I recently received two emails about certification, one from a customer of ours who purchased our CBAP® Online Study Guide. The other was from a colleague wondering if we planned to offer training for the new IIBA certification, the CCBA™ (Certification of Competency in Business Analysis). Both are good questions and prompted me to share my thoughts with others who might be interested.
Q. Can you please give me some advice on starting my preparation for the CBAP® exam? How did you prepare for it? Where are CBAPs most valued in the world?
Last month we began our “fight” by exploring two estimating techniques that are often used on both Scrum and Waterfall projects. The first was relative sizing (one kind of analogous estimating) and the second Delphi (called Planning Poker in Scrum). Scrum won both rounds (barely) because although both techniques can be used on both types of projects, their usage in Scrum seems easier to understand, learn, and apply. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the terms Analogous and Delphi I think academics and hard work. When I hear about tee-shirt sizes and planning poker, I think fun.
In the popular children’s book 
What is it with sponsorship? If I had a nickel for every story I heard in the classroom about poor or completely non-existent (!) sponsorship, I’d be writing this blog from somewhere more exotic than my cube. Sponsors who aren’t available for meetings. Sponsors who don’t have time to read reports. Sponsors the project manager never sees. Ever. Who is driving the project train here?
