Events

Monthly membership in a business analysis mentorship circle. Format: 4 virtual weekly meetups every month: "Cappuccino Group": Mondays at 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT, 10-11 am AET) "Espresso Group": Tuesdays at 9:30-10:30 am ET (2:30-3:30 pm GMT, 6:30-7:30 am PT) (Part A) 30-45 minutes led by Yulia Kosarenko to present a topic, teach you a technique or demonstrate how to create a BA artifact. (Part B) Off-the-record 15-20 minutes for Q&A and for members to share experiences and discuss professional challenges.

Weekly mentorship meetings on Tuesdays @8-9 am ET led by Yulia Kosarenko: case studies, collaborative work, advanced topics, tool experimentation, applying BA to industry problems. Time for Q&A and experience sharing. Recordings of past sessions for each 3-month cycle are included. Monthly membership in a business analysis mentorship circle. Format: 4 virtual weekly meetups every month: "Coffee Cup Group": Tuesdays at 8-9 am ET (1-2 pm GMT)

As organizations flatten, knowledge workers requirements will include working within many teams without managerial support. It is assumed you have the professional skills needed to work get work done with your fellow team members. But…we all know this is much easier said than done. In getting work done you must communicate ideas and from there present them, you must facilitate conversation and negotiate decisions at every stage in the process. What this leads to is conflict. You can’t get work done without conflict. Earn 1 CDU/PDU when you attend live! | Thursday, January 16, 2025 | 12PM EST | Virtual webinar | Presented by: David Mantica, VP & GM, Skills Development Group Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter Hosted by Skills Development Group

Discover a powerful Business Analysis technique that goes beyond traditional system mapping. The Systems Ecosystem Map is a strategic visualization tool designed to unravel the intricate web of interactions, relationships, and dependencies within complex systems. Unlike a standard Context Diagram, this technique offers a broader, more comprehensive view of your system's environment. It reveals not just direct interactions, but the entire landscape of entities that influence and are influenced by your system. By capturing system-level interactions, the Systems Ecosystem Map provides business analysts and stakeholders with a holistic understanding of upstream and downstream impacts. Whether you're seeking to understand complex business environments, uncover hidden relationships, or improve strategic decision-making, this Lunch 'n Learn will equip you with a valuable new perspective on system analysis. Presented by: Aaron Whittenberger, CBAP, AAC, CSPO, A-CSPO, Senior Agile Business Analyst | Friday, January 17, 2025; 12:00 PM EST | Virtual presentation | | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Kick Off the New Year with Our Social Event to ‘Build Our Community’! Join us on January 21, 2025, as we gather to start the New Year with a focus on fresh beginnings, meaningful resolutions, Agile insights, and a few delicious recipes. Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan, and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters will once again join together for this New Year-themed social event is designed to inspire, connect, and empower our community as we share our personal and professional goals for 2025. What to Expect: • New Year Resolutions Sharing: Reflect on your goals, hear inspiring resolutions from others, and find motivation to make 2025 your best year yet. • Agile Tips & Tricks: Learn practical Agile strategies and insights from our resident experts. Whether you're new to Agile or looking to sharpen your skills, these tips can help you approach the new year with greater agility and adaptability. • Recipe Sharing: We invite you to bring along a favorite New Year’s recipe to share! Whether it’s a traditional dish, a healthy meal to kickstart your goals, or something special to ring in the new year, we’ll gather and swap ideas for a delicious start to 2025. • Community Building Activities: Enjoy interactive discussions and activities centered around self-growth, giving back, and creating a positive impact in our community. Whether you're looking to develop new skills, deepen connections, learn Agile techniques, or simply add new recipes to your repertoire, this event is a wonderful opportunity to set the tone for a fulfilling and successful year. Bring a friend, bring your goals, and bring your recipes for a fantastic start to 2025! Let’s make 2025 a year of growth, connection, and great food together! Tuesday, January 21, 2025; 7PM - 8:30PM EST | Virtual social event | Hosted by Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters

