Practitioner Certificate in Business Analysis Practice

This course is for people who already have a business analysis role and want to gain a deeper understanding of business analysis strategy and application. You will explore a range of strategic analysis and performance management techniques. You will apply business analysis techniques within a defined framework.

This course can be delivered with or without the corresponding BCS qualification. If the delegate passes the exam the certificate can count towards the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Suitability

This course is suitable for business analysts, business managers and members of their team, business change managers and project managers.

Learning Outcomes

The course covers how to develop a business strategy and how to explore a business issue. You will learn how to apply a range of business analysis techniques and look at a range of issues including:

  • The strategic context
  • How to analyse stakeholder perspectives
  • How to analyse and model business activities
  • How to identify potential solutions
  • How to make the business case

Course Content

Rationale for Business Analysis:

  • The role of the BA throughout the stages of the business change lifecycle
  • The scope of the BA role within the context of the range of analysis activities: strategic analysis and definition; business analysis; IT systems analysis

Understanding the Strategic Context:

  • The MOST technique to analyse the internal environment of an organisation
  • The resource audit technique to analyse the internal environment of an organisation
  • The PESTLE technique to analyse the external environment of an organisation
  • Porter’s Five Forces technique to analyse the external environment of an organisation
  • The purpose of a SWOT analysis

Understanding the Current Situation:

  • The generic stakeholder categories defined in the stakeholder wheel
  • The different investigation techniques for a given scenario
  • The rationale for taking a holistic view when investigating a business situation
  • Interpret the business situation represented in: rich pictures; mind maps and fishbone
    Diagrams

Stakeholder Analysis and Management:

  • The different stakeholders in terms of their power/influence and level of interest
  • The appropriate stakeholder management strategy
  • The CATWOE technique to explore stakeholder business perspectives
  • The different stakeholder business perspectives based on elements of CATWOE to identify similarities and differences in their world views

Analysing and Modelling Business Activities

  • The rationale for building conceptual models of a business situation
  • How the five types of high level activity within a business activity model (and the dependencies between them) represent a stakeholder’s business perspective
  • The role of the doing activities in conducting the work of the transformation, as defined in the stakeholder’s CATWOE
  • The rationale for the consensus business activity model

Identifying Potential Solutions

  • Distinguish between the different categories of business rule
  • The process for carrying out gap analysis, through comparison of the conceptual business activity model and existing business situation
  • The components of a new business model

Building the Business Case

  • The rationale and contents for the development of a business case
    • Scenarios in order to identify costs, benefits, risks and impacts
  • The rationale for the development of the financial case and the different appraisal techniques
  • Where a business case sits within the business change lifecycle and the rationale for reviewing it at each stage

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of our clients would recommend Alpha to a colleague or peer

90%

of a cohort was promoted within 2 years after participating in an Alpha course.

96%

of participants felt more confident in their role, following an Alpha commercial leadership course.

Why study with Alpha?

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We are thought leaders in instructional and learning journey design and holistic solution architects. We have extensive finance and investments experience combined with skills application to deliver performance improving results. We develop immersive learning environments that maximize time to productivity, support talent retention and added value to improving quality of hires.

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We are focused on mining the embedded organisational intellectual capital for the benefit of the next generation. We create and curate best in class practice gathered from our experience with the leading financial institutions. We design our programmes with the end in mind – what results are you trying to achieve with this intervention? What metrics will we set ourselves to achieve that?

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Quality and innovation, using current market and industry best practices, have made us a trusted partner in delivering dynamic and motivating training for the financial and capital markets. Our programmes are generation proof and responsive to evolving learner needs and styles. Our solutions use a multi-stakeholder engagement strategy that expands beyond relationships between the learner and learning provider. We create connections with managers, peers and the wider business to drive impactful return on investment..

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