Foreword

By Ilya Zakharau, Chief-in-editor Principale

Welcome to the 2nd edition of the BArszawa blog! It is the end of February, so we desperately await spring. We are also very happy about the feedback we got about the first issue. Special thanks to those who support us financially here on “Buy Me a Coffee” - we love you!

February is packed with different activities, and the main one was our first event in 2024: the Pre-sales meetup led by Mikita Bobchanka. I will not say much except that it was a top-notch event! The OrgTeam must try very hard to keep going on the same level for a year.

Lovely people:

I liked the new place for our meetups, even though it is in the middle of nowhere. But people came and paid 20 zl. So, I think a distant place is not a big obstacle for people hungry for knowledge and human interaction.

We also visited a BA meetup organized by IIBA Poland and Andersen. Seeing other people from our community, former colleagues, and new faces was great. We’ve been able to recruit a few people to our Telegram chat. If you are reading this - welcome on board! By the way, all the materials from the meetup are available in the chat.

Lovely people (1):

Also, we have the first feature article written exclusively by one and only Taisa Taustales. Everyone can contribute to the blog, and we will happily share it with our audience. Just contact me on LinkedIn or Telegram, and we will figure that out.

I hope you enjoy this February edition and find something valuable for you. I hope to see you soon, whether online or offline.

Take care, and stay tuned!

Announcements

1. PowerPoint Flip - a new BArszawa event

This Saturday, we will try a new format called “PowerPoint Flip.” Speakers must prepare slides but will not present them by themselves - they will switch (”flip”) slides with other speakers. So, every participant will have to improvise and be creative while talking through slides they see for the first time.

As this is a new format, we also keep an option to make a traditional presentation on the Business Analysis or any related topics. Or you can just attend as a viewer.

Bad news: there is no space for new speakers already. We are delighted that so many people quickly responded to be the speakers. The good news is that you can still attend as a viewer.

Here is a registration link.

2. Last call to "Bridging Insights: Elicitation Techniques and Tips for BAs”

There is a last chance to register for the online workshop about BA elicitation techniques on February 20, which will be held by the magnificent Olga Rapoport. Here is a registration link.

3. 10th Anniversary IIBA Belarus Book Club

The 10th IIBA Belarus Book Club will happen soon! Make sure to attend it on April 3. I am already excited about the format we’ll have 🤩 More details can be found here.

Feature Article: Tools and techniques to prepare for exam

by Taisa Taustales

Introduction

As we grow and develop in the field of business analysis, one crucial aspect is the continuous improvement of our knowledge. Preparing for various exams, tests, and certifications is an integral part of our professional lives if we wish to maintain our competence at a high level, acquire and reinforce knowledge, and have evidence of our professionalism, including improving our resume and strengthening the client's confidence that they are working with a master of their craft.

I would like to share with you a list of favorite techniques and tools that I have personally used in preparation for various exams. It's not necessary (and probably not advisable) to use all of them at once. Instead, I suggest trying each one sequentially to find what works most effectively for you.

Techniques

1. Read, Listen, Watch, Do

We all absorb information differently. If reading alone doesn't help, try different combinations:

Read + Listen: Try reading aloud instead of silently. Reading aloud forces you to read slower, reducing the chance of distraction. You'll know exactly where you stopped understanding the text. Additionally, you can record your voice while reading and later listen to it as an audiobook, for example, during your commute.
Listen + Watch + Read: Courses on the topic of interest are a classic way to combine three learning styles. Don't forget to turn on subtitles.
Read, Listen, Watch + Do + Watch: Ultra-combo. A convenient way to visualize the information you've read, listened to, and watched is to create a summary or a visual model. This way, you consume the same information three times—something is bound to stick in your mind.

2. Spaced Repetition

This technique is based on repeated exposure to the studied material with increasing intervals between repetitions. This technique allows you to retain learned information in your mind for a long time. The foundation of the technique is to repeat the same piece of information sequentially through time intervals:

1 day following the first lesson
7 days since the first learning session.
16 days since the first learning session.
35 days since the first learning session.

For more details, you can read here: Spaced Repetition Learning Technique (Step-by-Step Guide). You can search for "Spaced repetition template" to find many templates, including our favorite Notion. There are also videos on YouTube explaining how it works, such as this one. Spaced repetition is mainly used for learning foreign languages, but it is also applicable to us — just use summary pages, diagrams, or lists instead of flashcards.

Tools

1. Focusmate

Since I discovered the website Focusmate.com, my life as a procrastinator and someone who tends to stretch out simple tasks over a day and a half has changed drastically. The essence of the site is to find a companion for joint online task execution. The application automatically finds one for you; then, you call each other, discuss your plans for the session (it can be 30, 60, or 90 minutes), mute your microphone, and work. At the end, you tell each other how it went. Because you have a virtual companion, you feel responsible for the task at hand and rush to accomplish as much as possible by the assigned deadline. I mainly prepared for CBAP in three months thanks to this service.

2. Miro

My favorite tool for visualizing information. You can write lists or draw diagrams. Everything is in one place, and with the help of frames, you can highlight information related to the main theme, use tags, icons, stickers, and different colors. In general, use visualization capabilities to the fullest and develop creative thinking (Underlying Competencies in BABOK ® Guide, 9.1.1)

3. LearningApps.org

Another favorite of mine is visualization and self-assessment. With this service, you can prepare entire collections of various tasks on a specific topic—matching pairs, assembling puzzles, finding matches, and completing missing letters. The principle here is similar to the techniques mentioned earlier: first, you read the information, then you think about how to turn it into a task, then you do the task, and finally, you complete the task (you can combine its completion with repetition from the Spaced Repetition technique). Profit! You repeat the information four or more times; your brain has no chance of forgetting it. To make it more fun, here are some examples of exercises from BABOK that I did while preparing for it: CBAP Exam Preparation.

I wish you good luck in preparing for any exam, and I hope my advice will be useful to you!

Useful Materials

From Ilya:

Lessons on Corporate Politics

I think most of you were in such a situation when you were compromised by a stakeholder who was not very interested in working with you or even hostile to you. That video is very valuable for reflecting on past experiences and being prepared for that. Especially, if you are working as a consultant or a business analyst contractor.

Listen to the Wise Men

With the current “Reign of Agile,” the good old Use Cases seem to be not so sexy anymore. The author of the classic must-read “Software Requirements” and other books, Karl Wiegers himself, disagrees with that. And I stand with him as without use cases, relying on user stories only, it is very easy to lose an important context of a flow. Here is a link.

If you want to learn how to work both with use cases and user stories, there is the best-in-class explanation provided by Denis Gobov-sensei:

A minute of self-promotion

If you think that I am overusing my position as the Community blog editor to promote my own blog, then you are right:

In January, I finally finished my “Replacing Legacy” series on Medium about dealing with modernization projects of legacy software monolith to move to new and shining microservices. After that, I summarized and published all the chapters here.
While doing some research about requirements categorization, I checked the upcoming 4th version of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge Guide (SWEBOK) and was excited about how the authors have reworked the “Software Requirements” knowledge area compared to quote poor V3. I did a small analysis of the improvements here.

From Stepan:

A review of a famous interview task about estimating the number of people in an airport to check how you proceed with incomplete data: Estimate number of people in an Airport: PM Interview | Guesstimate.

Free lecture “How to build a product” and a free draft of the book from Ivan Zamesin. It’s all about maximizing value, using the framework Jobs To Be Done, making product-focused decisions, and so on.

I like the approach, his mindset, and his materials very much. It could be recommended to all BAs as they’re working as proxy POs most of the time.