I’m really excited to announce that we are adding a few new business analysis classes to our ArgonDigital training curriculum! To make this happen, we’re partnering with Software Education who already has a strong offering that has been wildly popular in Australia and New Zealand. We are excited to bring their content to the US!

I’ll admit that this idea is a little scary to me. We’ve developed all of ArgonDigital’s training to date ourselves for customers based on our experiences, research, and what we think is most important to teach. However, I also know that it takes a long time to develop a new course (well, to create a really good one at least). Industry metrics show that you can easily spend 40-50 hours developing each hour of training content. So when the opportunity presents itself to bring to our customers already proven content that aligns to our approach, then why not?

I first learned about Software Education a few years ago at an IEEE Requirements Engineering conference where one their instructors was an active participant with training ideas that I very much respected. Then in 2011, I met another instructor of theirs, Shane Hastie. Shane and I both were selected to the International Institute of Business Analysis® (IIBA®) Core Team to write version 3 of the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK® Guide). Over our 3 years together on this team, my respect for him and this company have only but grown. It’s interesting what happens when you work with people for this long to build a set of standard best practices for the industry – obviously we don’t always agree, but we do learn to recognize each other’s strengths, areas of expertise, and even how to disagree and move on when necessary. In the end, thanks to all of that collaboration, I have learned we are very aligned to their best practices, and that’s key if you are going to adopt someone else’s content!

Over the last few years, I stated to recognize that our companies share similar business analysis views, training ideologies, and general operating principals. Our relationship has slowly morphed into something more formal. In early March, we hosted Shane here in Texas to learn to teach their courses from him directly. A few other ArgonDigital instructors and I went through a train-the-trainer effort with Shane to make sure we understand the intricacies of a few of their courses. Starting in May, we’ll be offering the first public offering – the Business Systems Analysis class. I can’t wait to hear what our US students think of this content!