About BA & Beyond

There's a lot of business going on in and close to the center of Europe. And there's a lot of business analysis and architecture going on here too. With the BA & Beyond conference, we create a forum for sharing inspiration, knowledge and experience across the BA community in the heart of Europe.

As we all are growing our BA profession, its core competences like process analysis, requirements management, strategy analysis and solution design and evaluation are maturing. But we are also connecting with new domains, like service or customer experience design, and broadening our horizon towards roles like product owner and product manager.

BA & Beyond aims to be the catalyst for bringing this variety of BA expertise together and moving our profession forward.

Good format: to the point, well timed.
A lot of information in a short time.
Sander Van Cappellen, Business Consultant at Ordina
Great conference, very rich agenda. It was extremely hard to choose between parallel sessions! I'm really glad I was able to take the opportunity and to travel to Belgium.
Piotr Sosinski, Senior IT Business Analyst at British Council
Awesome and valuable conference, with valuable and varied content.
Adrian Reed, Principal Consultant at Blackmetric
Great insights and take aways. Interesting to see different viewpoints.
Laurenz Kuijpers, Program Manager Digital Workspaces at Cegeka

Why attend ?

  • Get inspired by thought leaders
  • Learn from your peers
  • Enjoy a great networking opportunity
  • Discover how to build your BA skills and community
  • Get to know about the latest BA tools
Photo of speaker and audience during a conference session.

28 March
2019

Brussels
Belgium

250
Tickets

25
Speakers

Keynote: The Agile Business Analyst

More and more organisations are adopting agile techniques and approaches. Agile adoption brings about changes to processes, approaches and roles, and some BAs can be left wondering where they fit into this new world. Lynda Girvan will discuss what it means to be an Agile BA and how as an Agile BA you can bring value to your organisation through having the right mindset and a comprehensive toolkit.

In her talk, Lynda will discuss:

  • What is an Agile BA?
  • Lean, system and service thinking
  • Shortening the loop from requirement to delivery
  • How Agile BAs add value and contribute to development teams
Image of how analysis, development and operations interact in an agile approach

Who is Lynda Girvan ?

Lynda Girvan has over 25 years of experience in business and systems development as a consultant, professional trainer and practitioner in both the public and private sector. She has extensive experience of adding value to organisations at a variety of levels including coaching agile development teams or helping board level change projects.

Lynda’s particular strength is applying business analysis and agile techniques together to help organisations overcome challenging business problems. Lynda is the co-author of the book ‘Agile and Business Analysis’ which was published by the BCS, Chartered Institute for IT in Februari 2017. Lynda currently works for CMC Partnership (UK) Ltd where she is Head of Profession for Business Analysis as well as their Lead Agile BA. Lynda has delivered numerous presentations and keynotes to European and international audiences covering subjects on business analysis, agile and business change.

First programme announcements

At BA & Beyond 2018, the mini-workshops were highly appreciated. So for our upcoming conference, we will be hosting a dedicated workshop track next to two presentation tracks.

We're happy to announce the first workshops for this track!

The Innovation Game's board design

Innovation is a real buzzword. But what actions really make a difference?

With The Innovation Game by Michael Van Damme and Geert De Wael from The Forge, you can experience how to make the right, evidence-based decisions for innovation.

Photo of Koen De Keersmaecker during a visual facilitation workshop

Let's start thinking with our pen!

Join our workshop on Visualisation and Visual Facilitation by Koen De Keersmaecker from Bizzuals if you are still convinced that you are not at all talented and would like to get an intro in how to visualise.

Attend the conference

The Innovation Game

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The Innovation Game's board design

Innovation is a bit like eating healthy. Everybody talks about it, but secretly we still prefer our cupcakes and chocolates. Innovation is a real buzzword. But what actions really make a difference? With The Innovation Game you can experience how to make the right, evidence-based decisions for innovation.

During the game your team starts a new company. Your team is the management team of the new company. Of course you want your company to become more innovative. In several rounds your team will be confronted with several decisions you have to make about your company’s culture, teams, employees and processes. But which decisions are actually the good ones for innovation? If you make the right decisions, you’ll be rewarded and you’ll see your company grow. What do you think about a new coffee corner, a power nap room or a jacuzzi at the office? After each challenge you'll receive feedback on why your decision was good or bad for innovation. Everything in the game is backed up by scientific literature. At the end of the game the participants reflect on what they learned and how they could apply that in their daily work.

