Events

Elevate Your Agile BA Practice. Join the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter for an engaging evening featuring special guest author Aaron Whittenberger, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, A-CSPO, ICP-APO as he discusses his new book, Agile Business Analysis: A Guide to Product Thinking and Delivery. Are you struggling to bridge the gap between traditional business analysis and agile delivery? Do your teams face challenges connecting product thinking to real business outcomes? Discover how to evolve your BA practice to thrive in agile environments and deliver meaningful value at every sprint. This session is perfect for business analysts, product owners, agile practitioners, project managers, and anyone working at the intersection of business and technology. Whether you're new to agile or a seasoned practitioner, you'll walk away with actionable strategies to sharpen your product thinking and strengthen your delivery impact. Thursday, May 7, 2026 | Virtual Event | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT Special Guest Author: Aaron Whittenberger, CBAP, AAC, CPOA, A-CSPO, OICP-APO, Senior Agile Business Analyst, Author of Agile Business Analysis: A Guide to Product Thinking and Delivery Presented by Patricia Carlin, PhD, Vice President, Community Outreach and Engagement, Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Get ready for a night you won't want to miss! The Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan, and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters are coming together for a special Agile After Hours event where we're celebrating the season, the stories, and the snacks that make us who we are! May 11th is a triple celebration — Mother's Day, National Share a Story Day, and National Eat Whatever You Want Day — and we are leaning ALL the way in! 🌸 Come Share Your Story We're inviting attendees to come ready to share your favorite story about your mom. Funny, heartfelt, or somewhere in between — all stories are welcome! We'll also be putting an Agile spin on the evening with a fun, quick activity that will have you thinking about mom in a whole new way. 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

Elevating Business Analysis Excellence | This premier virtual professional development conference for new and seasoned professionals alike is designed to sharpen your business analysis skills, expand your thinking and professional network, and propel your career forward. You will gain insights into the latest trends, skills, tools and techniques that you can put in your BA toolbox. Gain insights from industry experts, enjoy various presentation formats, convenient virtual event site, and exceptional value in this learning experience. 12 IIBA Chapters have pooled their resources together to deliver this unprecedented, exceptional event to you. This conference will consist of Half-Day Workshops on Thursday, May 14, 2026, for a deeper learning experience, and the Full-Day Conference on Friday, May 15, 2026, for industry insights on multiple topics | Virtual Conference and Workshops

The Bluegrass IIBA Chapter will host its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and induct the eleventh 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 20, 2026 | 6:00PM EDT | Virtual Presentation

What does it take to write a book that doesn't just inform — but transforms? Join us for a lively virtual conversation in the garden as two accomplished authors and thought leaders pull back the curtain on their newest works and the journeys that inspired them. Aaron Whittenberger, a Senior Agile Business Analyst with over 35 years of IT and business experience, brings his latest book, Agile Business Analysis: A Guide to Product Thinking and Delivery (May 2026), to the conversation. A celebrated voice in the business analysis community, Aaron has built a reputation for telling stories about how business analysis, coaching, and mentoring connect people and organizations to better outcomes. In this chat, he'll share what drove him to write the book, what he hopes readers will carry with them, and what product thinking really means for the modern BA. Joining him is Dr. Joe Perez, a powerhouse in the IT and education worlds with 40-plus years of experience, a worldwide reputation as a keynote speaker, and a highly sought-after expert in data management and analytics. His newest release, Igniting the Data Dance: Orchestrating Governance, Insight, and Transformation (March 2026), is already making waves. The book is a transformative guide for leaders, analysts, and visionaries who want to move beyond checklists and compliance to build data governance programs that truly endure — weaving together history, narrative, leadership, and technical mastery to reveal governance as a living discipline shaped by clarity, rigor, empathy, and purpose. Presented by: Aaron Whittenberger, CBAP, AAC and Dr. Joe Perez Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Early Bird Pricing Ends May 16th | Model smarter. Communicate better. | Business modeling practices are often unclear definitions, resulting in miscommunication amongst stakeholders, and contributing to project failures, due to the inability to describe and understand an organization’s business processes end-to-end and top-to-bottom. Let us help you build your skills! Bluegrass IIBA Chapter is hosting an all-day workshop on Saturday, May 30, 2026, during which participants will learn how to: ● A best practices approach to developing a Business Process Model ● Practical exercises in Business Process Modeling based on real-world examples ● The use of the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for business-oriented and IT-oriented views of a given process This course qualifies for 6 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This workshop is Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This Workshop is Delivered by David Vrbanek

Join us for a delightfully themed evening as the Bluegrass, Southeast Michigan and Chicagoland IIBA Chapters come together to celebrate what makes both life and agile work a little sweeter — simplicity, community, and the joy of the things we love. We will celebrate Homemade Pie Day, National Love Your Bookstore Day and Simplify Your Life Week. In the spirit of Homemade Pie Day, we're honoring the art of making something from scratch. Just like a perfectly crafted pie, great business analysis requires the right ingredients, patience, and a willingness to iterate until you get it just right. We'll also be building our very own Community Cookbook! Bring your favorite pie recipe to share, use the link below to submit your pie recipe ahead of the event to be included in our community cookbook. Come ready to share your best slice of wisdom, whether it's flaky, creamy, or somewhere in between. Inspired by National Love Your Bookstore Day, we'll celebrate the knowledge-sharing culture at the heart of our BA community. Independent bookstores thrive by knowing their customers deeply, curating with purpose, and building loyal communities — sound familiar? We'll discuss how business analysts can channel that same energy to champion their stakeholders and deliver real value. And in honor of Simplify Your Life Week, We'll put our agile skills to work with a hands-on technique designed to help us cut through the noise and focus on what delivers the most impact. Light on ceremony. Heavy on connection. Always better together. Free and open to all. 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 July 24th | 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 August 4, 2026. 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. | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter.

