Agile Business Analysis and Agile Project Management: In growing demand for employers
Today’s workplace is increasingly complex, interconnected and competitive, resulting in a growing demand for inventive solutions in an ever-changing world. Forward-thinking companies that strive to remain competitive — and to consistently pursue synergies and steady growth in an evolving marketplace — are embracing innovation. These companies have an increasing demand for employees with educational training and experience in agile concepts, particularly as business analysts or project managers.
Scott Hinkson, a Red River College (RRC) instructor, truly understands how industry and workplace requirements can impact customers, clients, investors, companies, and products and services. Effective business analysis and project management can “facilitate the planning, management and implementation of business and technology solutions”¹ that align with organizational strategies and are built with flexibility to withstand changes in the marketplace and achieve solutions more effectively than traditional methods.
A former student of both the Business Analyst Program and the Project Management Program, Hinkson is a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and the first Manitoban to have obtained PMI-ACP certification (Project Management Institute Agile Certified Practitioner). Even when these programs were in their infancy, Hinkson foresaw the opportunity of how crucial these skills are, and would continue to be, to employers in the future.
Hinkson took the initiative to approach RRC with the goal of developing two specific courses. The College shared in his desire to meet the growing needs of business analysis and project management, provide employers with a knowledgeable workforce and prepare students with the job-ready skills needed to succeed. The result: the Agile Business Analysis course and the Agile Project Management course were born!
In RRC’s Agile Business Analysis course, you will learn how to utilize agile concepts for software development. As agile methodologies,tools and techniques become more familiar, you will learn how to compose agile documentation deliverables, create agile releases and develop iteration and daily plans. In the real world, requirements often change regularly, so Hinkson has built this course to embrace the changing of options and the re-prioritizing of requirements. The result encourages flexibility and teaches you how to change the process as you go,instead of defining requirements at the onset and facing immense difficulty and challenges in making necessary alterations at a later point. This process provides a more superior solution than traditional analysis has in the past, and it allows clients to define requirements and validate those requirements have been met.
In addition, the course teaches imperative skills including how to manage customer expectations, collaborate effectively, monitor team performance accurately, ensure products are consistently providing value, and perform incessant improvements for succeeding iterations while taking lessons learned into consideration.
Once agile knowledge, tools and techniques have been acquired, they can also be applied in software development projects in the Agile Project Management course. Further to learning and professionally developing skills within the agile field, you will also reap competencies in detecting problems and finding solutions that are flexible and capable of reacting quickly to unpredictable changes. This course also teaches you how to manage a team and tackle the largest and riskiest components first.
Jobs in business analysis and project management are applicable to any industry, enabling you to apply your knowledge and skill sets to a variety of fields. Whether you choose to take these courses for professional development and growth in your career path or to pursue the Business Analysis and/or Project Management Programs, these courses, along with Hinkson, are paving the way, preparing you for the jobs of our future.