BCS - Foundation Certificate in Business Change

Curriculum

Module 1: Business Change Principles (5%)

• Explain the degrees of business change
• Venkatraman’s Business Transformation Model
• Describe the business change lifecycle

Module 2: Business Alignment (20%)

• Identify the three aspects specific to an organisation with which any business change must align:
• The external environment
• The enterprise architecture
• VMOST (vision, mission, objectives, strategy and tactics)
• Explain the process and techniques used to develop a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).
• Techniques to analyse the external environment
• PESTLE analysis
• Porters Five Forces analysis
• Techniques to analyse the internal environment
• VMOST
• Resource Audit
• Describe frameworks used when analysing organisational culture
• Handy’s Model of Organisational Culture
• The Cultural Web
• Describe Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Culture
• Explain the balanced scorecard, critical success factors (CSF) and key performance indicators (KPI)

Module 3: Business Improvement Definition (25%)

• Explain the applicability, advantages and disadvantages of the following investigation techniques:
• Interviews
• Observation
• Workshops
• Scenarios
• Surveys
• Document analysis
• Describe the techniques to analyse the root causes of problems
• Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams
• Mind Maps
• Rich Pictures
• Identify categories of stakeholder: Stakeholder Wheel
• Explain techniques to analyse and manage stakeholders
• Power/Interest Grid
• CATWOE
• RACI Chart
• Explain the gap analysis process, comparing existing and target states
• Explain the process for evaluating options
• Identifying options
• Evaluating feasibility: business feasibility, technical feasibility and financial feasibility
• Describe the contents and structure of a business case
• Background and objectives
• Options
• Categories of costs and benefits
• Impact assessment
• Risk assessment
• Distinguish between investment appraisal techniques
• Payback
• Discounted cash flow
• Internal rate of return
• Distinguish between the change programme and the change project
• Requirements
• Describe requirements definition
• Describe the Requirements Engineering Framework: Elicitation, Analysis, Validation, Documentation and Management
• Describe the types of Requirement: General, Technical, Functional and Non Functional
• Represent the scope of the selected option: Use case diagrams

Module 4: Business Change Design and Development (20%)

• Describe the POPIT (People, Organisation, Process, Information and Technology) model
• People
• Identify the people related areas to be considered within a Business Change initiative
• skills
• recruitment
• staff development
• motivation and reward
• Organisation
• Describe types of organisational structures by
• function geography or product
• flat and tall structures
• centralised and decentralised
• Explain the impact of business change on team structures and roles
• Process
• Distinguish between a functional and process view
• Describe the components of a business process model (Swimlane diagram):
• actors
• tasks
• swimlanes
• process flow
• initiating business event
• decisions
• outcome
• Distinguish between current (as is) and improved (to be) business process models.
• Information:
• Explain the rationale for data modelling
• Describe the components of a Class Model o classes o attributes o associations
• Technology:
• Explain the advantages and disadvantages of bespoke software development and off-the-shelf software package procurement
• Describe the Waterfall lifecycle
• Describe the Agile approach to software development
• iterative development
• incremental delivery
• Describe testing in the business change process
• Describe the extended “V” model.

Module 5: Business Change Implementation (15%)

• Explain business readiness assessment
• POPIT model
• Force Field Analysis
• Kotter approach to change
• Describe the process for implementing the solution
• Implementation approaches
• Direct changeover (or “big bang”)
• pilot
• parallel running
• phased
• Lewin’s Model of Organisational Change – unfreeze, transition, freeze
• Explain responses to change
• Emotional impact of changes: SARAH model
• The conscious competence learning model
• Explain the purpose of post-implementation review

Module 6: Benefits Management and Realisation (15%)

• Describe benefits management process/lifecycle
• Describe benefits categories
• financial
• quantifiable
• measurable
• observable
• Describe the role of the Benefit Owner
• Describe the contents of the benefits plan
• Explain the purpose, conduct and outcomes of a benefits review