Happy New Year to you and your family!

As I am spending time with my family, enjoying warm cups of hot chocolate while thinking about the past year, I cannot help but feel a sense of gratitude.

2011 was a great year for us at BAMentor.

We started out with two really small goals but ended up accomplishing.

Our first goal was to help 20 business analyst reach their certification goal (CBAP or CCBA) and ended up with 30+ CBAP’s and 4 CCBA’s.

We also wanted to create a unique study aid that would facility the study process for our self-paced population and ended up creating a one of a kind workbook.

Our unforeseen accomplishment came from our collaboration with Bridging-the-Gap, where Laura asked us to help with her mentoring initiatives. So in 2011, we also started mentoring non-business analysts as well as business analysts through our collaborative mentoring program.

The most amazing part of our goals and accomplishments is that we couldn’t do it without your help. Though I am grateful for our accomplishment as a company, I am completely humbled by your trust, your confidence in us and for being our number one champion! And for this I thank you sincerely.

In 2012, we are going to continue with our goal to increase the certified business analyst population. We want to make sure that you pass IIBA exam the first time you sit for it.

Trough our continuously improved online courses, practice questions, e-flashcards…etc, we work hard to ensure that you find the tools that best suit your learning style.

We are setting out to reach out to at least 35 business analysts this year and help them obtain their CBAP/CCBA title. My goal is to mentor and coach at least 5 business analysts personally through our mentoring program.

We also have other goals and initiatives that we can’t wait to launch this year, including

BABOK deep dive courses, Study Groups, Boot camps for CBAP/CCBA preparation… etc

If you’ve been overwhelmed at your goal to become a certified business analyst professional for sometime, this year is your year to reach this goal. Tell us the challenges you face and let us help you this year!

Linda Erzah, CBAP

Let us answer them! 

Every so often I get few questions in my inbox either about the application process for the CBAP or CCBA and sometimes even questions about the content of the BABOK. 

Yesterday, after answering a couple of questions, it felt like a deja vous. Indeed I was answering the same question again in the past two days. 

To better serve our business analysis community. I am thinking of starting the conversation with you all here in this article. I want to know what your questions are and if I can answer them. This way, most of you will benefit from questions you didn't think to ask but could be important and you will also benefit from my answers without having to wait a couple of days until I get to your emails.

To help you to prepare for the CBAP or CCBA, We had launched our question of the week on our site.

Because we received emails from some who were missing the question of the week, we've decided to send you the question of the week straight in your inbox. Feel free to sign up and receive the question of the week via email.

We want to continue giving away prizes for participation. Send us your questions at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We will post answer to questions on our site and reward the person whose questions gets posted often on our site for the month.

Kate has identified the severity and probability of occurrence of a defect. This will allow her to assess its effect on the overall operation of the organization. Which of the following tasks has Kate performed?

A long time ago, in my early days as a business analyst, my role had a myriad of definition. Some managers thought of a BA as one who only document requirements, other thought that they documented pseudo-codes and yet others only thought of the business analyst as an assistant role. As some of you may experience, business analysts are usually tossed across a number of functions. Unfortunately, not all these functions lead to the development of true business analysis skills. And if you are looking to build a career as a business analysts, you want to ensure that your effort is spent performing those tasks related to business analysis. A good motivation to keep your experience in alignment with the business analysis standards is to look at the CBAP® (Certified Business Analysis Professional) application process.