Course Description

Passing the BCS Oral Examination is the final step toward gaining your BCS Diploma in Business Analysis. The 50-minute exam will see you being interviewed by two BCS oral examiners as they evaluate whether you can put all of the techniques you’ve learned from your certificate modules into an overall context and prove that you’ve gained the analytical and interpersonal skills needed to be awarded the diploma.

This Oral Preparation workshop has been designed to help you do just that. You’ll have the opportunity to review the core and specialist modules you’ve taken and prepare for what the examiners might ask you by practising some sample oral questions. Attending this workshop also means you’ll get free access to AssistKD’s unique online learning service, which also covers two key areas of the oral syllabus which you may not have covered: legal issues and types of organisation in business analysis.

Target Audience

Business Analysts who have completed their two core and two specialist modules and want to be fully prepared for their BCS Business Analysis Oral exam.

Practice questions

At the end of the workshop, the trainer, who is always an experienced oral examiner, provides participants with practice in handling the types of questions they will face in the oral examination and gives feedback on the participants’ answers and presentations.

Course Content

The context for business analysis

• The rationale for business analysis
• Sectors of the economy
• Business environment analysis
• Legal framework for business analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Business performance measurement
• Business change lifecycle

Business analysis techniques

• Investigating and documenting business situations
• Stakeholders and perspectives
• Business activity modelling
• Business events and business rules
• Gap analysis

Business case

• Rationale for making a business case
• Contents of a business case
• Options
• The financial case
• Investment appraisal techniques
• Risk / impact analysis
• Lifecycle for the business case

Requirements definition

• Rationale for requirements engineering
• Elicitation techniques and their relevance
• Rationale and approach for requirements analysis
• Rationale and approach for requirements negotiation
• Rationale and approach for requirements validation

Requirements management and documentation

• Rationale and approach for requirements management
• Traceability
• Change and version control
• Types of requirements
• Documenting requirements
• Rationale for modelling requirements
• Approach to modelling processing and data

Selected knowledge-based specialist module

• Relevance of specialist module to the business analyst
• Taking a holistic view
• Competencies of a BA
• Professionalism and business analysis
• Lifecycle relevant to the BA and the specialism

Selected practitioner specialism

• Relevance to role and responsibilities of the business analyst
• Description and application of techniques and / or approaches from specialist module