An Interview with Igor Arkhipov – A Senior Business Analysis Practitioner

Igor is a Business Analyst practitioner based in Australia. He has carved himself a niche in the online world of Business Analysis. His latest ventures include Udemy courses, an online medium publication and much more. Read about his Business Analysis Practice and get to know him.

Tell us about yourself.

I’ve been a business analyst by trade for the last 12 or so years. It all started in the uni when I had a small part-time gig at a company developing their own banner exchange engine – to manage ads on websites. It was at times when competing with Google Ads still seemed promising 🙂 I joined them as a part-time software developer and quickly realized I was not going to make an illustrious career as a developer. Luckily, about the same time our business analyst resigned and my manager offered the position to me. This is how I got into the analysis world and have been there from then. Since then I finished my Master’s exploring the requirements development process in my research paper, worked for numerous e-commerce organizations, then spent a few years with Kaspersky Lab protecting the world from cyber threats, and finally found myself at Isobar Australia leading business analysis practice here.

I heard that you have started your udemy courses. Can you provide the audience some background and what they can gain from the classes? Can you provide a link to classes?

At first, it was really a way to entertain my curiosity. Since university, I have been telling myself: “I could do that” (I mean, teach others). Then one day I was browsing online training working on a professional development plan for my team and came across Udemy’s offer to teachers. It caught my interest, so I decided to give it a go. Coincidentally, my family went on a holiday so I had a lot of time to focus on it. I moved the furniture converting the kids room into an amateur studio with blankets on the walls and construction of 3 chairs + a ladder to hold lights. It was fun. 

The topic I chose was what I knew I was good at – core business analysis skill set. I used the BABOK Guide as a guideline on which topics to include, so the training would be beneficial not only to gain some skills and knowledge, but also to prepare for IIBA certifications. I think it was a great experiment which allowed me to share some experience but also to connect with the students – curious BAs exploring the profession. This connection to people is something that makes online teaching so appealing. 

Last year, as we went into the covid-related lockdown there was some more free time to devote to teaching. So I created another course focused on Agile Business Analysis. This one is more focused on preparing for a certification exam (IIBA-AAC) and in addition to lectures and quizzes has a sample exam test. This time I’ve also invested into a better camera and mic, learning from previous experience it made a difference.

Here are the links if anyone is interested:https://www.udemy.com/course/agile-business-analysis-study-guide/?couponCode=FEB2021
https://www.udemy.com/course/business-analysis-study-guide/?couponCode=FEB2021

For the month of February you can use a discount code FEB2021 to get them at a potentially better rate.

I read the Analysts Corner on Medium a lot. Can you give this audience an understanding of what the Analysts Corner is? 
Engaging the students, I’ve realized there is no forum for them to share ideas and insights that would be a bit more sophisticated than Facebook groups, but more social than journals. So I looked at medium.com as a nice platform for social writing. It supports a longer format of write-ups while maintaining the features of a social network. This is how I created a publication called Analyst’s corner. A publication on medium is similar to a blog written by many people – a collective of writers contributes their articles to it. This process is curated by the editors of the publication, who ensure the content is related to its purpose.

So far, we have accumulated a great selection of articles across business analysis, enterprise architecture, and quality management. There are about 40 authors who have contributed at least once. What I like about it is the fact those stories are written by practitioners for the practitioners. It is a collective reflection of the things that matter to people today: their thoughts, successes and failures – all for us to learn from. 

Here is a link to it if you are interested: https://medium.com/analysts-corner

Can you talk about your venture with the Intersection Group?

Intersection Group (https://www.linkedin.com/company/intersection-group/) is a new non-for-profit venture. They focus on creating a better toolset for organisations to better design own future.

Enterprise architecture for years has been my professional hobby. One thing that I found fascinating about it was that while it has so much potential to help businesses do their job better, it often fails to deliver in full. Partially, the reason for that might be the gap between what architects are doing and consider important in their job vs. what the customers of the organisation really need vs. what the rest of the business can comprehend and put to a good use. At times, architecture boards in businesses become isolated (sitting in “ivory towers” that they create for themselves). So I thought to myself – a hint of UX design or strategic design would benefit the architecture practice a lot (you can read about it in my article, published in Analyst’s corner of course 😉 ). This is how I started to explore if there is a book or standard that would cover it, and through this search I was lucky to get connected to Wolfgang Goebl, one of the founders of the group. They focus on combining the benefits of customer-centric design with architectural thinking in an emerging discipline called “business design”. Organisational development is not something that you want to let just organically happen – this is reactive and is prone to issues. Instead businesses need to consciously design own future. 

Any words of wisdom for the Baknowledgeshare community?

Be curious, that’s the core business analyst’s skill 😉