Share this
Applying BABoK to our personal lives
by LN Mishra, CBAP, CBDA, AAC & CCA on Aug 30, 2018 12:00:00 AM
I have been studying and teaching BABoK quite a few years now. Mostly we try to apply the concepts in BABoK to our professional lives. I was indeed surprised to find that many aspects of BABoK do apply to our personal lives as well. Here is an attempt to find aspects in BABoK which can be applied in our personal lives as well.
1. Planning and monitoring
Planning and monitoring the progress of our key objectives in our life is quite important not only in our professional lives but also in our personal lives.
We can learn the basics of planning and monitoring including aspects such as stakeholder engagement, creating task plans and managing risk from BABoK for our personal lives as well.
2. Stakeholder engagement
A wise man said, “By engaging right stakeholders at the right time and right way, one can make a huge difference to one’s project, career, and life.”
Stakeholder engagement is as important in personal life as in professional life. Our ability to manage our key stakeholders in our personal life (spouse, children, parents, in-laws, friends) is crucial to our success as a person and as a professional.
We need to learn how to identify our stakeholder expectations and manage them throughout our lives.

3. Managing risk
Our personal lives are full of risks and one must take measures to ensure one does not expose oneself to unwarranted risks. I have seen many exemplary professionals who not only ruined their stellar career but sometimes even lost their lives because they did not consider risks associated.
A college senior of mine killed himself, his wife and seriously injured his children as he tried to save a few minutes of travel time. Another senior ruined his exemplary professional career due to unacceptable behavior in the workplace with a lady colleague.
4. Elicitation
Many often we do not try to understand the real needs of our relatives and friends. If we dig dipper, we would be able to understand their needs better and be able to find suitable solutions. Often, we don’t find all needs and we come up with a solution which causes dissatisfaction to close family members.
5. Creative thinking
We need to think creatively in order to come up with new ideas, approaches, alternatives to problems in our personal lives as well.

6. Decision making
When a set of alternatives are available, we need to make decisions by choosing the most appropriate solution based on analysis of relevant information, comparison and contrast with other options available etc.
7. Learning
We may have to work in new domains where they do not have prior experience. During this situation, we must be open to quickly learn new and different types of information and modify their existing knowledge to adapt themselves to a rapidly changing and evolving environment.
8. Problem-solving
Problems are part of our lives. We need to learn problem-solving techniques such as root cause analysis to ensure solutions we find eliminate root cause and they don’t recur in our lives.

9. Personal accountability
We are responsible to manage our lives. This requires effective planning of our work to achieve our goals by completing tasks on time and meeting the expectations of our key stakeholders.
10. Trustworthiness
Being trustworthy is essential in our personal lives. Honesty, empathy, and ability help us earn trust.
11. Organization and time management
We handle multitudes of tasks and information which must be organized. Prioritizing tasks and deadlines will help us to manage our time effectively.
12. Adaptability
It is our ability to adjust ourselves to suit the needs of the rapidly changing environment and also deal with a variety of situations.
13. Active Listening
Active listening helps us understand the essence of communication. Active listening requires us to give the speaker complete attention and also interpreting and responding appropriately to what he is trying to communicate.
14. Interaction Skills
Our ability to relate, cooperate and communicate with different stakeholders in our personal lives makes our lives more meaningful and enjoyable.
15. Facilitation
Facilitation is the skill of moderating discussions and interactions within a group and enabling stakeholders to participate actively, make decisions, solve problems, exchange ideas etc. Facilitation is an important skill in family decision making as well.
16. Leadership and Influencing
Leadership and Influencing skills involve motivating people to work together, inspiring them to transform vision into reality, reducing resistance to changes, building consensus etc. We as parents are natural leaders for our kids till they move out of our homes. Our appropriate behaviors shape our children as well.
17. Teamwork
A family is a team. It is essential for us to build a great team in the family first. Resolving conflicts in a family in a fair and transparent manner is essential to the family harmony.
18. Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
In life, we constantly negotiate but a better life, better salary, more attention. Learning to find win-win solutions for conflicts is essential to a happy family life as well.
19. Tools and Technology
We use a variety of software applications for our personal activities. This enhances communication and collaboration and increases our overall productivity.
20. Checklists
Checklists can indeed be very We use a variety of software applications for our personal activities. This enhances communication and collaboration and increases our overall productivity.

