How did I pass the CCBA Exam in 2 months?

"How did you prepare for the CCBA exam?"

That's the question I received the most since I posted my Certification of Capability in Business Analyst (CCBA) achievement on Linkedin 1 week ago. Therefore I'm writing this article to share with you my study plan, take-away notes, and everything I know about the exam.

A little bit about me...I'm a Business Analyst (BA) in IT industry. I'm working full time and have a family to take care of. I usually studied on the commute, late-night, and weekend and I managed to pull it off after 2 months. So if someone busy like me can do it, I'm pretty sure you can do better.

All right, let's go straight to the point. Here are all the steps that I took to prepare for the exam:

1. Set a goal: Why do I want to become a certified BA?
2. Research: What is CCBA? Should I take CCBA or CBAP? How much does it cost?
3. Define a detailed study plan.
4. Become an IIBA member and go through the application process.
5. Schedule and Take the exam.

That sounds easy-peasy, right?

If you're still with me at this point, I know you have a strong commitment. Now I'm going to describe each step in details and I hope you will stay with me until the end.

1. Set a goal: Why do I want to become a certified BA?

I saw this picture on Linkedin on one of my rainy days, I was on Fear Zone at that time. I was inspired by this picture and I determined to become a unicorn one day. I called it a "Unicorn Project". Becoming a certified BA is one item in my to-do list in this project. I have this picture on a wall where I can easily spot it to remind myself about the motivation whenever I wanna give up.

So, the first step, you need to identify your own reasons and it has to be motivating enough to spark joys to you when you need it. Then write it down, put it somewhere you can see it every day. I know most people feel this step is childish but... it worked for me and helped me stay focus on what I want to do.

After this, if you're a busy mommy or busy daddy, there is an extra step to do: talk to your partner about your decision to take the exam and ask for support. Because you would need a lot of help from your family to stay committed to your study.

2. Research: What is CCBA? Should I take CCBA or CBAP? How much does it cost?

I believe that you already knew about IIBA organization and IIBA certification. In case you're still wondering which certificate is right for you, I think this article or this one might be helpful.

After all considerations, I decided to go with the CCBA certificate. Looking at all the required criteria for the exam, I was lacking 21 hours of Professional Development (PDs). Please do not mix up between Professional Development Units (PDUs) (required by PMI) and PDs (required by IIBA). In order to get PDs for CCBA or CBAP exam, you need to take a course with an Endorsed Education Provider (EEP?). You can check a list of EEP at this link.

Notes: For those who want to take the ECBA exam, you can earn PDs easier by reading BABOK or attending webinars, chapter-events, or taking courses on Udemy. Example: This Udemy course is affordable and you can earn 9 PD.

So, how much did I spend on the certificate?

After knowing the price, do you still want to scroll down? :D

Besides the above points, I also want to share other information that I couldn't find it during my research for the exam:

• The certificate is valid for 3 years. You have to take an exam to recertify it.
• The exam has 130 questions and the passing score is 75% percent. You will know the result (Pass or Fail) immediately but the detailed result will be sent to your email later.
• Your score will not be displayed on the certificate and IIBA actually not let you know how much did you score. Instead, the result displays your competency level on each knowledge area which are: Higher/ Comparable/ Lower than average.

3. Define a detailed study plan.

Usually, the EEP already prepared a detailed study plan with study materials for you. You can choose to follow it or customize it to best suit your timetable. In my case, I combined and customized it as below:

Reading and understanding BABOK contents are the main activities throughout my study. Marking your progress as Done every time you finish will bring you happiness as you can see you're making progress. I dedicated 2 - 3 hours per day during weekdays and 6 - 8 hours per day during weekends for my study. During this study period, I usually went to bed at 2 am and no movies all over the weekend. Thanks to COVID-19, I couldn't hang out so it's easier to focus on my study as well. I think it's best to sacrifice within 2 to 3 months and you can reward yourself after that. The longer we delay, the more motivation fades out.

I strongly recommend using the Mind-Map technique when you study. It helped me to organize my knowledge and I could remember longer. Here is an example of my mind map diagram for one chapter:

A closer look:

I used Coggle to draw my Mind-Map diagram.

There is another point I want to be honest with you, I had a big wrong assumption and I guess you might have the same thinking. It's about the simulation tests or so-called question bank. I thought the real question would be very similar to the mock test, therefore passing all mock tests with 95-96% scores gained me extra confidence. In fact, the real questions are far different from the question bank. All questions are scenario-based and require to have a deep understanding of the Knowledge Area in order to analyze questions and answers. So you really need to study hard and put in lots of effort. Study materials provided by EEP are a good guide to check your knowledge but not to memorize without understanding.

My study journey wasn't as smooth as I expected, I was sidetracked by a couple of things that happened unplan, and I felt horrible every time I locked myself in the study room while my 2yrs old boy knocking the door and crying out loud. So if you feel struggling while studying, that's very normal and it happens to everyone. Whenever that happens, I usually look at the reason why I began, I remind myself about the Unicorn project and I put a reward for myself (This time, my reward was being lazy for a whole week, do nothing except drink milk tea and watch Netflix.) I'm lucky enough to have lots of support from my mom, my husband, my son, and my friends. A big thanks to my family and my friends.

