Attention: business analysts and change professionals
Are YOU involved in improving business? Do you work with people to change processes, systems and/or the structure of their organisations? Do you need a huge range of skills, behaviours and competencies to make change work through and with others? If so, you’ll know how important it is to keep developing your mindset, skills and thinking to deal with the complex and ambiguous world we live in and to help you to engage and influence others. In this free virtual summit, your host Penny Pullan will ask your questions to leading speakers and thinkers from around the world, covering: leadership, resilience, soft skills, mentoring, system thinking, improv, cognitive biases and more. All of this will help you to step up your BA career.
Join us for the tenth, annual, free, virtual and online Business Analysis Summit. The 2020 summit will feature short interviews with world-class experts and practicing business analysts.
These are the speakers from the 2019 Summit, to give you a flavour of the summit
Penny Pullan
Summit & Innovation Introduction
Monday 14 January 2019
James Robertson
Business Analysis Agility
Tuesday 15 January 2019
Laura Brandenburg
Innovation in Learning – Leveraging the Real-World in Training to Create Success
Wednesday 16 January 2019
Filip Hendrickx
Outcome Validation: an Essential BA Skill Thursday 17 January 2019
Debra Paul
Where Does the Future Lie for Business Analysis? Friday 18 January 2019
Feedback From Past Summits
Meet Our 2019 Summit Speakers
Penny Pullan
14th January 2019
Summit & Innovation Introduction
Dr Penny Pullan is your Summit Host, who is the author of both ‘Virtual Leadership’ and ‘Business Analysis and Leadership‘. Her session introduces the Summit, the concept, the participants and the speakers. She’ll go on to discuss what innovation is and why it’s the focus of this week’s summit. Ask her your questions on innovation and business analysis, especially those aspects around leadership and collaboration, the subject of her next book.
Penny has worked across industry sectors from banking and finance, through to telecoms and pharmaceuticals. She enjoys making a difference with people grappling with tricky projects. Tricky means anything from risky, with ambiguous requirements, to having disinterested stakeholders, probably with a team dispersed around the world. If that’s your world, that’s where Penny is too! Her form of creative collaboration helps people on these tricky projects to develop the confidence and competence to do great things with others. Penny is a director of Making Projects Work Ltd, and she has hosted Virtual Summits since 2010. You can contact Penny on Twitter at @PennyPullan or by responding to the summit e-mails.
James Robertson
15 January 2019
Business Analysis Agility
James Robertson is a business analyst, problem solver, author, speaker, instructor, photographer, designer, and coach. He trained as an architect but left that for a career in IT and the sociological side of technology. He left the security of employment in Australia to move and start his own company (with his brilliant wife) in the United Kingdom. Since then he has gone on to co-author seven books, numerous courses, and the Volere requirements techniques and templates, which have been adopted by organizations all over the world as their standard for gathering, discovering, communicating, tracing, and specifying solution needs.
James’ career is broad, both in a geographical sense and the areas and systems that he has worked with. It is fair to say that James has worked on almost every type of commercial IT project—from a start as a programmer in a software development house in Sydney, to consulting in New York, London, Rome, and most European capitals. He has earned his experience at the sharp end of both project and research work.
James’s latest book (seventh and counting) is Business Analysis Agility. In this, James and co-author Suzanne Robertson demonstrate how business analysts can work in an agile way, and mesh seamlessly with an agile development team. They show how to overcome the problem of the assumed solution where the project starts with a product backlog. This means that the project starts with a solution, and not the problem to be solved. The book reveals how business analysts can discover the right problem to solve, and how their findings can be synchronised with the delivery cycles of the developers.
You can find James on Twitter here, and at his website here.
Laura Brandenburg
16 January 2019
Innovation in Learning – Leveraging the Real-World in Training to Create Success
Laura Brandenburg, CBAP, internationally-recognized leader known for helping mid-career professionals start business analysis careers. She is the creator of Bridging the Gap and the best-selling author of How to Start a Business Analyst Career.
Laura brings more 15 years of experience in the business analysis profession, filling such diverse roles as a full-time business analyst, consultant, and hiring manager and is celebrating 10 years providing online training. She has created an innovative learning model which involves online instruction, concrete (real-world) exercises, and individualized instructor support that helps new and transitioning professionals truly build their competence, confidence, and experience, which leads to them achieving their career goals more quickly.
You can connect with Laura on LinkedIn here.
Filip Hendrickx
17 January 2019
Outcome Validation: an Essential BA Skill
Filip Hendrickx is a BA coach and innovation consultant, who helps established organisations to use their resources to outperform startups. Key in this is tapping into existing knowledge and experience, in both business and IT, along with collaboration. Filip suggests that continuous customer validation should drive your approach, along with a clear innovation process. This brings structure and speed to efforts to innovate. Of course, a can-do mentality helps along the way!
Filip’s analysis skills supported his early career in multimedia, as a software developer, moving into business analysis and architecture later on. Now he focuses his time on innovation consultancy, tapping into his technical background to understand options and possibilities, and supporting clients to develop small but tangible proof of concepts. These give much more valuable feedback than ideas on slides!
In this session, Filip will explain how outcome should drive analysis and implementation efforts in every kind of project, whether it’s a process improvement, system upgrade, or radical innovation venture. However, outcome usually is uncertain. That’s where continuous validation comes into play. Are you achieving the benefits your business case predicts? Is there a way to tell before implementing the whole scope? Filip will offer practical guidelines and tips on the why, how and what of your validation efforts.
You can find Filip at his website here.
Dr Debra Paul
18 January 2019
Where Does the Future Lie for Business Analysis?
Organisations have to cope with relentless change and increasing complexity, responding to customer needs, technology developments and competitor actions. The business analyst role has the potential to support organisations in the face of these varying demands but are business analysts able, or enabled, to do this? What is the value proposition for business analysis? What attributes should business analysts possess to work effectively with their customers, enable value co-creation and, ultimately, make a difference? Dr Debra Paul will discuss these questions and more during this discussion on where the future lies for the business analysis discipline.
Debra Paul is the Managing Director of Assist Knowledge Development Ltd, a training and consultancy company specialising in business analysis. Debra jointly edited and authored the publication, Business Analysis, and is also the co-author of Agile and Business Analysis, Business Analysis Techniques and The Human Touch. Debra has recently completed her doctoral research into the role of the business analyst and the business analysis service offering.
Debra is a regular speaker at business seminars and IS industry events. She has been a keynote presenter at business analysis conferences, delivering presentations such as ‘Business Analysis: The Third Wave’ and ‘Business Analysis: relevance and recognition’. Debra is a founder member of the BA Manager Forum, a networking organisation for senior BAs and BA managers and was the chief architect of the BCS Advanced Diploma in Business Analysis.
You can find Debra at her website here or on Twitter here.
Here’s Why You Should Sign Up for the 2020 Business Analysis Summit
Attend from the comfort of your own home or office
All the interviews can be listened to online. There’s no travel or hotels to book, saving you money and avoiding you having to take time off work and arrange cover to attend, and spending time away from work and your family.
Online Access to the Interviews
The interviews will be available online, for free, on the appropriate day of the summit so you can listen to them at your own convenience.
A panel of hand-picked expert speakers
Your expert speakers have been chosen by your host, Dr Penny Pullan. They will expand your thinking and provide tools and techniques for you to try out, safe in the knowledge that they’re coming from experts.
The Chance to Upgrade
To gain access to all the interviews, forever, and one to one interaction to discuss each session with the Summit host.