On completion of this course, participants will:

• How to develop an opportunity seeking mindset;
• Critical thinking and problem solving approaches;
• Proven techniques to enhance your personal creativity and strategic thinking skills;
• How to draft a problem statement that clearly defines your challenge;
• Apply innovative thinking techniques to generate business systems solutions;
• The creative process that helps you explore all possible solutions;
• How to identify the best solutions and create successful action plans.

Creativity and Critical Thinking

• Creativity and critical thinking in the role of the business analyst;
• Differences between critical thinking and creative thinking;
• Creativity and innovation;
• Critical thinking and the BA.

Explore the Problem/Opportunity

• Why is it a problem?;
• Move from problem-as-given (PAG) to problem-as-understood (PAU);
• Define problem as understood;
• Develop an affinity diagram to perform issue analysis.

Determine Possible Causes/Drivers

• Identify the real causes or drivers;
• Root cause analysis;
• Cause and effect diagrams;
• The 5 whys.

Generate Possible Options/Solutions

• Brainstorm options/solutions;
• Common brainstorming techniques;
• Idea mapping techniques and how to idea map;
• Application of idea maps.

Select the Best Options/Solution

• Choose selection criteria;
• Apply criteria evaluation.

Create the Implementation Plan

• What is needed to implement the recommendation;
• Do it, fix it, try it;
• Develop your action plan.

Measure the Results

• Link results to the problem or opportunity identified.