Creating a Practical BA Work Plan: From Project Confusion to Clear BA Direction

Business Analysts are often expected to simply know what needs to happen next. A project lands, the timelines are already set, and the work of figuring out the approach, the deliverables, and who needs to be involved happens quietly in the background, if it happens at all. When that planning is skipped, the symptoms show up later as scope confusion, missed stakeholders, rework, and a project manager who cannot see what the Business Analyst is actually doing or when it will be done.

A Business Analysis Work Plan is the antidote. It defines the approach, planned activities, deliverables, stakeholders, timelines, assumptions, communication needs, and the scope of the analysis work itself.

This workshop is delivered in two parts, and you will build a plan twice.

Part One: Build It Manually. We start with the what, the why, and the how, then you put it into practice immediately. Working section by section, you draft a real Business Analysis Work Plan by hand: defining scope, selecting deliverables, mapping stakeholders, surfacing assumptions and risks, and laying out the schedule. You will make the judgment calls yourself and see why each section exists and what a good answer actually looks like. This is the foundation, and it is not optional.

Learning Objectives

By attending this workshop, you will:

• Explain the purpose of a Business Analysis Work Plan and how it supports project planning and stakeholder expectations
• Draft the core sections of a practical plan manually, defining the scope of analysis work for a project or initiative
• Select appropriate deliverables, activities, and techniques, and apply the cycle of eliciting, structuring, documenting, and validating requirements
• Identify assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and planning risks before they become delivery problems

Expected Outcomes and Takeaways

Participants will leave with:

The Business Analysis Work Plan template. The same structure you build from during the session, yours to reuse on every project after it. 

The Business Analysis Work Plan AI Assistant, yours to keep. Set up on your own account during the session and ready to use on your next project, with no ongoing dependency on the workshop or the facilitator. 

Hands on time with the AI assistant: Direct experience running it end to end, seeing what questions it asks, what it produces, and where the output needs correcting.

A shared language with project leadership: A way to make analysis work visible and explainable to a project manager or sponsor, so the effort is planned for rather than assumed.

Good to Know

What to Bring

This is a working session, not a presentation. Please come prepared with:

• A laptop. You will be drafting throughout the day, both by hand and with the assistant.
• Access to an AI tool of your choice. Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, or Gemini all work. Have your account set up and logged in before the session starts so you are not troubleshooting sign in during the workshop

About the Facilitators

Kristie Marr, CBAP

Kristie Marr, CBAP ®, is an independent business analysis consultant and senior Business Analysis Specialist with over 20 years of experience leading business process analysis, workflow design, requirements translation, stakeholder facilitation, and solution delivery across federal government, financial services, healthcare-related, and regulated environments. Kristie specializes in bringing structure and clarity to complex business and technology change. Her work includes current-state and future-state process analysis, business rules and decision point definition, user flow documentation, requirements planning, stakeholder facilitation, UAT strategy, Agile backlog development, governance documentation, and practical delivery-ready business analysis artifacts. Across application modernization, service management, reporting, data, SharePoint/document management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Power BI, Azure DevOps, and workflow-driven initiatives, Kristie has helped teams translate business, operational, technical, and governance needs into clear requirements and usable project documentation. She has worked in Agile, hybrid, waterfall, and government gate-review environments, often helping teams connect formal planning expectations with practical day-to-day delivery. A core part of Kristie’s consulting approach is building BA capacity. She has mentored junior business analysts, coached business teams in using Azure DevOps for UAT, created templates and checklists to improve quality and reduce rework, and developed training materials to help teams better align requirements activities with project and sprint schedules. This workshop draws from that practical experience to help participants create Business Analysis Work Plans that are clear, realistic, stakeholder-aware, and useful beyond the template.

Oge Nwachukwu, CBAP, PMP, PROSCI, CPOA, CPMAI

Oge Nwachukwu is a Business Analysis practitioner and trainer with over a decade of hands-on experience working across consulting, education, industry, and government and more recently, an AI trainer and consultant helping teams do BA work smarter using artificial intelligence. She is the Founder of Pollard Learning, an IIBA® Premium Training Partner, where she has trained and mentored over 1,500 professionals across North America, Europe, and Africa helping non-tech professionals launch successful\careers in business analysis and transformation. She is also an Associate Professor at Lambton College. Oge is passionate about teaching teams and practitioners to leverage AI tools combined with Business analysis frameworks to work with greater speed, efficiency and impact. Her sessions are known for being live, practical, and immediately useful.

Event Details

When:

Where:

Parking/Transit:

Agenda:

Who should attend: 

• Business Analysts (new to intermediate): Practitioners who want a repeatable structure for planning their work instead of improvising it project by project

• Senior Business Analysts: Those taking on larger or more complex initiatives where the analysis effort now needs to be visible, estimated, and governed

• Business Analysis consultants and independent practitioners: Professionals who need to scope, communicate, and defend their approach to clients and contract owners

• Project managers, product owners, and team leads: Those who work alongside Business Analysts and want a clearer view of how analysis work is planned and sequenced

Cost: 

• $30 for volunteers (current board members, deputies, and active volunteers)
• $60 for IIBA members & Partner Students
• $80 for non-members

• $35 for volunteers (current board members, deputies, and active volunteers)
• $70 for IIBA members and Partner Students
• $90 for Non-members

Cost includes light refreshments at breaks and lunch. Please advise of dietary restrictions during registration.

Note that IIBA Members must be logged in for the IIBA Member rate to appear during registration. 

Volunteers must enter the volunteer promo code during registration. 

Partner students will need a promo code from their educational institution and register with their student email address.

How to Cancel Your Registration

Send a message to communications@ottawa-outaouais.iiba.org with your name and order number.

Continuing Development Unit (CDU)/Professional Development (PD) Hours: 

Your attendance is worth six (6) CDUs and six (6) PD Hours.

Sponsor