ABOUT THIS SESSION:
Community of Practice to Center of Excellence. Companies are struggling to grow and mature their BA practices. The value of establishing a Business Analysis Center of Excellence has been touted by many experts over the past few years, but how many of them have been successfully launched and operationalized? In fact, many organizations have taken the important first steps. Join our panellists, all who have experience in establishing BA centers of excellence in their organization, in a conversation to understand how they accomplished their goal and to ask your questions so that you can leverage their success.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR(s):
Alain has been working at BMO Financial Group- Bank of Montreal for the last 15 years in various positions, as business analyst, project manager and Sr Manager PMO on the business side. He currently works on the Technology side leading a team of professionals who provide PM / SDLC process support and governance on 4 key I.T. practices; Project Management, Business Analysis, Quality Control and System Development across the organization. He is also responsible for the training curriculum for these practices.
Alain also serves on the Advisory Board for the BA/PM World Conference in Toronto.
Alain has also been a volunteer for IIBA® for the last 5 years, first on few leading operational positions as Chief Strategist for 2 years then VP of Marketing and Communication playing also duel function on the IIBA® Board of Directors. Currently Alain is a Director at large and member of the IIBA® Board Nomination Committee and HR and Compensation Committee.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER(s):
Christopher Gaffney is the Business Analysis Center of Excellence Lead at AXA Equitable. In this role, Chris is responsible for advancing the skills and capabilities of the IT Business Analyst job discipline through: - Resource Management and Recruiting - Requirement Management Tool Implementations - CMMi Level 3-compliant Processes, Procedures and Templates - Metrics Capture and Analysis - Professional Development - Training Development and Delivery - BA Resource Estimation Chris is recognized as the Business Analysis Subject Matter Expert and Model Practitioner at AXA Equitable. He is well-versed in the theory behind the processes, policies and procedures, but recognizes everything must be practical in the AXA world to be successful. Prior to joining AXA Equitable, Chris was an Independent Consultant for 16 years providing Business Analysis, Project Management and Technical Writing services to clients both large and small. He is a Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) and Project Management Professional (PMP), and is currently working towards obtaining his AXA Six Sigma Green Belt certification.
Donna Thomas is an accomplished award-winning visionary leader in strategic planning, software development, compliance, business process improvement and contract negotiations. Her career encompasses more than two decades in the technology field working for Fortune 50 companies, including developing critical global enterprise programs for Dell, Inc.
Throughout her career, Donna has used Six-Sigma methodologies to analyze complex business processes and problems to develop end to end solutions which include people, process and technology requirements.
Donna’s passion for coaching and mentoring has allowed her to lecture in the MIS department at the University of Texas at Austin, and publish her estimating techniques in MIS text books.
Donna recently joined AMD, and is currently transforming a team of Business Analysts and AMD’s IT Requirement Engineering Practices.
Heather Davidson, CBAP has been involved in the analysis for over 15 years as a business stakeholder and as an analyst. Heather began her career at Nationwide Insurance as a BA and moved into financial services operations. She is currently Director of Analysis Services for Nationwide. Analysis Services staffs analysts on key initiatives. We use a combination of associates and contracted resources to support variable project demand. We have developed a series of tools/processes to support analysis staffing.
Mike Sandberg, CBAP, is a Director of the Business Analysis Center of Excellence at Novell, Inc. He currently manages a team of 13 Business Analysts that support Novell's IT projects. With 19 years of experience in the software industry, Mike has worked as a Business Analyst on multi-million dollar COTS implementations as well as smaller custom in-house applications. Over the past several years, Mike was tasked with building a BA practice in Novell's IT group. Most recently, he has worked extensively on developing BA processes and tools that support outsourced IT projects. Mike holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Behavior.
Mark Jenkins is the Associate Director of Business Analysis at KPMG. Prior to KPMG, Mark established a highly successful Business Analysis group at Internet Security leader Websense. In both roles he led and managed a team of Business Analyst's dedicated to supporting the goals of business units. Mark draws on his 8 years of Business Analysis experience, including numerous CRM initiatives and a wide range of projects, across all business areas.
