CBAP Application- Few points to remember

My  CBAP application got approved some time back and I am really  delighted. There are couple of reasons for my excitement. First, I have a total experience of just over 5 years and I was really nervous about the acceptance of my application form even though I had required hours.  Second, now  I can appear for the certification which I wanted to do since long time and was just waiting to get the necessary experience required. The application process is indeed a little lengthy  and requires quite an effort from the candidate. I have some tips and pointers which might be useful in case your are applying or planning to do so in near future:

1. Few really  good tips are mentioned on the B2T Training Website, check 8 Hints for Applying for CBAP. This is the place to  start.
2. Capture high level business goal in the project description. There are restriction on number character for project description, make sure that the project description is written in language which is concise and understandable. 
3. Don't miss on your consulting work. The projects where the outcome was not a software application can also be listed, for example I mentioned the the content management strategy  work that I did for a pharma company. The outcome was a recommendation document but it involved a lot of business analysis activity which maps to the knowledge  areas.
4. Pre-sales do not count as a Business Analysis experience. But if you  have done some kind of solution assessment or enterprise analysis that may  be counted. What may not count is responding to  RFPs and RFIs. 
5. It is  not necessary to  allocate some percentage to  every knowledge area for every project. It is OK to have, for example, 0% allocation for solution assessment and validation for a particular project. It is again dependent on the work that you done. What is important in the end is that you have a minimum of 900  hours in at least four knowledge area at a minimum total of 7500 hours. 
6. Avoid listing online recorded training for PDUs. You  should list only those classes where there was instructor, you had an opportunity to interact with the instructor and it was related to  business analysis work. Read this article by  Laura Brandenburg to  understand the PDUs concept better. 
7. Start  the reference process early, don't wait for the other sections to complete before asking  for reference from your career managers. If the feedback is received late your application submission may be delayed.

It takes time to complete the form, a lot of information has to  be entered and  tracking  the overall BA hours, total hours per knowledge area while your are entering information is not possible. IIBA should revise the form to  make it more user friendly. I have created an spreadsheet to  manage the application process, this is based on a presentation by Angelique Robateau & Michelle Gehrig. You can download the sheet here or by clicking on the image below:

Click on the image to download the  sheet.