Date: 6 Feb 2023
Where: Manchester

First Presentation: Leading a BA Service

The Community of Practice (CoP) concept has become both popular and prevalent in the world of business analysis. However, a ‘community’ is not the same as a ‘team’ focused on delivering customer-focused and responsive service.

While a CoP offers many benefits, these are not sufficient to deliver a BA Service that engages with customers, offers a relevant portfolio of services, aligns with standards, and employs professional business analysts who hold the required skills to co-create value for the organisation.

In this session Debra Paul and Christina Lovelock will introduce the key aspects of the BA Service and Service Leadership.

They are looking forward to addressing your questions about creating, leading and improving the BA Service within your organisation.

Key areas of discussion:

  1. What is meant by a BA Service?
  2. What does a BA service portfolio include?
  3. What does leading a BA Service involve?
  4. How can adopting a BA service portfolio approach help BAs and BA leaders?
  5. How are the BA service and the T-shaped professional aligned?

 

 

Second Presentation: The Vampire and the Stakeholders


Business analysis is a wonderful thing. As BAs, we work with all kinds of people on all kinds of initiatives… but sometimes the people we work with are not engaged, they may have other priorities, other views or quite simply don’t see the value in the work.

During this presentation, Sam Merrick talks about the next chapter in the story of Anna Lizst, a hero BA, seen at last year’s BA Conference, who helped to banish the Wizard of Woz.

In this story, Anna helps the world’s first Vampire BA: Dr. Acular. As a vampire, Dr. Acular is very concerned about people holding stakes! However, as we all know, vampires have certain powers that can be helpful at times.

As the story progresses, Anna helps Dr. Acular to see that his powers can help him avoid the wrath of tricky stakeholders.

 

 

Debra Paul is the Managing Director of Assist Knowledge Development Ltd, a training and consultancy company specialising in business analysis, business architecture and service design. Debra co-authored the publications, Business Analysis, Agile and Business AnalysisBusiness Analysis Techniques and Delivering Business Analysis: the BA Service Handbook. Debra is a keen advocate of service science and design thinking and developed the Business Analysis Service Framework during her doctoral research.

Debra is a regular speaker at business seminars and IS industry events. She has delivered keynote presentations at several conferences, is a founder member and director of the BA Manager Forum and was the chief architect of the BCS Advanced International Diploma in Business Analysis.

 

 

 

Christina Lovelock is a qualified coach and the co-author of the BCS book Delivering Business Analysis: The BA Service Handbook. She is active in the BA professional community, attending and regularly speaking at events in the Yorkshire region as well as national and international conferences.

Christina has contributed to digital transformation and continuous improvement in several public sector organisations at a local and national level, building practices of 5 to 120 Business Analysts. She is committed to the development of the BA profession, has introduced entry level roles into her organisations and led the development of the UK National BA Apprenticeship standard. She holds the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis and is a director of the national BA Manager Forum.

Having recently completed a Masters in Senior Leadership, Christina now provides independent services including consultancy, coaching and content creation. 

 

 

 

Sam Merrick is a Business Architecture Guild Certified Business Architect, an IIBA Certified Business Analysis Professional, a holder of both the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis, as well as the Advanced Business Analysis Diploma and BA Expert Award holder through the BA Manager Forum.

Sam is passionate about business analysis, business architecture and using these toolkits to optimise business benefits for large organisations. He has worked in financial services for ten years from entry business analyst to practice manager and more recently in the energy sector and public sector, to test his skills in a new domain and advance his business architecture skills.

Sam is an advocate of life-long learning, an active mentor in his spare time, a BCS Business Advanced Diploma in Business Analysis Assessor as well as a Director at IIBA UK.



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