Audit Services for Business Change Professional Development and Training

The BPTGroup offer a range of audit services designed to enable our clients to effectively identify training and development requirements for business change professional staff. We conduct audits by questionnaire, personal interview and team workshops for

• Business Process Professionals
• Business Analysts
• Project Managers

We can audit against mutually acceptable professional standards or an organisations internally agreed criteria. We can assist in the development of those standards and/ or use the agreed criteria and outcomes on which our Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals are based.

For business analysts and project managers we can deploy Capability Assessment tools which your staff can complete online. We have developed the Business Analysis Capability Assessment Tool with our partners Skillsedge which you can access at http://www.skillsedge.com/bca.asp . You will find the project management tool equally as valuable at http://www.skillsedge.com/pca.asp.

We charge our normal consultancy fees for conducting an audit but for those organisations choosing to go ahead with us, in developing and delivering a training and development programme for their staff, there is the opportunity to amortise those initial fees over the duration of that programme.

The Case for Business Change Skills Audit

As organisations increasingly realise that the skills of change are core competencies, so grows their awareness of the need for high quality, business needs focused, change professionals. In too many organisations techniques of change tend to be narrowly IT focused - the range of analysis techniques needs to be extended to enable discovery, analysis and design from a strong business perspective.

Individuals are often unaware that they and their colleagues often have some of the skill sets. Definition of the methodologies and techniques to be used in a structured IT/ business analysis/ project approach is key in creating a Centre of Change Excellence. T he audit and further training will structure and inter-relate the skills, tools and techniques and magnify their effectiveness.

For example, the requirements definition process, previously neglected by the business and left to IT, should be a partnership approach - the business analyst, working in concert with the systems analyst, to deliver the total requirements definition process. Requirements shape the role specifications – responsibilities, accountabilities and deliverables have to be business needs driven

Whether it is against established organisation standards and/ or and the qualification process of the Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals the audit enables the analysis and appraisal of the status and effectiveness of each business analyst relative to the requirements of the organisation.

The Audit Process

For your further information, we have distilled the approach and typified results we have obtained in previous audits to give a feel for the format and issues of the audit process. T his audit approach was used in organisations investigating the possibility of putting their change staff into a training programme for the Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals.

The purpose and method of an audit can involve:

• Better understanding the business culture, staff attitudes, role methodology and operational terminology of the organisation
• Defining the business requirements and standards of expertise required from a training and development programme to meet organisational needs
• Evaluating the current change training, qualifications and acquired skills of individuals, to ultimately achieve accreditation of valid elements of their existing expertise
• Complete an individual and departmental skills matrix set against the skill sets of the Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals
• Conducting interviews on a stratified sample of staff to :
• refine questionnaire information
• establish genuine level of interest in the training and the qualification that would result
• impart more information about the Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals and invite questions on the approach
• Establishing the degree of common ground between the organisations existing training programmes and the Advanced Professional Qualifications for Business Change Professionals content, objectives and qualification structure
• Conducting a gap analysis on all issues and criteria
• Assess potential for individuals to qualify by Exemption by Prior Achievement and Approved Prior Learning
• Where cost effective and appropriate, recommend development of new/ modified modules
• Complete a comprehensive approach and outline costed proposals for the implementation of a Business Change Professionals development and accreditation programme, in report form and/ or make oral presentation to the client

Functional and Professional Issues Revealed in Past Audits

Many of the staff interviewed appreciated -

• the opportunity of a credible qualification with outside accreditation based on practical achievement
• the facility to vary the pace of development around project demands, other business commitments and lifestyle constraints

The range of staff attitudes towards professional business change training and development programmes revealed by the audit process are mirrored in the following observations:

“… it will provide a structure for the current staff and guidance for the future development of their role and function”

“Such a programme will be important in establishing our credibility and enabling the department to compete with our competitors, the external consultants”

“…we need a structured way of approaching the subject of business analysis.”

“Of course technical skills and issues need to be addressed but often it is the personal and interpersonal skills that are deficient.”

“Lack of effective training in business analysis in the recent past has restricted the individual and collective approach to the role and our effectiveness.”

“… will improve my internal credibility and marketability, perceived as well as actual skill level and advance our need to turn us into fully functioning internal consultants”

“We need to bridge the current arbitrary break between business analysis/ project management roles - business analysts should carry through to help facilitate implementation given their knowledge of the people involved in the change process”

“The initial training should be followed through with the CPD – we must ensure skills remain current for everyone - currently no training for new recruits, no refresher training”

“… many people in our area who call themselves project managers are in fact, by nature of their work, business analysts”

“… it will help focus our expertise, bringing everything together into a structured form resulting in a credible achievement for us as individuals and the group in the eyes of our clients”

“Many project managers need and want to develop their business analysis skills - the Project Manager title does not necessarily reflect a comprehensive path to that role”