EXIN BCS Practitioner Certificate in Business Analysis Practice (BAP) Exam Syllabus

• Defines target state
• Purpose and direction

- Guidance

• A vision is a statement that defines the ideal state for the organization. The organization’s vision exists to provide clarity on their purpose and reason for existing, whereas the mission provides guidance on how the organization should run and can assist with current and future planning. Both should be used to inform project objectives and strategy.

• VMOST
• Resource audit

- Guidance

• VMOST – vision, mission, objectives, strategy, and tactics. Resource audit can be applied by considering and analyzing resource types – physical, financial, human, know-how, and reputation. These techniques may be applied to analyze the strengths and weaknesses which exist internally in an organization.

• Porter’s Five Forces
• PESTLE

- Guidance

• The Porter’s Five Forces model and the PESTLE framework can be used to analyze the opportunities and threats for an organization. Porter’s Five Forces – threat of new entrants, bargaining power or suppliers, bargaining powers of buyers, threat of substitute products and industry competitors. PESTLE – political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal, and environmental factors.

• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
• Internal and external

- Guidance

• A SWOT analysis is used to analyze the current state of both the internal and external organizational environment. Identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats which exist in an organization helps the analyst to understand the strategic context around their activity.
• Candidates should expect to prepare a SWOT analysis by identifying and allocating entries (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) into appropriate fields on a two-by-two matrix.

• Balanced scorecard (BSC)
• Critical success factors (CSFs)
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Targets

- Guidance

• Performance measurement tools are used to establish how an organization is performing in its current state, against the organization’s objectives and strategy. Balanced scorecard (balanced business scorecard, BSC) is made up of four performance areas – financial, internal business process, learning and growth and customer.

• Identify stakeholders
• Challenge and inform stakeholders
• Negotiate stakeholder conflicts
• Engage with stakeholders
• Written and verbal communication
• Support stakeholders and facilitate meetings and record outputs

- Guidance

• A business analyst can provide value by supporting business change through effective and sustainable stakeholder collaboration, communication, and effective stakeholder relationship management.
• Stakeholder engagement also comprises of other key skills that are becoming increasingly important in modern workplaces and will continue to be a part of future ways of working. In particular, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and cultural awareness. These skills will offer an analyst an extra layer of understanding when understanding stakeholder needs and perspectives.

• Partners
• Suppliers
• Regulators
• Employees
• Managers
• Owners
• Competitors
• Customers

- Guidance

• Identifying stakeholders is a key first step in stakeholder management, and the stakeholder wheel can be used to appropriately categorize them. Candidates should be able to recognize descriptions of stakeholders and the relevant categories.

• Customers
• Actors
• Transformation
• World view
• Owner
• Environment

- Guidance

• When implementing change within a business the business analyst may understand stakeholder differences by defining and analyzing each CATWOE element. Individual stakeholder perspectives on transformation, customers, actors, owners, and the environment may vary due to their world view. A CATWOE can be used to uncover areas of disagreement and encourage stakeholders to analyze their own differences in order to consider the future direction of a business.

• Power/interest grid

- Guidance

• The power/interest grid is a stakeholder analysis tool, used to map stakeholders according to their level of interest in a project and the amount of power or influence they have to support or block a project.
• Each stakeholder should be plotted on the power/interest grid using one of nine possible combinations that combine a level of interest (low, some, high) with their level of power (low, some, high).

• Watch, keep satisfied, constant active management, keep onside, keep informed, ignore.
• RACI

- Guidance

• Based on the Power and Interest grid, stakeholders require different management strategies, and this too is likely to change as the project progresses. RACI charts may also be used to understand how the level of involvement from a stakeholder differs at each project stage by categorizing a stakeholder as responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed during each activity.

• Background research

- Guidance

• To establish the current state, research should be completed into the organization’s performance, structure, and ways of working. This information may be sourced from websites, company reports or internal documentation.

• Interviews
• Workshops
• Observation
• Document analysis
• Scenario analysis
• Surveys/questionnaires
• Data analysis

- Guidance

• All investigation techniques can be classed as either quantitative or qualitative. Candidates should recognize when a situation requires either or both types of techniques, and from this, be able to select a technique which is most suitable to a given circumstance.

• Environment
• Project

- Guidance

• There are advantages and disadvantages to using any given investigation technique. Advantages and disadvantages can be dependent on the size of a domain to be investigated, location of the analyst and/or the domain to be investigated, the number of stakeholders to keep informed and the nature of the information being investigated.

