Getting acquainted with your Knowledge Areas!

BABOK® enlists six Knowledge Areas which a CBAP® aspirant needs to be conversant in to clear the certification exam. Knowledge areas are described as the function areas which a business analysis professional needs to understand and enlists the tasks which a practitioner must be able to perform. Contrary to the popular belief, Knowledge areas do not represent any project phase or the activities to be performed. The activities can be undertaken in any order depending upon the availability of inputs and level of importance.

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

This knowledge area focuses on planning the business analysis efforts. The process involves the nature of businesses to be carried out in order to achieve the Business Analysis effort. It can include a variety of techniques like identification of stakeholders, Planning Business Analysis activities, Planning Business Analysis Communication, Planning Requirement Management process, Monitoring and Reporting the Business Analysis performance.

Enterprise Analysis

Enterprise Analysis emphasizes on how to take a business need forward. The process generally defines the whole business need and helps in driving the proposed project by proper problem definition and analysis. The role does not end with identifying and defining the requirements but also includes searching and defining a feasible solution scope that can probably be implemented by the business. The profile may include developing a business case of feasibility study and work breakdown structure. Apart from it, the role also incorporates defining business goals; estimation of cost, time and required resources. The evaluation of risk factor associated with alternatives is regarded to be the most important task of the phase.

Requirement Analysis

Requirement Analysis is the ultimate test as it includes your skills at elaborating and defining the solution in an easy and manageable context to make it more understandable for the project team. The knowledge area focuses majorly on documenting and graphically modeling the requirements.  While performing the ascertained functions, one needs to take into account the feasibility of the characteristics of the defined solution. Prioritizing the requirements becomes important at this stage as it directly affects the outcomes.

Elicitation

The process generally is carried out at a prior stage. The phase emphasizes on the collaboration with the stakeholders in order to identify and gather requirements and perform a more realistic need analysis. The techniques identified in this phase are put to work to elicit requirements at many levels of project that includes your project business, stakeholders, solution analysis and requirements transition.

Requirements Management and Communication

One of the daunting tasks is to communication the requirements. This step enables you to device a communication strategy to approach the stakeholders about the requirements. This will ensue that the stakeholder and project team stay on one page. Managing formal approvals, tracking the requirement details, verifying the scope of the probable solutions and communication the whole solution process become the roles to be carried out at this phase. You are required to primarily focus on the communicating activities here.

Solution Assessment and Validation

Validating each alternative solution on the basis of outcomes can be quite daunting. Choosing the good amongst the bests is very difficult and that is what expected from you at this level. The role emphasizes on assessing and validating the proposed, in progress and the implemented solutions during and after the project life cycle. The main focus is on solution focused activities. The work also incorporates identifying the leaks and gaps in solutions and determining the workarounds at the same time. Your ability to foresight is put to use as it tests the deployed solutions to see how well they meet the original requirements and how well they satisfy the strategic goals.

Get in line with your Knowledge

Getting your doubts cleared about the Knowledge Areas can be regarded as the stepping stone in the direction of your ultimate goal: the CBAP® Certification. In order to get a detailed insight about the Knowledge Areas, it is recommended to undergo a quality preparatory program. Multisoft being a Registered Education Provider of IIBA® provides a good resourceful training workshop for the CBAP aspirants. Due to its unmatched mentorship and excellence, it has become the training partner for many certified CBAPs globally. Join the bandwagon with CBAP Online Training.