With the Business Analysis Conference Europe 2017 being hosted in London on the 25-27 September this article sets out the reasons why attending a conference might be of benefit. It can be used to decide whether attending a conference is right for you and pointers for building a business case if you need your company to pay for it.
Conferences provide the ability to:
- Network
- Networking at a conference provides the benefit of meeting likeminded individuals all in one place that have the same interests. It’s therefore a great place to exchange ideas and obtain new perspectives. It’s also a good sanity check to realise you are not alone in your experiences and this can help improve your confidence. Meeting others from different companies can also give an insight into what they are like to work at and highlight possible future opportunities. A company that invests in sending its staff to these events shows that they take business analysis and staff development seriously.
- Find out about new trends
- Business Analysis is continually evolving. Over 20 years ago, the industry mainly centred around systems analysis with many developers taking on this role. This wasn’t ideal because the emphasis was more on developing well-structured IT systems and less about understanding business needs. The business analyst role developed separate to the developer to meet the increase in the ways that IT could meet business needs and solve business problems. As time has gone on the role has also expanded to analysis that might not even lead to being resolved by an IT system but other ways to improve a business such as business process improvement and organisational change. Improvements to technology have also led to a shift in the importance of how technology can be used to give a business competitive advantage with business architecture playing a bigger role. These events have led to changes in the business analysis role. The benefit of a conference is that they will play to showcasing the most recent trends to enable skills and its business analysis value to be improved.
- Learn new skills
- To support the change in trends new tools and techniques have also developed over time. There are for example 50 techniques listed in the IIBA BABOK v3 (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) handbook. Conferences will not only cover the latest techniques but will provide case studies of how they have benefitted organisations. This enables an understanding from a practical application. This can also inform an understanding of how to apply these back in the workplace. In larger conferences, there may be a choice of subjects to attend, all led by experts in their field under one roof. This variety of choice enables decisions on focussing on the areas that interest you most. Most often there is also time to ask questions at the end of a talk which is a great way to clarify understanding or ask advice.
If you are living in the UK and you are interested in attending the Business Analysis Conference Europe 2017 then I’ve added more information off the menu at the top of the page. Business Bullet is a media sponsor this year so as a reader you can obtain a 10% discount by quoting BB10 when booking.