4. Become an IIBA member and go through the application process.

Becoming an IIBA member is a straight-forward process, you just need to register an account on the IIBA website and pay for the membership fee. Please take note of your location as prices might vary among different locations.

You need to have at least 3,750 hours of BA work experience in order to be eligible for the exam. The word "BA work experience" here means your actual work on BA related tasks but not your work title. For example, I was working as a developer for a project 3 years ago, in this project, I worked on requirement gathering and performed solution evaluation. I can count these hours as BA work experience and accumulate it until I have enough 3,750 hours. I'm pretty sure your EEP will have a template to guide you through the application process. But if you do not register for a course with an EEP, I found this article is quite helpful to prepare by yourself.

Please note that your application will be selected randomly for audit from IIBA. You also have to provide references for your work history. I think it's good to heads up my references for the exam audit and therefore I sent emails to them asking for permission of using their information in my exam application.

After done with all paper works, I followed instructions on IIBA to submit my application and paid for the exam application fee ($106). I didn't schedule the exam at this moment as I was unsure when is the best time for me. I only paid for the exam fee ($325) right before I scheduled the exam.

5. Schedule and Take the exam.

Finally! We come to the last step. At this point, you should feel confident and proud of yourself after all efforts you have spent. There are several struggling points that I want to share with you from my very own experiences. I hope you don't repeat my mistake and have a smooth experience with your exam.

Scheduling the exam:

The exam will be held by PSI, you have to book a slot for your exam on the PSI website. You can choose to take the exam online with a live proctor or at the examination center. You can schedule the exam 1 day in advance but not on the same day. You also can reschedule the exam before 48 hours. If you do not launch the exam within 15 minutes after the scheduled time, your exam will be canceled automatically, and there is no refund.

Prepare a room for the exam:

You need to have a decluttered room, neat and avoid background noises to take the exam. The proctor will ask you to scan the entire room in 360 degrees to check if there is anything abnormal. This video will help you understand the online exam process:

On the exam day:

• You can launch the exam 30 mins in advance before your scheduled time. After launch, you have to download a secure browser to take the exam. If you're a Macbook user, you need to ensure the PSI secure browser has access to Camera and Screen Recording otherwise the proctor would not allow you to take the exam. I didn't know about this step, so I wasted almost 1.5 hours before I could take the exam.

• You need to have a good internet connection. I was unlucky as on my exam date, the wifi connection was weaker than usual. I lost connection twice and I couldn't log in again. I was panicked as I wasn't sure if the proctor still waits for me to come back. Luckily, the proctor was very supportive. After my turn, it happened that the proctor lost his/her connection and so... I wasted lots of time. Do not worry, the waiting time won't be counted in the exam duration but interruptions can make you feel frustrated especially when you're focusing on something. Also, every time you re-enter the exam, all question's orders will be reshuffled to avoid cheating, only the order but not the question's contents. This made me lost count on my progress which caused me to feel a bit out of control.
• You need to have a happy tummy. Yeah, I'm serious. I made a big mistake that I skipped my lunch on that day because I had a late breakfast. I thought the exam would end in at most 3 hours. I usually only need 1.5 hours to do a simulation test, so I was too confident. But due to all technical issues, I took 5 hours to complete it (from 1 pm to 6 pm). I was too hungry to think clearly and I rushed to finish it as soon as possible. :(
• Other than that, you also need a government-issued document (Passport, Identification Card) with your photo on it. The proctor will verify your identification.

Final thoughts

If you ask me "Is the CCBA certificate worth it?", my answer is yes in comparison with the amount of knowledge that I obtained throughout my study. I know for sure with this knowledge, I can contribute better to my work and my career. If you still remember about my Unicorn project earlier, I now see myself at the Learning Zone and I can't wait to apply these BA techniques and skills in my work and master it to prepare for the CBAP exam in the next 3 years.

I hope my sharing is useful for you and help you to achieve your goal. I know this is a long article as I'm ambitious to share with you everything I know. Thank you for reading my note until the end. If you have any feedback, concerns, questions, or want to share your experiences, please leave a comment.

I would like to end my article with one of my favorite quotes: "Ask yourself if what you are doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow."

Stay strong and healthy. :)

Thanks my friends, Hero and Mendy for helping me review my article. You guys are awesome friends. :)

References

• Adaptive US blog: https://www.adaptiveus.com/business-analysis-certification/
• Adaptive US blog: https://www.adaptiveus.com/ccba-vs-cbap/
• Bridging The Gap blog: https://www.bridging-the-gap.com/cbap-application-worksheet/
• Coogle: https://coggle.it/
• IIBA organization: https://www.iiba.org/
• Photo by Lacie Slezak: https://unsplash.com/photos/yHG6llFLjS0
• Photo by Ian Schneider: https://unsplash.com/photos/TamMbr4okv4