Now that you have some extra time, this can be a great opportunity to upskill—whether it’s to perform better at your job or to acquire skills that can help you secure another position.
In fact, a survey by TalentLMS found that many working professionals are doing this already: “42% of employees have pursued training on their own after the coronavirus outbreak.”
Are you a business analyst looking to sharpen your skills or a manager that wants to help your team level up? You’ve come to the right place!
Inspired by a discussion in our business systems community, we’ve highlighted 3 training routes that you and your team members can take!
Want to see what, exactly, BT leaders said in the discussion? You can find out by joining the largest community for business systems professionals, Systematic.
1. PCE Business Analysis Certification
(offered by University of Washington)
The University of Washington’s 3-course certification program is designed to help students analyze issues, develop requirements, and come up with solutions for problems that fall under business process modeling, waterfall and agile methodologies, among other areas.
Additionally, the program has adapted to the pandemic by operating fully-remote. Tricia Smiley, a Business Systems Analyst at Seattle Housing Authority and an alumni of the program, explained that the program has gone 100% online since March. This, she explains, allows anyone to participate.
Another perk of the program: It’s a IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) Endorsed Education Provider. This means that by completing the course, students earn credits toward IIBA’s CBAP and CCBA certifications—which can help them showcase their experience and skills in the job market.
Want to learn more? Check out the details of the course here.
2. Linkedin Learning
Linkedin Learning offers more than 16,000 courses. These range from free to paid, and many of the courses include quizzes, certification badges for your Linkedin profile (which can be a great way to showcase your experience), and are taught by industry professionals.
Now, what courses should you look for in Linkedin Learning?
Susan Chambers, a Business Systems Analyst at Khoros, offers some insight:
“As a Business Analyst, I have found that change management is essential training, along with learning more about Lean, Agile and applying this to project management (Scrum/Kanban). LinkedIn has great courses for all of the above.”
For context, Lean and Agile are two broad methodologies with sets of goals and values teams can use to complete projects. Digging deeper, Scrum and Kanban are two project management styles.
Want to learn more about these approaches? You can begin searching for the relevant courses here.
3. Product Owner/Specific App Certifications
In scrum, there is a key role called product owner.
According to Scrum.com, a “Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team.”
Pushpanjali Rao, a Manager of IT Business Systems at Forescout Technologies, emphasized this project management skill set and highlighted the benefits of getting certified with major applications.
“I encourage my BSAs to get trained/certified (admin level) on the major applications we use in our company. Being a certified product owner is the first step and then applications can follow based on their projects and business groups they support,” wrote Rao.
Interested in developing your project management skills? Learn more about certified product owner courses here. Also, as you explore your certification options and begin pursuing one of them, you can reflect on your organization’s applications and see if you can identify any that you’d like to get better at using.
Bonus: Automation Institute
This year, we launched our very own Automation Institute!
The institute offers several tracks that allow you to learn anything from the basics of automation and integration-building to more technical concepts, like conditional actions and error monitoring. Plus, once you pass each course, you’ll earn a certificate that you can add to your resume, Linkedin profile, etc.
You can learn more about the institute and why we launched it here.
Looking for additional training resources? You can ask your peers for recommendations in the largest community for business systems professionals, Systematic. Join the community.
