In this short article, I will provide you a glimpse of what’s inside IIBA BABOK Guide version 3. Version 3 of the guide has been released recently. It’s possible that you might not have laid your hands on it so far.
If you are planning to appear for ECBA, CCBA or CBAP certification exams, this article will help you to know what’s inside the BABOK guide version 3. The IIBA certification exams are based on this guide, so it’s important to know it well.
What’s inside BABOK Guide Version 3
Let’s accept it, the BABOK guide version 3 is a big book. It has a total of 514 pages (aggregate). Setting aside the TOC and indexes, the guide still has 491 pages. It’s around 50% more than the previous version.
So, what’s inside the BABOK guide? First of all, let’s look at the BABOK guide architecture and how chapters are arranged:
There are a total of 11 chapters and 4 appendix. The diagram above shows the content of each of the chapters.
Read Also: Business Analysis Core Concepts Model
Quick Stats about BABOK Guide
Having looked at the structure of the guide, let’s look at the stats:
As you can see, every knowledge area is described in individual chapters. Each knowledge area is further sub-divided into tasks. The total number of knowledge areas is 6 and the total tasks are 30 (spread across all the 6 knowledge areas).
Each task has a defined structure as shown below:
There are 6 categories of competencies and each category has specific competencies. The total number of competencies is 29. There are a total of 50 techniques discussed in chapter 10. Each task has a list of techniques also recommended in the individual knowledge area chapters.
BABOK guide, however, does not provide any insights on the techniques mentioned. You need to learn these techniques separately as certification exams have questions on them.
Read More – Types of Requirements | BABOK classification Schema
List of changes in BABOK Guide Version 3
To get an idea about the list of changes in version 3 of the BABOK Guide, here is a quick overview of all these changes.
Changes in used Terminology
The Body’s language has gotten more scholarly and difficult to read and comprehend. Moreover, you can expect that re-certification of CBAPs to become more difficult as a result of this new change in the used terminology.
Introduction of BA Core Concept Model
A new change in the BABOK Guide version 3 is the introduction of a business analysis core concept model. The following fundamental topics are covered by the model:
- Change to the current state
- The desire to be satisfied or fulfilled (and thus requiring a change to the status quo)
- Solution to satisfy the identified need
- Stakeholders related to the change
- Value to stakeholders as a result of the change undertaken
Changes in The Name of Knowledge Areas
BA Planning and Monitoring is the only chapter that hasn’t had its name changed. All other Areas have been renamed as follows:
- Requirements Elicitation is now changed to Elicitation and Collaboration
- Requirements Management and Communication is now changed to Requirements Lifecycle
- Enterprise Analysis is now changed to Strategy Analysis
- Requirements Analysis is now changed to Requirements Analysis and Design Definition
- Solution Assessment and Evaluation is now changed to Solution Evaluation.
Changes In the list of Techniques
A number of techniques from the Agile extension were added to the prior version. The techniques are as follows:
- Balanced Scorecard
- Business Capability Analysis
- Collaborative Games
- Backlog Management
From the Agile extension, two extra tasks were added:
- Decision Modelling
- Roles and Permissions Matrix
IIBA Certification levels and Scope of BABOK Guide
The BABOK guide is applicable for all the levels of IIBA certifications. Does it mean that you need to master the entire guide for all the levels of certifications? Not really. IIBA has defined the scope of the BABOK guide for each level.
IIBA website has specified the scope of the study for each certification level. This detail is available on the IIBA certification blueprint page.
Even though the BABOK guide is a big book and may look overwhelming, a strategic approach to mastering the BABOK guide will make your task easier.
