Don’t Know What & How to Study and How to Apply for CBAP Exam?

I have received many requests from individuals who want to apply for CBAP Exam, but they have confusions in how to apply & especially what and how to study for the exam.

Conclusively, most of us who are motivated to become a CBAP and are looking for some path to be followed in order to attempt the CBAP examination. So here we are, this article is meant for everybody who is looking for the clear path or road map to become a CBAP.

However, if you already know "how to apply and what to study for CBAP exam" but still not able to appear in exam, then my article on “CBAP Yet? Start Preparing & Get Certified” will definitely help you out in identifying the common issues that we face whenever we want to appear in any exam.

Let’s start from 2^nd part “How to Apply For CBAP Exam?”

Following are the steps for CBAP Application & Exam Process:

1.  Applying for CBAP Exam (CBAP Exam Application)
2. Paying for CBAP Exam Application
3. Registering For Exam (Paying for CBAP Exam Fee)
4. Preparing For The Exam
5. Taking the Online Exam

Applying for CBAP exam is the hardest step, not because of its complexity, but because it’s a first step. So first thing first, there is no fees for filling the CBAP Application, you can fill the application, identify the professional references without paying any fees, but your application will be pending until you pay the application fees. So that is the point to start, as there are no risks, so just fill the application and make sure your experience & qualification is in match with the IIBA requirements. Following is the link to CBAP Application Form

http://www10.iiba.org/source/iiba_cbap/signup.cfm

Further you can apply for CBAP exam without buying IIBA membership as application fee (125$) for Member & Non member is same. Once you applied for exam after filling the examination fee, IIBA takes 1 week to confirm you whether your application is successful or not. Once it is successful, you will have 1 year from that date to pay the exam fee (325$ for Members & 450$ for Non Members) to appear in the exam, whereas I would suggest to buy the membership first to save 75$ (as for Pakistan and most of the Asian countries the membership fee is 50$).

Before applying for CBAP Exam Application, make sure that you should:

Have minimum 7500 Hours of BA Work experience aligned with BABOK Guide in last 10 year

Here 7500 Hours refers to approximately 3 years of working experience, which should be directly aligned to Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK), which means you should have applied the tasks & techniques that are mentioned in BABOK. 

Further, while filling the application, you have to segregate your total experience in an organization in term of percentage allocated to each knowledge area of BABOK (BA Planning & Monitoring, Elicitation, Requirements Management & Communication, Enterprise Analysis, Requirement Analysis, and Solution Assessment & Validation), e.g. if you have worked for 1000 hours in a company on different projects, then you need to segregate, how much time you have spent on each knowledge area in terms of percentage. Also you need to identify the tasks that you have done in your experience for each knowledge area, and this is a little tricky part as in CBAP Online Application Form, there are some tasks given which doesn't  pertains with Business Analysis Body of Knowledge and if you click on these to mention that you did those tasks in your experience, then the relevant portion of the experience will be deducted from your overall total experience. E.g. created service level agreements, created project charter, develop test cases and others are not considered as BA Tasks and if you mention them they will impact your overall count of experience.

Following excel sheet will help you in identifying those areas which are not relevant to business analysis and should not be identified in experience while filling CBAP Exam Application.

Here one important point that need to be notes, is after filling the experience in term of number of hours and segregating the same into knowledge areas and identify which tasks is each knowledge area you did in your experience, you have to make sure that total number of hours for overall experience are minimum 900 for at least 4 knowledge areas i.e. in your overall experience you should have at-least 900 hours of experience in at-least 4 knowledge areas

Following excels sheet will help you in filling the experience part of your application

http://www.4shared.com/office/_Eiz9fmi/CBAP_app_data_v2.html
(Red tasks are irrelevant to BA, Orange are some what related and Yellow are BA related, whereas unfilled / white tasks are also BA Concerns)

http://www.4shared.com/file/pugMyv_-/CBAP_Application_Spreadsheet.html

Fulfills Education Requirement

You should be high school passed out in order to apply, whereas graduation is not required as well as not experience deduction as well. i.e. if you worked for total 10 years and did your graduation after 5 years of experience, in that case your experience will be considered for 10 years (non deductable)

Fulfills Professional Development Requirement

You should have attended a Business Analysis Training of 24 hours (minimum) in last 4 years. But there is no requirement of 24 hours of single training, i.e. if you have attended 2 trainings of 12 hours each, it will be considered as 24 hours in total, the only point is it should be relevant to the role of Business Analyst or its underlying competencies as per BABOK last chapter.