• Customer journey maps
• Rich pictures
• Empathy maps
• Mind maps

- Guidance

• These tools exist to allow the analyst to record the findings of their investigations. Customer journey maps and empathy maps specifically show a process from the customer’s perspective. Both can be used in conjunction with user roles and personas to provide further insight into the customer experience. Rich pictures and mind maps are useful in offering a visual representation of a whole solution, in a simple format. Candidates can expect to be examined on the application of these tools – using information to complete them or drawing information from them.

• How to construct
• What, not how

- Guidance

• A BAM is used to model activity, from a specific stakeholder perspective. Multiple BAMs are likely to be created to represent all stakeholder perspectives. BAMs will be used alongside target operating models (TOMs) and gap analysis to establish a view of the target state.

• Planning
• Enabling
• Doing
• Monitoring
• Controlling

- Guidance

• Within a BAM, there are five categories of activity to record, as shown. Candidates should expect to be examined on the use of these five categories by identifying which activities align with which category.

• Stakeholder buy-in
• Agreed perspective

- Guidance

• As above, multiple BAMs are created in the first instance, with the objective being to create one, consensus BAM which all stakeholders find agreeable. This consensus BAM is a single model (a shared perspective) of what the business activity should look like and is a key part of stakeholder buy in and engagement. The analyst should apply the skills mentioned in this syllabus to manage the creation of the consensus BAM.

• Internal
• External
• Time-based

- Guidance

• When modelling a business process, there are three types of events which should be recorded, including internal – things which happen inside the business, external – things which happen outside of the business, and timebased – events which occur with advance warning or regular frequency. Candidates can expect to be examined on these event types and their explanations and descriptions.

• POPIT
• Gap analysis

- Guidance

• A TOM is created to show how a business should be operating, to achieve their target state. The POPIT model (People, Organization, Process, Information and Technology) is often used a basis for creating a TOM. By establishing the TOM, gap analysis can then be used to compare the current and target state.

• Empathize
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Evaluate
• Create

- Guidance

• Design thinking is an iterative way of identifying, exploring, and testing solutions, while focusing on the customer need. Candidates should expect to be examined on the stages of design thinking and the techniques used within them.

• Double diamond model

- Guidance

• As part of design thinking, the double diamond model of discover, define, develop, deliver, uses the concepts of divergent thinking – where all ideas are considered – and convergent thinking – where ideas are refined to explore and define solutions.

• Comparing current and target state
• Developing options and process

- Guidance

• Gap analysis is used to identify differences between the current and target state, by comparing tools and models mentioned in earlier topics such as rich pictures (current state) and TOM (target state). Where gaps are identified, the analyst should explore options to address these gaps.

• Business
• Technical
• Financial

- Guidance

• Feasibility must be considered when considering a solution, with three key areas to consider.
• Business – does the proposed solution align with the business strategy and objectives?
• Technical – does the technology exist and is it available to deliver the solution?
• Financial – can the organization afford to fund the solution?

• Purpose and use

- Guidance

• A business case is created only after investigation into potential solutions has taken place, but before any commitment is made to a solution. The purpose of a business case is to present multiple courses of action to decision maker and make recommendations.

• Introduction
• Management summary
• Description of current state
• Options considered
  - Analysis of costs and benefits
  - Impact assessment
  - Risk assessment
• Recommendation

- Guidance

• A business case should contain each of these elements, providing decision makers with enough detail to agree or disagree with the proposed recommendations. Candidates can expect to be examined on this list of contents and the type of information included in each section.
• While not listed here, a project sponsor will often appear on a business case to support the project and demonstrate commitment from an executive level to the recommendations presented.

• Cost benefit analysis

- Guidance

• The costs and benefits of a solution can be categorized as tangible or intangible. Tangible in this context meaning measurable or verifiable. Candidates can expect to be examined on the types of costs and benefits which would be included in the business case, and whether they would be categorized as tangible or otherwise. Examples include: staff training, recruitment, improved communication, customer satisfaction.

• Types of risk
• Risk analysis
• Risk impact

- Guidance

• Risks must be included for options presented in the business case. These risks should be analyzed, and their probability, impact, countermeasures, and owner must be recorded as part of the risk assessment.

• Payback
• Discounted cash flow and net present value

- Guidance

• In a business case, the financial impact of paying for a solution (or not taking any action) must be considered. A payback calculation can be completed to show the costs of the solution, and the financial benefits over time.
• Discounted cash flow must be considered; this addresses the time value of money and how the costs and benefits may vary due to external economic factors. Net present value must also be considered; this uses discounted cash flow to discount future monies back to today’s values. The net present value takes into account the time value of money and presents the value of investment in today’s terms.

- Indicative content

- Guidance

• The business case is central in the business change lifecycle. As demonstrated in the diagram, the five stages (alignment, definition, design and development, implementation, and realization) all feed into the business case, and likewise, the contents of the business case will impact the activity at each stage depending on its contents and recommendations.