IIBA Updated CBAP Exam Questions and Answers by ioan

A business analyst (BA) is running a workshop with a group of stakeholders to understand the requirements for a change that the company is planning to implement.

What important factor does the BA need to understand to ensure the workshop remains focused on the topic in question?

A business analyst (BA) is reviewing the performance results from a recent change initiative. One of the results stated, "The planned schedule expected 50% of the project to be done at milestone 6. The schedule performance index (SPI) was .87. Three project team members worked overtime to ensure that the actual schedule would align with the planned schedule."

This is an example of what type of action?

A non-profit utility company has 900 employees, a majority of whom are hourly employees and must track their time using a paper based process A few years ago, the Director of Human Resources purchased a software system to eliminate the current paper-based time reporting process. No requirements specific to the utility company were defined prior to the purchase. A team was formed to implement the software During implementation process, the team discovered the software lacked functionality and was not robust enough to support the general ledger requirements The company stopped the effort and incurred a $500,000 USD loss on the cost of the software.

This year, the Director of Finance requested that a team investigate the current paper based time reporting process and recommend solutions. The Director of Finance feels that the Director of Human Resources must be involved as a critical stakeholder. The Director of Human Resources is still bitter about the last effort because the process stopped'.

During a brainstorming session on improvement opportunities, the Director of Human Resources repeatedly interrupts the group and states why the proposed ideas will not work.

Which approach should the business analyst (BA) take to refocus the group?

A very large insurer of General Liability and Property Damage insurance has an upward trend of increased claims over the past 5 years.

The Risk Control Area for that company has just completed a 12 month Pilot of a new improved Risk Control Site.

The purpose of the site is to help their customers manage their exposures and ideally prevent them from having claims There were 100 customers that were part of the Pilot that represented 25 different industries. The business goals were to increase use of the site and provide tools to help customer awareness of their exposures, so that they may reduce existing exposures and ultimately reduce claims.

The sites Features were as follows:

* Improvements to the search engine to all customers to search for articles, tools and services on the site

* A checklist function that allow customer to create their own unique Checklists or utilize a sample provided by ABC company to use daily, weekly etc for an area of their facility.

* A promotion feature - where Risk preventing Articles, and tools on the site are marketed toward a customer.

* A profile section allowing for Customer Name, Address and contact Phone number.

Alter the 12 month pilot the business sponsor received an assessment of what was working and what was not. The Assessment of the pilot revealed overall site activity had significantly increased, however only 5% of the time the promotions were viewed. And the most shocking was that total claims increased by nearly 20% for these 100 customers during the pilot period. The business sponsor was perplexed as he had an expectation of reduced claims and at least for 30% viewing of promotions since the project team had spent a lot of careful time and effort on this feature. A BA was assigned to do further analysis regarding the low use of the promotions and why claims were not being reduced.

Regarding the use of promotions the BA looked into other similar companies to see what they did differently to get their customer to look at their promotions. The BA found that similar companies had promotions that targeted the industry the customer was in so it was more relevant to them and they were more interested to view the promotion. In addition the BA sent out a survey to all 100 pilot customers asking probing questions about what they thought of the site and if they felt it had decreased their exposure to risk sufficiently. The Survey responses came back with raving positive comments and providing examples of how the site had been helping in the reduction of claims from the customer's perspective. In addition the survey also revealed insight that the customers found the promotion often irrelevant to their industry.

The BA asked for a dump of all documentation of the 1000 claims that were filed over the 12 month pilot period. The BA found the nearly 90% of the claim filed were all in one region of the country and were all for property damage related to several severe winter storms in the region and the claims were nearly all unavoidable by the customers. The BA brought all this analysis back to the business sponsor and made the recommendation to the business sponsor to require the customer to select 1 of 25 industries in their profile. This would in turn allow for the ability to show industry specific promotions and promote search results relative to a customer's industry to be sorted at the top giving the customer a more personalized experience.

What type of recommendation has the BA made to the business sponsor?