International Institute of Business Analysis® (IIBA®) has just releasing a new version of the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK®) which has expanded the scope of the standard to new areas like business architecture and BPM, revamped the knowledge area and task structure, and added dozens of additional techniques to the guide.
This release is non-trivial with many additions and changes. Driving many of the updates is the objective of expanding the body of knowledge beyond IT projects and into disciplines of process improvement, business architecture, business analytics, and enterprise transformation.
“This version responds to a growing world-wide demand for strategic business analysis professionals who align technology projects to business strategy, drive ongoing process improvement and deliver innovative solutions,” said Aaron Whittenberger, a volunteer regional director of IIBA. “It marks an important milestone in the evolution of the business analysis profession and establishes a new standard by positioning BAs as leaders who contribute to enterprise-wide success through alignment of change with strategy and innovation in business architecture, processes and information technology.”
IIBA sees the business analysis profession as much broader than IT and RDM, and this version of the BABOK starts along the path in that direction. As they describe on their website, they see the BA ambitiously involved in everything from defining strategy to supporting continuous improvement, as well as taking a leadership role defining goals and requirements for programs and projects.
To support this, they have added and updated content on what they call perspectives (agile, business intelligence, IT, business architecture and business process management) in order to recognize the different contexts and purposes for which business analysis work may be needed and performed. Additional techniques to support this (such as business cases, financial analysis, mind mapping, balanced scorecarding, and business capability analysis) are among those added in this latest version.
The knowledge areas and their tasks and elements have also undergone a significant restructuring. Some of the major highlights include:
- An expansion and renaming of the Elicitation KA to what is now known as Elaboration and Collaboration,
- A major restructuring of the Requirements Management and Communication KA into the Requirements Lifecycle Management KA,
- Enterprise Analysis has now been renamed and repurposed as Strategy Analysis,
- Requirements Analysis has been expanded to include design activities relevant to a BA in the new Requirements Analysis and Design Definition KA, and
- Solution Assessment and Validation has been simplified to focus on Solution Evaluation.
For a variety of infographics and resources summarizing the changes and new format, visit the IAG BABOK Resources page.
IIBA members should also be aware that while many new changes have been made, IIBA is not yet releasing a date for changes to its certification programs — advising that tests will remain based on V2 for the near future and suggesting a revamping of the CCBA®/CBAP® ‘levels’ is under development.
For additional help and understanding of the implication, integration and application of these new concepts and changes, contact you IAG advisor. IAG’s management team were founding members of the IIBA and we have been a leading force championing and providing services in the areas of business analysis, requirements, agile, BPM, and business architecture for more than 20 years now. These new areas that IIBA has now added in this latest version demonstrate their importance for the BA community to understand — in order to provide value to its business stakeholders. For assistance or more information on these (particularly business architecture and BPM) , follow IAG (iag.biz, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) for updates, services, courses and webinars.