Our team has evolved greatly! We were all going through the training together and each time we studied areas of learning such as modelling business processes or requirements engineering, we’ve learnt the standards that go with that. It was a continuous improvement process that has benefited the wider team.

Definitely, we had a fortnightly catch-up on Microsoft Teams and we communicated frequently on our portfolio progress, which covered such a wide range of competencies that we didn’t always get to do everything in our day-to-day jobs. By performing this exercise, we were trying to look for opportunities for people to shadow other people or pick up a particular piece of work to boost their portfolio. For example, where I lead the team, if something comes up where someone needs to do some process modelling, I choose a team member on the apprenticeship that hasn’t had the chance to do that yet so they can boost their portfolio.

1. I’ve learned so much around modelling business processes and all the standards that come with that. I’ve been modelling processes for a new social care system for adults within the council and knowing how to do that properly has been helpful.
2. Another practical element is around requirements engineering, learning how you validate and prioritise requirements has really helped myself and my colleagues.
3. Getting an appreciation of the value a Business Analyst can add to a business. For example, bringing clarity to a business problem or need, it has definitely built our confidence as a team.

Our 2-day Agile training course was fantastic. Our trainer was so interesting, with such a variety of experience and knowledge, he really brought the subject matter to life, with lots of examples. It was nice to be able to attend the training with other BA colleagues from HCC IT, who have also commented on how useful and interesting the course was. The little tests throughout the course were fun and kept us engaged with it too. Lots of food for thought for improving team working and agility in “the new normal” too!