235. How to become a Business Analyst in 2024 part 1

Arvind brings over 20 years of professional experience. He has extensive Banking, Finance and ICT sector experience, rounded out by experience in Government (Australian), Utilities, Transport, Petroleum, Higher Education and Retail.

He has been deployed on numerous consulting engagements throughout the Asia Pacific region, enabling him to engage in highly varied client organisations, both culturally and in relation to their core business. Arvind is currently the Manager of Business, Technical and Process Analysis at UniSuper.

Arvind is also an elected Board Member of IIBA Australia Chapter for Corporate Partnerships and Engagement.

Arvind proudest achievement was when he built his BA Practice at Yarra Valley Water. Which went from having no identity within the organisation to being nominated for the “Team of the Year” within 12 months.

Arvind has published multiple publications which can be found below: 

Why Building Relationships Is So Important for Business Analysts

Agile – Is it really so difficult for organizations?

Your Quintessential Business Analyst

Why I am a proud Business Analyst?

With Business Analysis, soft skills are the new hard skills.

How can Agile make you a better human being?

After 20+ spent in many roles in the Information Technology industry Luca decided to start his own company, named E-quality Italia, whose purpose is to have a positive impact on Italian organisations by training and coaching their leaders. Luca works as a trainer and coach himself; he is the only Italian coach for the Getting Things Done® methodology, and is one of the few accredited trainers in Italy for BRMP® and CBRM® qualifications. Luca's proudest achievement is the reputation of his small company, both in Italy and abroad.

Learner and experimenter. It needs only two words to describe Michał's current role. Learner because he constantly needs to learn to stay on top of the knowledge required to lead teams and train people. Experimenter because he constantly needs to adapt the known and proven to the context of organizations they train or to whom they provide consulting services. The experimenter also because Michał is in charge of assessing and rescuing endangered projects. In OMEC two days are never the same.

Michał also sometimes participates in scientific projects:

• EUREC4A: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/13/4067/2021/

Michał's proudest achievement this year is being able to certify and re-certify quickly in various PM knowledge areas and also technical areas capitalizing on the knowledge he already has.

Since 2016, Andrew has been delivering Business Analysis training courses for QA Ltd. We provide courses from APMG and BCS over 3 or 4 days. Pre-Covid this meant travelling all over the UK and occasionally abroad to deliver these courses. Now Andrew has the ‘Shed of Analysis’ in the garden and mainly present online but there is still an occasional "face to face" course. Andrew started in IT as a programmer, Cobol & PL1 for an insurance company, eventually becoming an Analyst Programmer. BT offered him a job as a Business Analyst for many years. CRM expertise took him to SaaS startup, and then on through several other companies in logistics, Police services, and finance. Finally, before his current position Andrew worked at CSC as a senior BA with a team of 30 BA’s so mentoring and training was already familiar.

Andrew's proudest achievement is having a young BA take a course and exam in their first week on the job. The candidate had no experience and no clear understanding of the subject matter. Andrew helped them pass their exam and aided them through the course, resulting in the candidate achieving a great position within fashion. Another proud achievement from Andrew would be the ability to join a company with no BA and help the organisation get set up with methodologies that are suitable for them as a business. 

Andrew's achievements:

• BCS Diploma in Business Analysis
• Part way to BCS Advanced Diploma in Business Analysis
• APMG Trainer in Agile BA and PM
• APMG Value & Vision

Karen is the head of a team of Business Analysts helping to shape and deliver the change portfolio for The Coal Authority.  As a change professional, Karen has supported the delivery and management of business change for more than 20 years with experience in both the private and public sectors. Her main focus has been delivering business analysis and leading analysis teams but she also has experience across many business transformation activities including business architecture, change management, user-centred design and delivery, and IT development and testing.

Karen's proud of how she has given back to the change community to support others. Karen regularly write articles and has been a guest on several podcasts to offer out the knowledge she has built up. Karen has run local networking events for BA professionals

Dieter Strasser has a wealth of experience as a solution catalyst, visual enthusiast and twelve times accredited trainer and coach for the flow of people and organizations. He is all about embracing an organic work flow, naturalization and modeling. 

Awards and nominations:

• Most innovative application for Autodesk MapGuide in EMEA
• 2 acceptance innovation prices in Austria
• Review of AgilePM manual in German, translation of OBM an Introduction into German

Dieter is proud of having worked for over two years as a voted representative for around 1000 training institutes for two agile methods.