My CBAP Journey

Well… By now, you might have a fair idea of my career journey from my previous post. As you see, It was quite a struggle to break into the desired role. And the biggest challenge here was to bridge the gap! With mixed roles throughout my career and a considerable gap, things were getting a little hazy and that’s when I decided to pursue Certified Business Analysis Professional Certification.

Let me be honest here! Studying the BABOK for the first time can be as mind-twisting as a Christopher Nolan movie! One might even get this “Imposter Syndrome” and that's the power of BABOK! That too, being a little out of touch with work and going through the BABOK surely made me think, I had made a wrong choice! Enrolling on the ed-tech courses didn't save the day either.

With a gruelling Google search, finally, I came across Laura Brandenburg’s blog, which explained the concepts in layman’s terms with great examples. Going through her videos made me realize the importance of structuring the concepts and I decided to implement the same for my own good. To start with, I had to list down each and every responsibility I had taken up so far, based on the 6 Knowledge areas. In fact, I had to literally perform a gap analysis on “what I had done so far as a BA” vs “what I have not come across in my regular work”.

Learning every Knowledge area with a real-life scenario and connecting the same with the BA tasks gave a new perspective. And now, reading the BABOK was no longer mind-twisting! It’s just that we have to be focused and understand how the concepts are structured.

Now the problem of the Knowledge Area being solved, it was time to get into the Business Analysis Techniques. One thing I understood is, most of the CBAP concepts you learn, strongly relies on how you handled or solved the problem using BA techniques. Since Laura’s post gave me an idea of how to approach the problem, I started using the same for BA techniques too.

There are 50 Business Analysis Techniques (I’m not kidding here!) and your performance in CBAP depends on how strong you are in these techniques. Rolling up my sleeves, taking up the challenge, I had to come up with real-time scenarios for each and every technique. Techniques related to RADD was a piece of cake, as I have done the same like umpteen times in my career. Few like Financial Analysis, SWOT Analysis, Benchmarking and Market Analysis, Business Model Canvas was quite new to me. Participating in study groups, interacting with people from different domain backgrounds gave a clear perspective on how to understand and apply such techniques.

Finally, after 3 months of non-stop preparation, my story got a happy ending on the D day. I was much impressed at myself as I scored a relatively higher grade in each of the Knowledge Areas. One thing I learned from the mentors is, relate the concepts with a real-time experience.

Keeping that in mind, I’m going to start writing about the BA techniques in simple layman terms, which can be useful for entry-level BAs or for someone who might need more information on a particular technique.

Do watch out for my space for weekly updates! Until then... Ciao!