Monthly Archives: August 2015

Is the new IIBA alliance a trustworthy one?

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fellowship

The IIBA has formed a strategic alliance, (as described in my previous post).

In that post, I looked at how each partner could enrich the IIBA offering. The partners are:

  • BCS The Chartered Institute for IT,
  • BRM Institute,
  • IREB, and
  • Sparx Systems Pty Ltd.

After submitting the above-mentioned post to some BA groups on LinkedIn, I got some great responses. Ones that made me stop and think about the alliance.

Each member of the alliance has in-depth knowledge of specific areas that are covered at a higher, and broader, level by the IIBA. And this will add value. However, one of the partners, Sparx, is actually a vendor. And this is where the concern is…

Here’s some of the comments that have been made…

I thinks it’s odd and perhaps a conflict of interest for a standards/certification organization to align itself with a particular vendor…no matter how good they are.

How likely will it be that IIBA will host webinars with other competing products now that they are in alliance with one vendor? Probably not very likely. So rather than expose members to a collection of tools, foster competition and recommend “best of breed” products, this alliance does exactly the opposite.

I saw the announcement and was vaguely uneasy about the implications, primarily my squeamishly about IIBA becoming commercialised – maybe i’m being too naive?

So, there is some concern that an alliance with a vendor might not be a good thing.

In the discussion Alain Arsenault, Senior Officer, Corporate and Business Development at IIBA, offered the following:

In 2014, IIBA leadership and Board of Directors revised the organization vision and defined a new direction for IIBA. A 3-years strategic plan was established to support this new model along with a new core purpose to “unite a community of professionals to create better business outcomes”.

The new vision focuses on collaboration, engagement and value creation while continuing to support and advance the practice, discipline and profession of Business Analysis.

The newly announced alliances support this new paradigm. Our goal is to broaden our engagements and enable the Business Analysis ecosystem to flourish and provide greater value and connectivity to our members, the broader BA community and business stakeholders.

Our engagements are not exclusive and we welcome and will continue to foster similar alliances of collaboration with other associations and organizations.

You’ll see that Alain mentions “value creation”, and providing “greater value”. And as mentioned, Sparx do offer a depth of resources and knowledge that is of great value to a BA.

But that last sentence is also a bit of a concern…”our engagements are not exclusive” and “we … will continue to foster similar alliances of collaboration with other associations and organizations.” IREB, BCS and BRMI are all “associations, or organizations”, but how does Sparx fit in there?

Personally, I feel that the IIBA does have our best interests at heart…But the concerns that I mentioned above are also bothering me.

concernedpose

Unfortunately, I’m unable to predict, with any certainty, what is going to happen here…so I‘m just going to wait and see. (IIBA – we are all watching.)

What about you? What are your thoughts? Do you think that the IIBA’s alliance with vendors is one that we should be concerned about? Let me know in the comments below.

Related Links

The IIBA is teaming up…what does this mean to you?

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war army

IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) has announced a strategic alliance with four leading, global organizations. 

The four leading, global, organisations are:

  • BCS The Chartered Institute for IT,
  • BRM Institute,
  • IREB, and
  • Sparx Systems Pty Ltd.

In my opinion this is a great thing. Each of these organisations offer real value. Often in ways that the IIBA can’t.

Map Makers

Let’s face it, IIBA does not pretend to be an expert in any one specific field. The IIBA (according to themselves) assists business analysts by defining standards for business analysis, identify the skills necessary to be effective in the business analyst role and recognise BA competency through their CCBA and CBAP certification.  In fact, in an earlier post I mentioned that “the BABOK was merely providing an extremely good high-level map of the BA world. One with signposts to areas that needed further exploring.”

Members of the Alliance

So what value do the parties of this alliance have to offer? Let’s have a look…

BCS

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, promotes good working practices, codes of conduct, skills frameworks and common standards. (In that respect, they are similar to the IIBA).

They provide rich, detailed, guidance, and certifications, for specific areas relating to Business Analysis. I have always been impressed with their in-depth material. In fact, one of the most valuable books that I have in my BA bookcase, is “Business Analysis Techniques”, it’s my go-to book when I want to understand specific BA techniques

I see the BCS as definitely complementing what the IIBA offers. (Check out their website, the qualifications, and certifications that they offer, and their list of excellent books).

BRM Institute

The Business Relationship Management Institute advances the art and discipline of BRM. They offer training and varying degrees of certification in BRM. They also have their own BOK, the BRM Body of Knowledge. 

Having the BRMI in a partnership with the IIBA is definitely a winner. It will definitely strengthen the discipline of Business Analysis.

You can read more about the BRM Institute on their website.

IREB

The International Requirements Engineering Board provides training and certification in the field of Requirements Engineering (naturally). Their certification is the Certified Professional for Requirements Engineering (CPRE), and is made up of three levels – Foundation, Advanced, Expert. (The Expert level is in the planning stages – so really it’s only two levels).  The IREB publish an excellent (free) quarterly magazine – Requirements Engineering. 

The IREB focuses in depth on software specific requirement elicitation, requirements documentation, requirements analysis, requirements modeling and requirements management. This will definitely be of value to a complete BA offering.

IREB’s website: https://www.ireb.org/en. Click here also to see an interesting comparison of the IIBA and IREB offering (from 2014).

Sparx Systems

Sparx Systems specialise in visual modelling tools. Their product Enterprise Architect is an exceptional tool for full life cycle modeling. It has a user base of over 350,000, and is used across the globe. Added to that Sparx offer a wealth of information including white papers, tutorials, e-books, etc.

Having Sparx Systems as a member of this alliance makes sense. Sparx Systems have very good credentials, and can offer a lot. 

The Whole is Greater than the Sum the Parts

Each member of the Alliance brings something valuable to the BA discipline. The IIBA is very broad in what it offers, but not necessarily deep. The other partners all contribute something that bolsters out that depth. It is a very sensible alliance and one that I am excited about.

Another possibility…

As you might be aware, dear reader, recently there has been a new threat  to the IIBA’s seat of power. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has developed it’s own Business Analysis certification. A lot of analysis has been performed on the validity of this threat.

Watermark Learning made some very interesting observations in a blog post. The PMI’s perspective of a BA is is that the business analysts support the efforts of the program and project manager. The IIBA perspective is that business analysts support the organization. Which does the organization need?

So … it is also possible that this alliance came about as a way for the IIBA to fend off this new threat, 

I’m curious what you think …

Other Links

  • Announcement by IIBA
  • Announcement by BRMI
  • Announcement by BCS