Speakers

Michaël Van Damme

  • Achtergrond Experimenteel/Organisatie Psycholoog & PhD bij UGent.
  • Werkte voor Centrum voor de Ontwikkeling van het Creatief Denken (COCD, als facilitator van innovatie processen) & UGent (onderzoeker).
  • Expertise Wetenschap rond innovatie in groepen en organisaties, groepsdynamica, communicatie, charisma, humor en idee selectie.
  • Andere Ervaren Keynote spreker (oa. TEDx). Ervaren impro- en stand up comedian. Coaching van public speakers.

Geert De Wael

  • Achtergrond TEW aan de KULeuven & MBA bij Vlerick.
  • Werkte voor IBM, TV Brussel (directie), Sanoma (operation manager).
  • Expertise Leiderschap, communicatie management & team communicatie.
  • Andere Ervaren impro- en stand up commedian. Coaching van public speakers.

Thought Sketching for Business Analysts and Beyond

Visualize your thoughts and make impact

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Photo of Koen De Keersmaecker during a visual facilitation workshop

During this session — let's start thinking with our pen. No matter how convoluted a problem may feel in your head — simply pick up a pen and make the first stroke — the rest usually takes care of itself. I bet you will like it!

Visualisation and visual facilitation is a (new) method to make content and process visible in realtime. Be it in presentations, workshops, coaching sessions, trainings and meetings — whenever people engage in dialogue, are working together and want to learn from each other in an impactful way. Bikablo is the brand that opens the door to the world of visual thinking and dialogue.

You are (still) convinced that you are not at all talented and would like to get an intro in how to visualise? You have little experience with visualisation so far and you are looking for an easy way to improve your analysis documentation and make them more clear, attractive, and lively or you want to take your first steps into the world of visual facilitation and storytelling? This session is definitely something you will never forget!

Get an intro about how to Present, Document and Explore Visually — This session will be very interactive and aims at people with all different backgrounds and experience levels (after all visualisation is useful for everybody).

Speaker

Koen De keersmaecker is a visual facilitator, visual trainer and visual coach. He is founder of Bizzuals, a visual incubator that empowers people and organisations to think with the pen. His main observation is “People think they understand each other, but in reality they don’t.”

As bikablo® certified global trainer, he trains and coaches people and teams in the bikablo® visualisation technique — a technique which improves learning, knowledge transfer, dialogue and collaboration.

Over the last 10 years , he has been working as a pragmatic “Enterprise Lean-Agile Coach”, supporting companies big and small in their improvement journeys in immer changing markets, be it adopting Agile models or thriving as a start-up.

Today his passion is exploring new techniques and methods for inspiring people and helping them make their messages stick. He lives with his wife and 2 sons in Antwerp.

Call for Speakers

At the BA & Beyond Conference, we combine inspiration from thought leaders in the BA field with genuine stories from practitioners like you. We're looking for stories and cases that can help others move their BA skills forward. Potential topics are:

  • Rock solid BA Tools & Techniques that stand the test of time
  • Ensuring architects, business analysts, functional analysts and developers solve the same business problem
  • BA & Agile: Friends or foes? How do you perform BA work in an agile context?
  • The Role of the BA in Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, Innovation, Data Science, Machine Learning, Citizen Development, …
  • Soft skills and facilitation skills: a key to BA success?
  • Building BA communities of practice

Sessions will be a combination of a 20-25 minute talk and a 15-20 minute discussion, facilitated by us. You have a topic in mind but are unsure about presenting? Submit your topic without any obligation and we'll get back to you to discuss your idea, or check our speaker guidelines.

All speakers get free access to the conference. When presenting with two speakers, the second speaker will receive a 50% reduction to the conference fee. In case you have already registered for the conference when we confirm your speaking proposal, you can always transfer your tickets or receive a refund.

Submit Your Proposal before Thursday 20 December

Submit your proposal

Register for BA & Beyond 2019

Grab your € 50 early bird discount now!

  • Super early bird: € 200 — 50 tickets available until 30 November
  • Early bird: € 250 — 50 tickets available until 1 Februari
  • Normal tickets: € 300

Register here

Event Sponsors

Interested in sponsoring this annual event? Get in touch

Founding Partners

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Event Location

Crowne Plaza Brussels — Le Palace
Ginestestraat / Rue Gineste 3
1210 Brussels
+32 (0)2 203 62 00

Crowne Plaza Brussels is very easy to reach by public transport, as it is located next to the Brussels North (Brussel-Noord / Bruxelles-Nord) train station and the Rogier subway and bus station.