An Update on PMI's Standard in Business Analysis

 

Kicking Off 2017 – An Update on PMI’s Standard in Business Analysis by Laura Paton PMP, PBA

Happy New Year to all!  What better time to reconvene our discussions on this blog and to kick-off our year by providing the community an update on PMI’s business analysis standard. We apologize for going silent for a few months, but we have been so busy trying to hit our deadlines that we took a little time off from updating the blog. The great news is, the project is staying the course and is right on schedule!  I think it is safe to say you can continue to see more information about the project on this blog in 2017.

Let me step back to bring everyone up to speed on the journey so far. If you have been following this blog you would know that PMI approved a project to develop a full consensus based standard in business analysis last year. In fact, the project kickoff meeting occurred January 20^th, 2016. The development team worked diligently in the spring and early summer months and delivered a draft in August. A call for subject matter expert reviewers was conducted through PMI’s Volunteer Management System and a team selected.

Subject Matter Expert (SME) Review

We invited over 30 SMEs to participate in a Subject Matter Expert Review process and the engagement was amazing. SMEs provided over 1100 suggestions and improvements   and the development team took several weeks to analyze the feedback and update the draft.   The contributions obtained from this very experienced group of SMEs have definitely helped to elevate the quality of this product. 

Public Review

 As PMI editing is cleaning up our adjudicated draft, preparations are being made to prepare for the public review process; after all this is a full consensus based standard. This process is an opportunity for the community across the world to review and provide feedback and suggestions back to the development team.

We anticipate more communication when we are ready to launch the public review process, but for now I can tell you that we are right on schedule to make this happen in Q1 of 2017.

Publication

Once the review window closes, the development team will be hard at work reviewing and considering the suggestions made by the community. The window of time needed to analyze and action on the public feedback is unknown until the team has a sense for the size of this effort, which is heavily dependent on how much feedback is received. Once the public review window is closed, the development team will be able to provide further information regarding next steps and associated dates. Based on the progress made thus far, the development team is optimistic of delivering the final product in Q3 so PMI can publish in Q4, 2017.

In Closing

If you are new to this blog, you may want to review PMI’s project announcement which is where this work all started. If you would like to know more about the value proposition of this product you can review that discussion here or feel free to review any of our past blog posts to follow the journey thus far!  We are excited for you to be part of our review team, so stay tuned for more information announcing the launch of the public review process.