I would love to hear from my BA friends if they found other interesting facets of BABoK which can be helpful to become a better person.
Sharing is caring!
Share this
- Business analysis (135)
- CBAP (41)
- Business analysis skill (34)
- CBAP Certification (32)
- #CCBA (31)
- Career (29)
- ECBA (22)
- #AdaptiveUS (20)
- #BA Certification (18)
- #BA (16)
- IIBA Certifications (16)
- BABoK (15)
- #IIBA (14)
- #AdaptiveUS #BusinessAnalysis (13)
- Uncategorized (13)
- Most Popular (12)
- Announcements (11)
- cbap certification training (11)
- Requirement engineering (10)
- #CBAP_Certification (8)
- #LNMishra (8)
- countdowns (8)
- #BA Skills (7)
- CPRE (7)
- Press Release (7)
- #BA Techniques (6)
- #BusinessAnalysis (6)
- #CCBA_Certification (6)
- #Elicitation (6)
- #AdaptiveUS #BusinessAnalysis #BA #BABoK (5)
- #PressRelease (5)
- #business analyst (5)
- #Business_Analysis (4)
- #ECBA_Certification (4)
- #Requirements engineering (4)
- #cbap_exam_ preparation_tips (4)
- #certifications #AdaptiveUS #BusinessAnalysis #BA (4)
- Business analysis certification training (4)
- Most Recent (4)
- #AdaptiveRocks (3)
- #BA_Certification (3)
- #IIBA Membership (3)
- cbap certification cost (3)
- cbap certification course (3)
- cbap training certification online (3)
- #LearnwithLN (2)
- Business analysis study guides (2)
- CCBA Recertification (2)
- CPOA (2)
- businessanalyst (2)
- cbap question banks (2)
- cbap study guide (2)
- ecba question banks (2)
- ecba study guide (2)
- #AAC (1)
- #AgileBA (1)
- #BAOT (1)
- #BATrends (1)
- #BridgingtheGap (1)
- #ECBA #IIBA #IIBAWorkshop #Certification (1)
- #IIBA #Agile (1)
- #IIBAEgyptChapter (1)
- #IREB (1)
- #NFR (1)
- #OneWorksGroup (1)
- #Partnership (1)
- #SimpleSim (1)
- #ba #businessanalysis #jobdescription #adaptiveus (1)
- #performancemetrics (1)
- Adaptive US (1)
- Agile BA (1)
- Artificial Intelligence (1)
- Awesome BA (1)
- BABoKV3 based certification (1)
- BACOE (1)
- CBAP Certification Tips (1)
- CBAP Exam Preparation (1)
- CBAP Exam Tips (1)
- CBAP Preparation Tips (1)
- CBAP certification preparation (1)
- CBDA (1)
- ECBA Certification steps (1)
- ECBA V3 certification (1)
- ECBA certificate (1)
- From our Archive (1)
- IIBA CBAP Certification (1)
- KPI (1)
- PMI PBA (1)
- PMP vs CBAP (1)
- Requirements Management (1)
- Scrum (1)
- Scrum rules (1)
- Transitioning to BA (1)
- bajobs (1)
- cbap e-learning (1)
- cbap training material (1)
- ccba certification training online (1)
- ccba or cbap certification (1)
- conflicts resolution techniques (1)
- iiba ecba online course (1)
- productowner (1)
- stakeholders (1)
- testing (1)
- what is scrum? (1)
- May 2023 (2)
- April 2023 (4)
- March 2023 (3)
- February 2023 (5)
- January 2023 (1)
- December 2022 (4)
- November 2022 (3)
- October 2022 (2)
- September 2022 (4)
- August 2022 (3)
- July 2022 (4)
- June 2022 (8)
- May 2022 (4)
- April 2022 (7)
- March 2022 (6)
- February 2022 (1)
- January 2022 (1)
- December 2021 (2)
- November 2021 (4)
- October 2021 (4)
- September 2021 (2)
- August 2021 (4)
- July 2021 (4)
- June 2021 (2)
- May 2021 (1)
- April 2021 (1)
- March 2021 (4)
- February 2021 (2)
- January 2021 (3)
- December 2020 (3)
- November 2020 (3)
- October 2020 (3)
- September 2020 (5)
- August 2020 (8)
- July 2020 (3)
- May 2020 (5)
- April 2020 (2)
- March 2020 (7)
- February 2020 (6)
- January 2020 (4)
- December 2019 (1)
- November 2019 (3)
- October 2019 (5)
- September 2019 (3)
- August 2019 (2)
- July 2019 (4)
- June 2019 (2)
- May 2019 (3)
- April 2019 (6)
- March 2019 (3)
- February 2019 (8)
- January 2019 (7)
- December 2018 (8)
- November 2018 (6)
- October 2018 (8)
- September 2018 (11)
- August 2018 (11)
- July 2018 (23)
- June 2018 (12)
- May 2018 (19)
- April 2018 (11)
- February 2018 (1)
- January 2018 (3)
- December 2017 (1)
- November 2017 (5)
- October 2017 (2)
- September 2017 (2)
- August 2017 (30)
No Comments Yet
Let us know what you think