This morning I attended a great talk by Melanie Byrne of SQS at the Irish Computer Society on "
BABOK® Guide v3 - What’s it all about?". This was a breakfast event at 8 o'clock suitable for people on their way to work, and is part of a regular
series of events run by the Business Analysts Association of Ireland.
Melanie outlined some of the key differences between version 2 and version 3 of this international standard for Business Analysis. Version 3 was released last April after over five years of input from experts from all around the world. This has consequences for me and my classes in that modules content will have to be updated to take account of the new standard.
Some of the knowledge areas have been changed, and there is a lot of structural change within the areas plus new techniques and competencies added. But perhaps the biggest two changes that Melanie concentrated on are:
- New Core Concept Model
- New Perspectives
The new Core Concept Model components are: Changes, Solutions, Contexts, Value, Stakeholders, and Needs. These concepts are fundamental to the practice of Business Analysis and are recommended by Melanie to be part of every BA task.
The new Perspectives are used within Business Analysis to provide focus to the tasks - they use the same techniques, but in different ways. The perspectives are:
- Agile
- Business Intelligence
- Information Technology
- Business Architecture
- Business Process Management
Overall there are some significant changes and anyone used to the older version will need to update very soon. In particular to me it seems that Agile has become prominent, and as Melanie says - many BAs are now working in Agile environments and must move away from old methods like Waterfall to keep up.