Building the Foundation: The BOK on BA

Part 1: Meet the Team

Hello and thanks for visiting our new blog. My name is Laura Paton, chair and contributing author of PMI’s Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide. Working on that project with an amazing team of authors and subject matter experts was one of the most rewarding experiences in my career. I continue to hear from members of the community how much the practice guide is helping them understand and apply business analysis.  I have received such great feedback about how easy the guide is to use, how comprehensive it is and it is no surprise that practitioners just love the examples!

After its publication, we kept hearing how the community wanted more. I am privileged to be asked back once again, and this time to lead the development of PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. This publication—which we hope to launch in  2017—will take a lot of what you loved about  the practice guide to the next level. It will answer your requests for a foundational standard that supports the knowledge and practices of the profession. It will also be a body of knowledge reference for the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)^®  certification.

If you missed the announcement, you can check it out here.

A global development project such as this requires a core team to help oversee the effort and to get things kicked off. To ensure we can deliver the standard quickly, we decided to make the core team small.  But, small in number certainly does not mean small in experience! It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the core team for PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. You can even check out their linked profiles for more information.  

• First off is Joy Beatty PMI-PBA, CBAP - Vice President, Research and Development for Seilevel in Austin, TX.   Joy has published so much in the field of business analysis and has been a frequent speaker at many PMI events.  She has a ton of practical experience and has even authored several standards. All of this and her enthusiasm makes her an important asset to the team.
• Sue Burk CSM is Principal at Top Five to Seven, LLC based in Wilbraham, MA. Not only does Sue have lots of experience in requirements, business analysis, and project management she is a certified Scrum Master and brings an agile perspective to the team—an essential component in today’s business world. Sue also has extensive standards experience.
• Cheryl Lee PMP, PMI-PBA, CBAP is President of a Toronto based consulting firm. Much of her work is devoted to the harmonization of the PM and BA roles and has authored a book on the topic. It is also vital to project success so you’ll see that theme in the upcoming standard.
• And finally, yours truly, Laura Paton PMP, PMI-PBA, CBAP , Founder/Principal of BA Academy, Windermere, FL. I’ve been working in business analysis and project management for over 30 years and, when I’m not writing standards for PMI, I work as a BA coach/mentor, trainer and developer.

Remember this standard is being built by the community, for the community so think of this team as an extension of you!

What’s Next?

Now back to the blog!  Why are we here? Well, for starters, we want to provide you key insights into the development efforts to ensure you remain engaged and informed during this journey. We encourage you to be a part of the process by collaborating with us and among yourselves; by sharing ideas, needs, likes; and yes, letting us know when there are things that need to change.

Our first step is to build off the success of the Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide and leverage the extensive PMI research on the topic of business analysis. From this we will assemble an initial outline and then provide the rough draft content through two review processes. Business analysis thought leaders will partake in a subject matter expert review process later this year. And in early 2017, the global community will partake in a public exposure draft review process. Stay tuned for more information about these key reviews.

We have a lot to share, so this is just the start.  In next week’s blog, Cheryl Lee will share her insights about the foundational standard and how it will help support anyone performing business analysis, including PMs and BAs.   Future postings will provide you more insights about the project, stuff about us and maybe even a bit of trivia. And if there’s something you want us to talk about, let us know!