Post Conference Workshop

Wednesday, May 9
9:00am - 5:00pm 

Facilitation Academy – Learn practical and effective facilitation skills for the workplace

This is a hands-on, interactive workshop where participants actively learn how to become successful facilitators in order to consistently get excellent results from their meetings and workshops.

Participants will graduate from this workshop as 'Facilitators'. They will learn how to plan and structure meetings so that they consistently meet their desired objectives. We will explore a facilitation technique that helps to break down difficult problems into smaller units for resolution. Facilitators will explore many tools and games that help to brighten up a meeting's atmosphere, awaken creativity and ensure a productive meeting. We will learn how to motivate stakeholders, help them to communicate and interact effectively with each other. Finally, the workshop will focus on self-awareness. Participants will decide what facilitation qualities they possess and what they can do to improve on them.

Learning Objectives:

• Clearly identify meeting objectives
• Effectively develop and execute an agenda
• Run games and activities
• Break down difficult problems for resolution
• Engage participants and manage unexpected situations
• Explore different facilitation tools
• Identify important Facilitator qualities

Facilitator - Andrea Borle, CGI

Andrea Borle is a Senior Consultant for CGI and works as a Project Manager and expert facilitator. She holds a graduate degree in business from the University of Alberta. For over ten years, Andrea has helped business and government groups by facilitating large and small requirements gathering sessions. She has earned a reputation of being a committed and knowledgeable resource who is able to add a ‘twist’ of fun to workshops and has been sought out by groups wishing to ‘spice up’ workshops and team building events.

Wednesday, May 9
9:00am - 5:00pm

THINK it Through. Creative and Critical Thinking for Business Analysts

The overall purpose of the workshop is to explore the skill of creative and critical thinking for Business Analysts. This approach to problem solving is demonstrated using the unique visual technique of Idea Mapping. This is a graphical method to see the various areas of a problem, to identify the real drivers and to organize the various options to select the best solution. Participants work in teams to explore the process, to see their output and to share the various tips and techniques to generate and collect all of the input.

Learning Objectives:

• To explore a problem solving process to determine root cause.
• To apply creative thinking to brainstorm ideas and develop the final solution.
• To introduce to the skill of Idea Mapping.

Facilitator - Debbie Showler, Atocrates, Inc

Debbie is a Program Director and Principal Instructor for Atocrates, Inc supporting their Business Analysis Project Management and Human Dynamics Masters Certificate Programs in partnership with tier 1 colleges and universities throughout North America. She has over 15 years experience in the project environment primarily within the heavy manufacturing business sector. Debbie specializes in Customer Relationship Management, Creativity and Innovation, Quality Processes and Marketing Communications. She is a Certified Master Trainer in the Buzan Mind Mapping process, and is an honours graduate from Durham College, University of Ontario, in Human Resources Management. She received the 2008 Masters Certificate in Business Analysis Most Valuable Trainer Award and the 2009 Schulich Executive Education Award for Training Excellence.

Wednesday, May 9
9:00am - 5:00pm

Model-Driven Business Analysis Techniques - That Work in the Real World!

Writing effective requirements as a goal can be taken too far, often leading to documents that contain thousands (!) of requirements, but little value. That’s because written requirements usually lack consistent granularity, don’t cross-validate, and provide no context. Model-based techniques can address these shortcomings, but “modelling” has fallen into disfavor because so many models are little more than “pictures of the physical design.”

This workshop introduces business-friendly modelling techniques that have been proven on both custom development and packaged software projects. They are repeatable by analysts, relevant to business subject matter experts, useful to developers, and are surprisingly popular with Agile teams because they support “just enough” modeling to get into the ballpark and then let iterative development take over.

After a quick review of bad advice in the world of business analysis, the consequences of applying it, and why it just doesn’t work, we’ll study four integrated modelling techniques, each addressing one fundamental aspect of the problem space.

Learning Objectives:

• Process context and workflow models - what the processes are, and how they do/should work;
• Use cases - how the application should behave externally in support of the people and processes using it;
• Business services - what the application should do internally regardless of who is using it, or how;
• Data models – developing a common understanding of what things the process and application need to know about.

Facilitator - Alec Sharp, Clariteq Systems Consulting

Alec Sharp has managed his consulting and education business, Clariteq Systems Consulting Ltd., for 30 years. Serving clients from Ireland to India, and Washington to Wellington, Alec's expertise includes facilitation, business process improvement, data management, and, of course, business analysis. In addition to his consulting practice, he conducts top-rated workshops and conference presentations on these topics globally. Alec is the author of "Workflow Modeling, second edition" (Artech House, 2009) which is widely used as a consulting guide and university text, and is a best-seller in the field.