Trainings related to CBAP preparation, or any training that is directly link with business analysis skills are accounted for training hours, whether it is internal or external. E.g. if you attended a course of Microsoft Visio for Process Modeling or MS Project 2010, which is conducted internally in your organization, you can add this in your education requirement and same will be considered.

Fulfills Professional Reference Requirement

You should provide details of 2 professional references (email, phone & mailing address). As you will be filling the CBAP Exam Application and whenever you will define the Professional References, email will be sent to the individual with a link of online website (survey type) which will consist of some basic business analysis skills & experience related ranking, and the references individual need to rate you on those skills. As they will submit their responses you will be able to see the same as completed on your CBAP Application screen.

“What & How To Study for CBAP Exam?”

Once your CBAP Exam Application is approved by the IIBA you can appear in exam within 1 year the date of application approval. My suggestion would be to pay the exam fee as you receive the application approval and schedule the exam in 2 months time.

First thing is to study Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, if you are member of IIBA you can download the BABOK from downloads area of members. I would suggest to read this book at-least twice before going for any other book, read the book in a way to understand major concepts of how each input is link with tasks and how tasks are linked with techniques and how techniques are linked with outputs and how specific techniques can be applied in different scenarios.

Mind Maps are very effective tool to memorize the relationship between “Knowledge Area, Inputs, Tasks, Techniques and Outputs). The best Mind Map CBAP Preparation I have found so far is by “Brain Hunt Consulting” you can search and download the same for free on internet or download the same from shared folder on our yahoo group. My recommendation is to print out those important maps and paste in your study room  (where you will be spending two hours daily as per my previous article of “CBAP Yet? Start Preparing & Get Certified”. Looking at those mind maps frequently really helps are a lot in clarifying the relationships & understanding the core concept.

Further, read the book “CBAP Certification Study Guide by Susan Weese & Terri Wagner”. This book is highly recommended for CBAP Exam preparation and consists of everything that you need to pass the exam. It consists of practical problems and sample exam questions that will give you an excellent head start. The book is completely aligned with the following exam pattern (Knowledge area and percentage of questions that will be appear in exam)

Knowledge Area	% of Questions in CBAP Exam
Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring	19.33%
Elicitation	14.00%
Requirements Management and Communication	16.00%
Enterprise Analysis	15.33%
Requirements Analysis	19.33%
Solution Assessment and Validation	16.00%

Please note that due to rounding error, the percentages above do not quite add up to 100% without rounding up

Sample Exam Questions are easy way to fulfill the knowledge gap & emphasize on areas that are over looked in the study. You can find 1,000s of sample CBAP & CCBA Exam question on our study group. Chapter wise sample questions are also available, try utilizing them to test your grip on the subject on completion of each chapter.

“Giving the CBAP Exam”

I would recommend taking 3 days off from your work and starting 3^rd review of BABOK before 2 days of exam. Don’t worry, by that time you will be enough prepared for the examination. As recommended earlier you should pay the exam fee just after getting approval on Exam application to make the ball rolling. Further you have to schedule the schedule the exam online through Prometric Center’s website. You have to schedule your exam minimum 1 month before (due to some local policies of Prometric centers). Choose the nearest possible location and visit 2 days before the examination to make sure that you know the exact location and different ways & modes to reach in case of any contingency.

With this Best of Luck for your CBAP Exam. Let me know if you want to know anything related to CBAP or CCBA Exam Application or Preparation.

References:

CBAP Handbook by International Institute of Business Analysis http://www.iiba.org/imis15/CMDownload.aspx?ContentKey=450701bb-477c-4371-8a11-0e38fd203327&ContentItemKey=5bed644f-ec17-4960-bb82-c055e388dede

IIBA BOK Mind Maps by Brain Hunt Consulting Limited www.brainhunt.co.uk

Author’s Liability:

The article is written on personal experience and different sources on passing CBAP Exam. Methodologies and Recommendations Identified is this article are personal recommendation of author which is proven by experience but doesn’t guarantee passing of any exam.