Hall of Fame 2017

Category:

  Service to an Organization within the Bluegrass

Inductee: Cody May, CBAP

After moving to Lexington he began working at Galmont Consulting in March, 2011. He was hired as a Quality Analyst Engineer, but soon proposed to management the idea of expanding Galmont’s service offerings to include business analysis. The idea interested them, and they recognized that Cody’s strong experience in risk and requirements management made him the best person to lead the effort. He was given the title Business Analysis Practice Director, reflecting the fact that not only would he be performing business analysis for clients, but he would also be responsible for establishing and growing the practice within the company. 

Cody was Galmont’s sole BA for about a year, working with several different companies. As clients started recognizing the value of Galmont’s new offering the demand soon increased. By late 2015, and at the same time in which Galmont was acquired by SQS, the company had a team of six BA’s in addition to Cody. The new members came from a variety of different areas and levels of experience. All had utilized business analysis techniques in the past, but there were still wide degrees of variance between their areas of expertise. Fortunately, the training materials Cody had put together gave the team easy access to extensive learning that covered all aspects of business analysis, and he worked with each team member to help them locate the areas that each one needed to focus on the most. As a result, he has built a team with a very wide knowledge base, enabling SQS USA to provide a consistency in their BA offering.

With the new team in place, Cody applied for corporate membership in the IIBA, thereby making each of SQS USA’s Business Analysts individual members. His promotion of the IIBA encouraged several of the BA’s to start attending meetings of the local Bluegrass chapter, with two of them even getting involved as board members. At the same time several team members started expressing an interest in earning CBAP certification, an interest that Cody not only strongly endorsed but one that he wanted to pursue himself. Cody worked with the Bluegrass chapter to arrange a BABOK and CBAP preparation study group, giving his team a chance to both prepare for the exam as well as satisfying the Professional Development requirement for certification. The group was very successful and was attended by several people outside of SQS, and even from other organizations outside of the Lexington area, including SQS’s other recent acquisition, Trissential. He also arranged for SQS to pay for each employee’s attendance within the study group, as well as for the fees for applying for certification and taking the exam. It was yet another example of Cody’s dedication to helping others learn and improve their skills.

Now that what had started as a small, Lexington-based company is part of a large international organization, Cody continues to find ways to improve SQS USA’s Business analysis offering. He has reached out to the BA teams at SQS’s other national groups to look for ways to collaborate and share information, and he is working on making training opportunities available for the Lexington group through the British Computer Society, again subsidized by the company. 

Cody’s long-time and continued devotion to improving the business analysis practice within SQS, both nationally and internationally, is an inspiring example of how one person can selflessly improve the strengths and abilities of others, thereby improving the impact that SQS makes on its clients.