CBAP Certification, My Take.

Hello, fellow CBAP aspirants !

Some of you on LinkedIn recently contacted me to understand my approach to pass the CBAP exam. IIBA certifications (especially CBAP) continues to be a gray area in terms of the information that is available, so, I am sharing what I think worked for me.

Let's start with the basics: What is CBAP certification ?

IIBA defines CBAP [ Certified Business Analysis Professional? (CBAP ?) ] designation as a professional certification for individuals with?extensive business analysis (BA) experience. CBAP??recipients are the leading, senior members of the BA community.

You can learn more about the CBAP certification and the process of application here : https://www.iiba.org/business-analysis-certifications/cbap/

Exam Preparation:

There are only 2 study materials I used (nothing less, nothing more):

1. BABOK v3.0
2. BABOK Study tables from Watermark Learning.

Make up your mind and accept the fact that you would have to read BABOK multiple times in order to get comfortable with it. At first, when I started reading BABOK, I was not able to remember a lot of things because of its theoretical nature. So, I started making notes for each chapter while studying them. This whole exercise took me around 5 weeks. I tried to stick to a schedule to study (around 1.5 hours everyday, mostly late night because of my work timings).

I read all chapters, except the 'Underlying Competencies'. (Core reason to leave it out was I realized there's only so much I can remember, and did not have the energy to read and remember another 30 pages).

Studying BABOK

• BABOK starts with the Key concepts chapter that describes the basics of the Business Analysis, key terms, knowledge areas, stakeholders etc. This chapter also explains the Core concept model which is a very important concept for Business Analysis exam per se - Make sure you read this chapter thoroughly, and understand the difference between concepts; ex: Business goals vs. Business objectives.
• There are 6 chapters covering all 6 Knowledge areas. BABOK breaks down each knowledge area into tasks. For each task, there are Inputs / Outputs, Elements, Guidelines & Tools, Techniques and Stakeholders. - My recommendation is to understand the applicability of each task in your work. That would make it easy for you to remember what BABOK is trying to convey.
• I spent time to learn, and remember all Knowledge areas, tasks, its elements, and their Input/Outputs.
• I did not spend time to remember Guidelines & Tools and Techniques for each task, as they are repetitive across tasks in all Knowledge areas, and I did not think my brain could store that amount of information, to be honest.
• I tried my best to remember Stakeholders for all tasks, because it was fairly easy for me based on my BA experience. - There are not many direct questions, so you can take a chance to answer such questions from your understanding of the task and career experience. Having said that, one must understand logic behind why certain stakeholders are included or excluded for different tasks.
• Study Chapter 10 - Techniques very very thoroughly. There are around 40 - 45 questions in the exam asked around Techniques either directly or indirectly. Understand the difference between techniques used in the same tasks. For Ex : Difference between using Focus Groups, Interviews, Surveys to Conduct Elicitation.

Preparing for the Exam

I spent about 4 weeks to practice mocks, revise BABOK before I took the exam. Watermark exams are the best ones out there for CBAP preparation, so please don't waste money any where else to buy mock exams at a cheaper cost. It won't be worth it !

• Week 1 : I took the full simulation, and scored 57 %. I felt disappointed, because I really thought I am marking the right answers while taking the exam. For rest of the week , I revised BABOK again, concentrated on the wrong answers' areas.
• Week 2: Took full simulation again, and scored 67 %. My score suggested that I need to work on 3 KAs: Strategy Analysis, RADD, Solution Evaluation and also on the Techniques.
• Week 3: I spent 5 days revising the KAs again. Identified my weak areas related to Techniques (Data Modelling, Financial Analysis, Process Modelling, Process Analysis etc.)?and spend good 10+ hours studying them.
• Week 4 : I took the simulation, and this time scored 87 %. This was hugely because I kind of remembered answers to the questions I was getting wrong before. But I felt I cannot prepare beyond this, and just decided to go for the exam.

Day before the exam: I just went through the BABOK tables and revised some notes for about 2 hours. Took good rest, and went to bed early.

Exam Day: I went to the PSI Centre to write the exam purely to avoid internet issues that I face sometimes at my home. The invigilator would not allow you to carry anything inside the exam hall, not even a water bottle.

• When I started the exam, there were all case study questions from Q1 - Q35. I faced concentration issues while reading those case studies; so, I started solving Q 36 onwards which were mostly scenario-based questions.
• I came back to Q1 and could concentrate better. The case studies are deliberately long to confuse you, so make sure you note the important points in those large paragraphs.
• I had about 20 mins left, so I took the time to revise the questions I had flagged.

My suggestions:

• Read the questions carefully. If you are not able to arrive at an answer soon enough, flag it and move on. Come back to it at last.
• Try to understand the Knowledge Area -> Task referred in Scenario / Case question. This would help you to arrive at the answer.
• For some questions you'd be required to rule out the obvious wrong answers, and pick the best answer.

I hope you find this article helpful. If you have any questions, drop me a message.

All the Best for your CBAP Exam.