Early Bird Pricing Ends Jan. 17th | GUARANTEED TO RUN | Are you interested in ECBA™, CCBA® or CBAP® certification, or just would like to learn more about the content of A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) version 3? Then this business analysis training opportunity is for you! All participants will receive a CBAP® or ECBA™ Study Guide. This study group uses additional study material, student homework and provides four (4) practice test experiences for participants. Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will host a virtual BABOK® v3 Study Group for those individuals interested in ECBA™, CCBA® or CBAP® certification or learning the IIBA® Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide) to elevate their career. Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will run the study group for fourteen (14) sessions on Monday evenings beginning on January 27, 2025, with four sessions on Thursdays. This study group will provide 35 Professional Development (PD) Hours for those students seeking IIBA® core certification, and provide practice tests opportunity for all students. We ask students to begin studying early so it is a good idea to be registered at least one week prior to the first session. Register at least two weeks prior to first session to catch the Early Bird pricing. Students will be provided with course material. This study group is an instructor-led course by instructors from the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter. 14 sessions | 35 Professional Development (PD) Hours / 35 Continuing Development Units (CDUs) | Monday, January 27 - Monday, April 7, 2025; 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST | Virtual training sessions.

Early Bird Pricing Ends January 17th | Are you looking to expand your skills in using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform your business analysis and become a leader in leveraging emerging technologies ? The future of business analysis lies at the intersection of human creativity and technological leverage. Our AI for Business Analysis course is an immersive and interactive journey to prepare experienced BA professionals for the AI-empowered future. Through real-world exercises with leading AI agents and tools, gain first-hand experience planning initiatives, analyzing requirements and devising solutions. You will learn methods of “prompt engineering” for using generative AI agents to produce key BA artifacts, research new subject matters, evaluate work, and conduct interviews with subject matter experts. Whilst balancing AI’s power to create content with human judgment, you will discover AI dialog techniques that will enable iterative and incremental analysis and development. This course qualifies for 14 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This course will contribute 14 PMI® PDUs towards your chosen certification. | Get EEP level training at IIBA Chapter pricing! | Tuesday, January 28 - Thursday, January 30, 2025; 12:00 PM - 4:30 PM EST | Virtual training course | 3 sessions | 14 PD Hours/CDUs | This course is sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This course is delivered by Skills Development Group (formally SoftEd US)

You may have heard of the RACI Technique before, and perhaps used it. This ISN'T just the RACI we were taught. In this meeting, Thea brings you updates from her experience over the last decade of actively using and IMPROVING the RACI in challenging meetings for companies worldwide. You need everyone to leave the meeting with the SAME ideas, understanding what they committed to, when they will deliver, who will be involved, and exactly what decisions were agreed to (and by whom). This tool/technique WORKS! Presented by: Thea Soehren, CBAP, CSPO, ICP-APO, Senior Business Analyst | Thursday, February 6, 2025; 12:00 PM EST | Virtual presentation | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Early Bird Pricing Ends January 31st | Design Thinking has emerged as a major trend for how innovative organizations and teams are approaching problem-solving. This hands-on, interactive workshop explores the intersection between Design Thinking and project teams and will provide participants with a high-level overview of Design Thinking methods and tools. Participants will work in small teams and will learn about useful tools to use in a more agile, discovery-driven world. Case studies are used to show concretely how to integrate design methods into projects with lessons learned and unique outcomes. The workshop includes a warm-up rapid-fire sketching exercise and several individual and group hands-on exercises to expose participants to various design methods for user research, idea generation, visualization and prototyping. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants should be able to describe the benefits of incorporating design methodologies on projects for increased customer alignment and business impact and be able to illustrate multiple design-thinking tools that could benefit current or future projects. This course qualifies for 4 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This course will contribute 4 PMI® PDUs towards your chosen certification. This workshop is Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This Workshop is Delivered by Astrevo

