CBAP

Industry certifications such as IIBA are proven ways to get oneself established in the industry and achieve much-aspired growth in the profession in terms of skill, visibility, personal branding, career growth, to name a few. In fact, it opens a myriad of opportunities for a business analysis professional.  This article is meant for those wishing to achieve IIBA certification on the first attempt without falling for the deadly failure traps.

Studying for your IIBA certification (CBAP, CCBA, or ECBA) can be a rigorous but ultimately fulfilling experience. But there is nothing worse than putting in all that time, work, and commitment and then FAILING the actual exam. Several disappointed candidates have sought guidance from me, unfortunately, after failing their first attempt at the exam. Before moving forward with these candidates, the first thing I do is get an understanding of the steps they previously took to study for the exam. This not only helps me get a baseline of how I can help them, but it also serves as inputs for how I can build courses and study tools that address these issues. So, to help you increase your chances of passing your IIBA exam on your first attempt, here are some of the top reasons people fail their IIBA exam.

These are my findings from analyzing the Business Analysis Body Of Knowledge, version 3 (BABOK). These findings are presented in the form of, suggestions for improvement, potential errors and omissions. They are the result of creating an object-oriented model of the structure and information of the BABOK. This model captures 461 pages of the BABOK - from the Business Analysis Key Concepts chapter through to the end of the Techniques To Tasks Mapping chapter.

While the IIBA-AAC exam is not the most challenging exam that I've ever taken, it does require you to have a very specific type of understanding of the Agile Extension to the BABOK Guide. Though it's not a requirement, I recommend taking an exam prep course to increase your chances of passing the exam. Those who did not initially pass the exam reported that they underestimated the exam and figured that they would be able to rely on their agile experience to pass the exam. WRONG!! In fact, the exam doesn't focus much on the details of agile ceremonies or daily activities, but more so on the general principles of agile business analysis.

 

Many professionals approach us after being unsuccessful in CBAP so we thought of doing some analysis to come up with the most common reasons of failure in CBAP.

There are many articles and blogs giving tips on how to pass the CBAP exam but on a first search, I didn't find any article explaining why people fail in CBAP. This will definitely help the CBAP aspirants to make sure that they don't repeat the mistakes.

Becoming a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) has been one of the most rewarding and challenging endeavors for me as a business analyst. The purpose of this article is to help other business analysts pass the CBAP exam on the first try by sharing the strategy that I used. Hopefully, it will be of great service to many business analysts and aspiring CBAPs. Below is an outline to navigate you through studying for the CBAP and absorbing the BABOK material.

I want to pursue a career in the Business Analysis field. I am very excited about it, and keen to pursue further. But, I am in a different role and I don’t have prior experience in BA field. How do I switch over to BA role? All the BA jobs require prior experience. How do I make the transition? Will any certification help me for the transition? How do I solve this? All the certifications have prior experience eligibility criteria. I am in a fix–what should I do to make my dream true? Can anyone help?”

Does this sound like you?

CBAP certification is undoubtedly the most coveted designation globally among the Business analysts.

Even though work experience is one of the requirements of CBAP® as a prerequisite, the CBAP® examination needs you to have excellent practical knowledge of the business analysis concepts and the ability to relate BABOK® knowledge to practical scenarios/cases.

The purpose of this article is to help YOU (fellow business analyst-perfectionist) to pass the CBAP V3 certification exam efficiently without overspending on prep materials. I wish there had been a CURRENT guide available for me when I stormed the CBAP fortress back in April 2017. After completing thorough online research, I found a few useful but outdated articles and other useful but disparate tips for how to pass the exam. But there was no comprehensive guide for passing the CBAP v3 exam on the first try.

This article briefly summarizes the CBAP and CCBA programs, and how eligible business analysts can create a “foolproof” plan to obtain their certification. Bear in mind that any certification plan is only foolproof if you personalize it, commit to it, and follow it. The majority of the article covers the crucial steps for your plan and several tips to help you execute it to become certified.

This article explores strategy mapping as discussed within Business Architecture Guild BIZBOK, and attempts to extend the discussion by defining a set of information and graphical principles that allows strategy to be represented graphically.

This article provides an in depth study on the concept of traceability, together with its implications and applications within a business context. Traceability is a term used in the IIBA BABOK, among other professional practices, in the context of requirements where requirements are said to be traced that provides alignment of requirements to each other. This implies that there are different classes or abstractions of requirements such as stakeholder, business and functional requirements. Traceability allows the alignment between all types or abstractions of requirements, telling a kind of story to how they all interrelate. 

This new PMI-PBA certification for business analysis, from PMI, might introduce confusion in selecting the right certification to help you achieve your professional goals. This comparison includes application requirements, knowledge required, and your current or desired role.

The advantages of attaining a certification, such as the CBAP, are difficult to overstate; the benefits are numerous. If you have the necessary experience, the designation is likely within your reach. You can easily form a feasible plan (even using your analyst skills, if you wish) for applying for and achieving the CBAP, and boost the direction of your career today. 

In my experience of pursuing the CBAP certification, while there are tangible benefits from the outcome of being certified, there are some very real and very significant benefits generated as a by-product of the certification process itself, even when it was painful and downright frustrating.