DVT speakers Carina Fourie, Edward Ngubane and Laura Wier

Software development and related services company DVT recently sponsored the annual BA Summit 2019 for the second consecutive year. Additionally, DVT developed the conference's mobile events app for delegates as part of its sponsorship. The event took place from 16-18 September at the Lord Charles Hotel in Cape Town.

The BA Summit is key in bringing together practitioners of business analysis from all corners of SA and other countries for knowledge sharing and relationship building, creating an awareness of and educating the broader business community about the BA profession.

From left: Ineke Burger, Carina Fourie, Deidre Forbay and Edward Ngubane of DVT

This year's conference theme was: 'Repositioning business analysis to go one step beyond'. The question raised by many speakers was how do we future fit the business analysis profession to ensure ongoing relevance and continued delivery of exceptional, meaningful business value?

According to Lucy Davies, president of the IIBA South African Chapter, this year's BA Summit was another great success, hosted by IIBA-SA in Cape Town. "It was the place to meet old friends and hear new ideas, discuss current trends and debunk myths, a place where attendees repositioned business analysis to go one step beyond. The BA Summit was a hive of business analysis activities where delegates could learn, un-learn and re-learn," notes Davies.

The BA Summit 2019 mobile event app showing the speakers

DVT's Edward Ngubane, Head of Business Analysis in Gauteng, says: "The value and the impact of the BA Summit are immeasurable. Over the years, this event has grown from strength to strength, to now becoming the 'must-attend' business analysis event in South Africa."

"DVT has a critical role to play in contributing to the repositioning of business analysis as a profession during this time of transition from the Information Age to the Experience Age (the 4IR)", notes Ngubane. "As DVT, we remain resolute and relentless in our efforts to help uplift the BA profession."

The BA Summit mobile event app showing part of the schedule

DVT has spearheaded several events for the sole purpose of encouraging dialogue about business analysis issues. Its most recent initiative is the Business Analysts Managers’ Forum (BAMF), which is meant to create a platform to bring together managers of business analysts to address challenges they experience in their organisations.

Ngubane's presentation topic at the event was: 'In defence of business analysis', where he addressed the issue of whether there is a role for a BA in an agile environment. "Business analysis as a discipline has a lot of value to add in agile teams," notes Ngubane. "The BA brings to the team a skill that no other team member possesses. The reason why this value is not fully realised in some, if not all, agile teams are that BAs are very operational in their thinking, and not elevating themselves to competently represent product owners."

Other DVT speakers included project delivery manager, Deidre Forbay, who spoke on innovation in business analysis; Laura Wier, principal consultant for DVT’s national RPA service offering, who presented on the impact of robotic process automation (RPA) on business analysis; and business transformation coach, Carina Fourie, who gave a talk on the human side of RPA: utilising people’s unique strengths.

According to Wier, business analysts need to remain current with emerging technologies to best provide business solutions that are relevant in our customer-centric digital world.

For more about the BA Summit 2019, go to https://basummit.co.za/.