GUARANTEED TO RUN | Early Bird Pricing Ends July 24th | 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 (12 Ways of Working and 2 Business Acumen) towards your chosen certification. | Get EEP level training at IIBA Chapter pricing! | Wednesday, August 12 - Friday, August 14, 2026; 12:00 PM - 4:30 PM EDT | Virtual training course | 3 sessions | 14 PD Hours/CDUs | This course is sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This course is delivered by SoftEd US

What if you left tonight's chapter meeting already knowing how to use AI as a BA tool? The Bluegrass IIBA Chapter is dedicating an entire meeting to one of the most transformative shifts in the business analysis profession — and you won't just watch it happen. You'll do it yourself. This is a live, hands-on workshop led by Van Miller, CBAP, built around a real-world healthcare scenario: creating a patient portal. Van will guide you through a series of ready-to-use prompts that you'll type into GenAI yourself, in real time, to tackle the kinds of tasks business analysts face every day. No prior AI experience required. We hand you the prompts — you run them, see the results, and learn exactly what GenAI can (and can't) do for your BA practice. Presented by: Van Miller, CBAP | Wednesday, August 19, 2026; 6:00 PM EDT | Virtual presentation | | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Join the Bluegrass IIBA Chapter for an engaging lunch hour focused on enhancing your business analysis toolkit! Our expert-led session will feature a hands-on demonstration of a practical BA technique you can apply to your work immediately. How many projects have you seen pour months of effort into building the right solution to the wrong problem? It happens more often than anyone likes to admit—and it almost always traces back to a problem domain that was never fully understood before the work began. Join us for this Lunch 'n Learn as Peter Lutz explores one of the most foundational—and most overlooked—disciplines in the business analyst's toolkit: knowing your problem domain before you dive into the details of analysis. A clear grasp of the problem domain is what keeps teams from racing toward solutions before they understand what they're actually trying to fix. Presented by: Peter Lutz, CBAP, CSPO, AAC, Senior Agile Business Analyst | Thursday, August 20, 2026; 12:00 PM EDT | Virtual presentation | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

Organizations often try to improve results by pushing teams to move faster through existing processes. But in many cases, the real problem is not effort nor speed. It is workflow design. This session shares a practical business analysis case study on transforming a fragmented, delay-prone workflow into a more streamlined and scalable process. What initially appeared to be a turnaround-time issue was actually a structural problem shaped by hidden dependencies, system sync delays, manual handoffs, duplicated handling, and limited operational visibility. By stepping back to analyze the workflow end-to-end, the team reframed the problem, redesigned the operating path, and then applied automation more intentionally. The result was a centralized workflow with direct intake, automated routing, improved visibility, and significantly faster processing. The redesigned process reduced readiness time from 7–10 days to 1–3 days and eliminated major non-value-added steps. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for identifying hidden dependencies, diagnosing structural workflow problems, and applying redesign-first thinking before automation. While the case is specific, the approach is transferable across service delivery and other operational environments. Presented by: Adwoa Arhin, CBAP, PMP, Business Analyst | Wednesday, September 16, 2026; 6:00 PM EDT | Virtual presentation | | Hosted by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter

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. Tuesday, September 22 and Wednesday, September 23, 2026 | 6PM - 8PM EDT | Virtual training class | This workshop is Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This Workshop is Delivered by Astrevo

Early Bird Pricing Ends September 25th | In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, understanding and addressing the root causes of issues requires a holistic approach. The "Systems Thinking Workshop" is designed to empower professionals with the skills and insights needed to analyze and solve complex problems through the lens of systems thinking. This interactive and engaging workshop introduces participants to the principles and methodologies of systems thinking, enabling them to view challenges from a broader perspective and identify leverage points for effective intervention. Through a combination of theoretical discussions and practical exercises, attendees will learn how to map systems, identify interdependencies, and develop strategies for sustainable solutions. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a robust toolkit for addressing complex problems. Whether you are a business analyst, project manager, business architect, manager, consultant, or engineer, this workshop will enhance your ability to think critically, make informed decisions, and drive meaningful change. Join us to cultivate a systems thinking mindset and transform the way you approach challenges. This course qualifies for 4 PDHs/CDUs for all IIBA® certifications. This course will contribute 4 PMI® PDUs towards your chosen certification. Tuesday, September 13 and Wednesday, September 14, 2026 | 6PM - 8PM EDT | Virtual training class | This workshop is Sponsored by Bluegrass IIBA Chapter This Workshop is Delivered by Astrevo