Ready to transform your brainstorming sessions from mundane to memorable? Join the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter for an energizing, hands-on workshop exploring dynamic collaborative games that will revolutionize how you generate ideas with stakeholders. In this interactive one-hour session, you'll do more than just learn about collaborative games – you'll actually experience them! Through live participation using online collaborative tools, you'll discover engaging techniques that can immediately enhance your stakeholder interactions and requirements elicitation processes. Whether you're new to business analysis or a seasoned professional, you'll walk away with actionable techniques to add to your BA toolkit. Come prepared to participate, share, and have fun while learning! Facilitated by: Steph Hawkins, MSIA, CISA, and Aaron Whittenberger, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, A-CSPO. Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 | Time: 6:00 PM EST | Format: Virtual interactive workshop | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Early Bird Pricing Ends February 14, 2025 | Begin adopting the core competencies of the Agile coach profession, and start enabling transformational outcomes within your organization. A coach's primary goal is to enhance their client's awareness of practice and behavior — enabling and empowering the client to realize objectives that may be just outside of their reach. Through thoughtful and deliberate engagement, the coach strives to enhance, in a measurable and sustainable fashion, team practices in order to provide focus on the business goals and objectives of the team and organization. Whether the coach is internal or external to the organization, coaching covers a broad spectrum of teaching, mentoring, problem-solving, planning, leadership, team-building, and mastery of skills and knowledge. Coaches must challenge organizations to change the culture — establishing new paradigms — which permit agile-lean thinking and quickly deliver value. A coach must be competent, professional, and ethical — having business and technical knowledge and an understanding of change and the impact it has on individuals and organizations. This course is designed to teach, practice, and reinforce the core coaching competencies of the Agile coach, enabling the Agile coach to succeed at reaching agreed-upon team and organizational outcomes. This course has been approved by ICAgile to award students the Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC) upon successful completion. This course qualifies for 12 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. February 24-26, 2025; 12:00 - 4:30 PM EST | Virtual training class | This course is sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This course is delivered by Cprime Learning

BAs on the Street is a live event and video series in which we will have conversations with business analysis professionals in our community to see what is going on in the business analysis community. We will talk with business analyst all along the experience spectrum from those new to the profession to those with decades of business analysis experience. We will talk about the thrills and challenges of being a BA; and discuss the daily work of business analysts and where they may see the profession going in the future. We will then take questions from the audience. The BA on the Street: Peter Lutz, CBAP, AAC, CSPO Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Early Bird Pricing Ends March 7, 2025 | Unlock Your Data Superpowers: Transform from Business Analyst to Business Insights Hero | In today's data-driven business landscape, business analysts must be equipped with robust data and analytics skills. Business analysts who can truly understand, interpret, and leverage data are strategic organizational assets. This comprehensive workshop is designed to transform participants into data-savvy professionals capable of leveraging advanced analytical techniques to drive business insights and decision-making. This interactive workshop will provide practical knowledge and skills to prepare business analysts for projects with a significant data component. Accelerate your career to become a more strategic, data-informed business analyst! This course qualifies for 4 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This course will contribute 4 PMI® PDUs towards your chosen certification. Tuesdays, March 18th and 25th, 2025 | 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT | Virtual training course | 2 sessions | 4 PDHs/CDUs | This course is sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter | This course is delivered by Why Change Academy.

In this interactive discussion we will review the elements of effective leadership and the habits and practices necessary to lead high performing teams. This session helps leaders look at what makes teams operate at high performance. In this session Luis will review of the components of High Performance Teams, including Leadership Effectiveness, Project Management, Communication, Conflict Resolution, and Emotional Intelligence. We will review everyday situations in the workplace with examples of how to lead with higher influence and higher performance for best results. Presented by: Luis Moreno, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, Coach, Consultant | Wednesday, March 19, 2025; 6:00 PM EDT | Virtual presentation | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

In an age where data is the lifeblood of modern organizations, the need for robust data governance has never been more critical. Yet, as history has shown, adopting significant change can be quite challenging. This session draws compelling comparisons to the Meiji Restoration, which launched Japan into the modern era, urging participants to reevaluate their data management strategies. Just as the Meiji leaders enacted transformative reforms to advance their nation, contemporary business leaders must be prepared to evolve and innovate to fully leverage their data strategic capabilities. Through engaging real-life case studies and insightful discussions, attendees will discover the essential elements of creating a data governance framework grounded in the five rhyming cornerstones of embracing integrity, pacing infrastructure, chasing insight, facing impediments, and racing implementation. By learning to avoid expensive data silos and utilize information as a competitive edge, this session offers a strategic guide for organizations aiming to replicate the Meiji Transformation's spirit of visionary leadership and effective execution. Attendees will leave empowered to spearhead a data governance revolution within their own enterprises, poised to navigate the complexities of the digital age with confidence and clarity. Presented by: Dr. Joe Perez, Data Thought Leader | Keynote Speaker | Author | Monday, March 31, 2025 | 7 PM EDT | Virtual webinar | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Join us for our themed Agile Tips & Tricks Social event as we continue to "Build our Community". We will be celebrating April Fools Day, National Fun Day, National Sourdough Bread Day and National Soft Pretzel Month; so let's have some fun with this! Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan, and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters will once again join together to celebrate National Fun Day with some sourdough treats and learn about some Agile Tips & Tricks from our resident experts. Bring your favorite friend and your favorite sourdough and pretzel dish recipes to share as well as we continue to "Build Our Community". This promises to be a fun and interactive event, one You Won't Want to Miss! Hosted by Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters

