse stakeholders. 
    • Stakeholder responsibilities using a RACI chart. 
    • Improving Business Services and Processes 
    • Business process hierarchy. 
    • Techniques used to model the enterprise level processes. 
    • Aspects of the event-response level. 
    • Aspects of the actor-task level. 
    • Aspects of the as-is process model. 
    • generic approaches to improving business processes. 
    • The purpose of customer journey maps. 

9. Defining the Solution 

• • • The gap analysis process 
    • The use of POPIT™ in gap analysis. 
    • The process for developing options. 
    • The purpose of design thinking. 

10. Making the business case 

• • • The lifecycle for a business case in business case development. 
    • The areas of feasibility assessment. 
    • The structure and contents of a business case 
    • Features relevant to the production of a business case within an Agile environment. 
    • The elements of a CARDI log. 
    • The purpose of the following investment appraisal techniques 

11. Establishing the requirements 

• • • Requirements engineering (RE) framework 
    • Actors in requirements engineering. 
    • Types of requirement. 
    • Hierarchy of requirements 
    • Requirements elicitation techniques. 
    • Elements of requirements analysis 

12. Documenting and Modelling Requirements. 

• • • Documentation styles. 
    • Elements of a requirements catalogue. 
    • The format of user stories. 
    • The elements of the use case diagram used to model functional requirements. 
    • The elements of a class model used to model data. 
    • Product backlog in modelling and documentation in an Agile environment. 
    • The structure of the business requirements document. 

13. Validating and Managing requirements 

• • • Types of requirements validation. 
    • Aspects of requirements management 

14. Delivering the Requirements 

• • • Types of delivery lifecycle. 
    • Advantages and disadvantages of the lifecycles. 

15. Delivering the business solution 

• • • The role of the business analyst in the business change lifecycle. 
    • The role of the business analyst during the design, development and test stages. 
    • Approaches used in the implementation stage. 
    • How the benefits plan is used in the realisation stage.