Comments on: Diary of a CBAP Seeker: Making sense of the BABOK http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/ Advance Your Business Analysis Career Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:08:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Forget me not flowers. http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/comment-page-1/#comment-8492 Forget me not flowers. Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:59:06 +0000 http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/?p=2209#comment-8492 <strong>Forget me not flowers....</strong> Forget me not flowers. Forget me nots flowers.... Forget me not flowers….

Forget me not flowers. Forget me nots flowers….

]]> By: DougGtheBA http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/comment-page-1/#comment-4506 DougGtheBA Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:04:01 +0000 http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/?p=2209#comment-4506 James: These are excellent suggestions and insights into the learning process. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences with me (the World). As time goes on and the exam becomes more visible, more and more people are developing tools and other assets to help different learners achieve their learning goals with the BABOK. Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman have amassed several and offer them from EBG Consulting, Linda Erzah has a few different ones at www.thebamentor.com and Tony Johnson with Crosswind yet a few more. In the end, it's training my brain to absorb, as you said, a mountain of data in different forms in order to pass the test. I realized the other day that it has been a very long time since I sat for a large test, so I wonder if future cert exams may be a bit easier. Thanks Again, Doug James:
These are excellent suggestions and insights into the learning process. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences with me (the World). As time goes on and the exam becomes more visible, more and more people are developing tools and other assets to help different learners achieve their learning goals with the BABOK.

Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman have amassed several and offer them from EBG Consulting, Linda Erzah has a few different ones at http://www.thebamentor.com and Tony Johnson with Crosswind yet a few more.

In the end, it’s training my brain to absorb, as you said, a mountain of data in different forms in order to pass the test. I realized the other day that it has been a very long time since I sat for a large test, so I wonder if future cert exams may be a bit easier.

Thanks Again,
Doug

]]> By: James Brandt http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/comment-page-1/#comment-4500 James Brandt Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:38:46 +0000 http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/?p=2209#comment-4500 Doug - I relate to your experience having explored BABOK 1.6 and recently passing the BABOK 2.0 exam. My approach was to summarise the notes in my own hand-writing. This took ages and I figured it was part of sub-consciously absorbing all the information. Unfortunately, I don't retain what I read very well so I needed to do this for my own learning reasons. These notes became very useful for running a highlighter through the week before the test (different colours for different levels of importance) I then needed to organise, categorise and present the info (being a BA) in a summarised view - funnily enough I was the audience this time. I used excel - each worksheet was a knowledge area and the tasks were a new row. I then put the key cues against each task purpose, description, element etc... this developed my memory of the high-level. All the low level information I'd then refer to and it became interesting as it filled in the gaps. Once all the detail was absorbed, it then became important to understand the relationships of all the tasks - this involved stepping back upto the high level to understand the inputs and outputs (this can be co-ordinated neatly in the spreadsheet). This last part took some time as this is where I began to truely understand the BABOK. There is no explicit start or end point. Once I understood the concurrent nature of all the seperate tasks the clouds disappeared. Personally I felt the time spent understanding the relationships between the inputs and outputs was the most valuable. The techniques are still important, although I found I referenced them when there was a gap missing in my own understanding and felt I needed to understand more through my own curiosity. This assisted in validating whether the technique was appropriate for a task or not. Good luck - it's clever piece of work and rewarding. My challenge now is maintaining an adequate level of knowledge retention and finding meaningful ways to keep up my CDUs. Rgds, James Doug – I relate to your experience having explored BABOK 1.6 and recently passing the BABOK 2.0 exam. My approach was to summarise the notes in my own hand-writing. This took ages and I figured it was part of sub-consciously absorbing all the information. Unfortunately, I don’t retain what I read very well so I needed to do this for my own learning reasons. These notes became very useful for running a highlighter through the week before the test (different colours for different levels of importance)

I then needed to organise, categorise and present the info (being a BA) in a summarised view – funnily enough I was the audience this time. I used excel – each worksheet was a knowledge area and the tasks were a new row. I then put the key cues against each task purpose, description, element etc… this developed my memory of the high-level. All the low level information I’d then refer to and it became interesting as it filled in the gaps.

Once all the detail was absorbed, it then became important to understand the relationships of all the tasks – this involved stepping back upto the high level to understand the inputs and outputs (this can be co-ordinated neatly in the spreadsheet).

This last part took some time as this is where I began to truely understand the BABOK. There is no explicit start or end point. Once I understood the concurrent nature of all the seperate tasks the clouds disappeared. Personally I felt the time spent understanding the relationships between the inputs and outputs was the most valuable.

The techniques are still important, although I found I referenced them when there was a gap missing in my own understanding and felt I needed to understand more through my own curiosity. This assisted in validating whether the technique was appropriate for a task or not.

Good luck – it’s clever piece of work and rewarding. My challenge now is maintaining an adequate level of knowledge retention and finding meaningful ways to keep up my CDUs.

Rgds,
James

]]> By: DougGtheBA http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/comment-page-1/#comment-4470 DougGtheBA Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:40:03 +0000 http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/?p=2209#comment-4470 Thanks Mary! I've actually seen this resource and it's quite good and continue to utilize it. It's good to have an army behind oneself. Doug Thanks Mary!

I’ve actually seen this resource and it’s quite good and continue to utilize it. It’s good to have an army behind oneself.

Doug

]]> By: Mary Gorman http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/diary-of-a-cbap-seeker-making-sense-of-the-babok/comment-page-1/#comment-4468 Mary Gorman Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:58:38 +0000 http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/?p=2209#comment-4468 Hi Doug, you are really on a roll - all good ideas for studying to write the exam! I worked on the BABOK committee for 4+ years. Wish we had had the resources to add more graphics and traceability but we didn't. Following the launch in March 2009, I decided to create a few assets that might help folks navigate the 2.0. In response to your point "immersed myself in the BABOK world in different ways in order to retain the information in various ways" you may want to check out my BABOK navigator listings at http://ebgconsulting.com/requirementresources.php and the webinar I conducted "Navigating Tips for Exploring the IIBA BABOK 2.0" at http://ebgconsulting.com/media.php#webinars. Good luck! Mary Hi Doug, you are really on a roll – all good ideas for studying to write the exam!
I worked on the BABOK committee for 4+ years. Wish we had had the resources to add more graphics and traceability but we didn’t. Following the launch in March 2009, I decided to create a few assets that might help folks navigate the 2.0.

In response to your point “immersed myself in the BABOK world in different ways in order to retain the information in various ways” you may want to check out my BABOK navigator listings at http://ebgconsulting.com/requirementresources.php and the webinar I conducted “Navigating Tips for Exploring the IIBA BABOK 2.0″ at http://ebgconsulting.com/media.php#webinars.

Good luck!
Mary

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