Early Bird Pricing Ends March 21st | Are you interested in IIBA® Certification in Business Data Analytics (IIBA®-CBDA), or just would like to learn more about the content of Guide to Business Data Analytics? Then this business data analytics training opportunity is for you! Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will host a virtual Business Data Analytics Study Group for those individuals interested in IIBA®-CBDA certification or learning the IIBA® Guide to Business Data Analytics to elevate their career. Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will run the study group for six (6) sessions on Thursday evenings beginning on April 3, 2025. This study group will provide 15 Professional Development (PD) Hours for those students seeking IIBA® core certification, and provide a practice exam opportunity for all students. We ask students to begin studying early so it is a good idea to be registered at least one week prior to the first session. Register two weeks prior to the first session to catch the Early Bird pricing. Students will be provided with course material. This study group is an instructor-led course by instructors from the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter. Thursday, April 3, 2025 - Thursday, April 8, 2025; 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM EDT | 6 sessions | 15 PD Hours / 15 CDUs | Virtual study sessions.

Early Bird Pricing Ends April 11, 2025 | Enhance collaboration and stakeholder engagement skills for agile requirements at scale. Gathering Requirements for an Agile Project Project failures are often due to poor requirements gathering, analysis and planning. Traditional requirements documents may not contain complete and accurate requirements due to rapidly changing business environments. Agile requirements gathering, by moving detailed requirements closer to implementation, allows for rapid response to change. "Collaborating and Communicating Agile Requirements" will show you how to gather and manage these requirements. Organizing and Managing Requirements Traditional requirements are documented in a requirements specification. Changes to the requirements are managed through a change process. This course will demonstrate alternative ways of documenting requirements and managing changes. These alternatives can allow for a less "heavy" process in projects that can benefit from quick changes in direction. Discover Real-World Techniques This two-day Agile requirements training course will give you hands-on experience with techniques for gathering Agile requirements. Explanatory lectures with demonstrations, combined with practice exercises will provide you with the experience needed to create requirements that meet business needs. This course qualifies for 12 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This course will contribute 12 PMI® PDUs towards your chosen certification. April 23-25, 2025; 12:00 - 4:30 PM EDT | Virtual training class | This course is sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This course is delivered by Cprime Learning

The Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will host its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and induct the tenth class of professionals into the Bluegrass Business Analysis Hall of Fame (BBAHoF). The AGM will look at what the Chapter has accomplished in the past year in relation to its strategic plan, its community outreach efforts, relationships it has built and inform participants of the strategic plan for the coming year. There are transformational changes happening in the global business analysis community, we will look at how the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will bring those changes to the Bluegrass business analysis community. The Bluegrass Business Analysis Hall of Fame recognizes those from the community that have made a significant individual contribution to the advancement of business analysis as a profession within the Bluegrass region. Presented by: Bluegrass IIBA Chapter Board of Directors | Wednesday, May 21, 2025 | 6:00PM EDT | Virtual Presentation

Early Bird Pricing Ends May 23, 2025 | Are you interested in IIBA®-AAC certification, or just would like to learn more about the content of Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide version 2? Then this agile business analysis training opportunity is for you! Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will host a virtual Agile Analysis Study Group for those individuals interested in IIBA®-AAC certification or learning the Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide to elevate their career. All students will receive an AAC Study Guide. This study group uses additional study material, student homework and provides a practice exam experience for students. Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will run the study group for five (5) sessions on Tuesday evenings beginning on June 3, 2025. This study group will provide 12.5 Professional Development (PD) Hours for those students seeking IIBA® core certification, and provide a practice exam opportunity for all students. We ask students to begin studying early so it is a good idea to be registered at least one week prior to the first session. Register two weeks prior to the first session to take advantage of the Early Bird pricing. Students will be provided with course material. This study group is an instructor-led course by instructors from the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter.