Watermark Learning Blog

Watermark Learning had a great time at BBC 2018, and we hope you did, too! Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth and chatted with us.

If you were unable to attend this year’s conference, we have provided some quick observations from the conference below.

Observations from BBC 2018

Digital projects

For the last few years “digital transformation” was a buzzword which most attendees related to in theory, if at all. Now, many more attendees are working in or with organizations that are actually going through such a transformation. One of the biggest topics of discussion from the participants was the amount of data needed for predictive analytics and the effort involved in cleansing it before it can be used in machine learning and AI.

Business Architecture

In the past, many viewed business architecture as somewhat of a niche component of business analysis. Now, many conference attendees wanted a deeper understanding of what it is and why it’s needed. This new interest is not surprising. In the early days of Agile, business architecture was considered as something nice to have, if it was thought about at all. Now, organizations realize that business architecture is essential to ensure that Agile projects produce product features that fit together in a way that adds value to organizations.

CURRENT AND FUTURE STATE OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Rich was on a panel of four industry experts, facilitated by Jared Gorai of IIBA, discussing what is happening now in the field, what is holding us back, and what the future might bring.

• One question for the panel about the current state provoked a great deal of discussion: what to do to help business analysis break out of the “order taker” mode. The problem could be defined as simply accepting a given solution (whether dictated by the business or any other stakeholder) and not questioning being an impediment to our role. The panel agreed that business analysts need to develop Influencing skills, and especially to show courage when “pushing back” or recommending alternative solutions.
• Jared mentioned there will be 800,000 business analysis jobs needed to be filled in the coming decades, and how do we find and hire that many talented people. We agreed there need to be better mechanisms available for assessing new BAs. The IIBA Competency Model is one framework for assessing potential candidates, but it is not an assessment.
• We agreed the future of business analysis is bright and adapting our profession to business changes, new technologies, and more complexity. For example, we need to solidify our translator and facilitator roles as business and technology advance.

For more, check out our Facebook photo album from the event.

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