Business Analyst Podcast Episodes

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“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch

I vividly remember the first time I learnt to play barre chords (the moveable chords) on the guitar. My mentor demonstrated the value of having this in my toolkit by playing an entire song without moving his index finger. It was definitely different from reading about it from a book. To this day, I remember that and the importance of playing barre chords.

Mentors can imprint life-long lessons in their mentees’ (the one getting mentored) psyche by providing minor nudges and suggestions. Since being a great BA is not exactly a flow-chart diagram you can follow, it is always extremely valuable to get right “art” direction by mentors.

The reason I named this podcast as “The Ultimate Mentoring Panel Discussion” is simply because I believe this has (almost) everything you ever need to learn about mentoring business analysts or being mentored as a business analyst.

Also, this was the toughest podcast I have edited to date. With four voices to handle on GarageBand, this was both fun and a unique challenge. Additionally , please note that this was recorded last year, so, you will have to add an additional year to the timelines that the panelists will be referring to.

So, here are the mentors and their respective mentees enlightening us all about mentoring:

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Helping stakeholders to get to the “aha!” moment is a joy.

If you are a business analyst and after a long and hard stint of work when you see your stakeholders overcome a problem, an organization achieve a business goal or objective, that is the moment of rejoicing! I am sure you can relate to this feeling.

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In this episode, you will get to hear from a top-notch BA in UK, creating ‘Aha’ moments for his clients in every engagement. His passion for doing work that can goes beyond just being a ‘project’ can serve as a great example for us to learn from.He shares many insights and tips that can help practitioners understand that our profession is a social profession and that collaboration is at the heart of a project well done.

So, here is David, sharing tips, suggestions, and insights to help you help your stakeholders get better “Aha!” moments:

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When I was hearing Terry speak during editing of this podcast, one of my favorite quotes from Rabindranath Tagore sprung into my mind:

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“Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.”
          - Rabindranath Tagore

Embedded in this interview are examples of what BAs can do and achieve by fearlessly facing their stakeholders and treading forward with boldness.

I got introduced to Terry when she first commented on a blog post that I had posted on LinkedIn, and ever since we have kept in touch. She is a great BA,  friend and fellow coach. She is also rendering a great service to the community by helping working professional transition into the BA role and also helping practitioners advance boldly.

There are lot of valuable lessons to learn from this episode. There were no leashes on what she wanted to share with her fellow BAs. Keeping the tradition of sharing some pressing challenges and how she overcomes them, advancement tips, etc. , her biggest advice to the BAs is to ‘be bold and fearless’ to succeed.

So, here is the inspirational Terry:

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IIBA certifications are gaining increasing traction since the past year or so. Since providing support to the certification community is one of our key objectives, I decided to interview Michael Gladstone in this CommunityCast episode. Once you go past the “Why CBAP (or CCBA)” barrier, the big challenge is understanding the various requirements and prepping for it.

It is quite interesting to learn about various facets of the IIBA professional certifications for business analysts. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about CBAP, CCBA and how they got started and what their history was like, you are in for a treat. We discuss many more interesting perspectives; please see below for a sneak peek of the episode.

Here is Mike enlightening us with everything you need to know about the IIBA certifications:

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The Three Musketeers is a phrase which has come from a french novel – Les Trois Mousquetaires.This title was given to 3 inseparable friends who live by the motto, “One for all, and all for one”.

People, process and technology are the three musketeers of a business. Miss out or mistreat one of them you will surely upset the other two.

In this podcast, we take a microscopic look into the people musketeer with the lens of the BABOK and go over the very important task of stakeholder analysis with Mathew Leach.

Here is stakeholder analysis (BABOK 2.2) coming to life:

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