Hi to everyone, I'm Carolyn.

I have been a Business Analyst for approx 14 years now but apart from some Parity Training, In-house company training and some Open University courses many years ago, I am not qualified other than experience which has been invaluable.  I have recently been considering ISEB qualifications or others and would welcome any advice anyone has for me - do I really need to take a whole course in order to take the exams or is there a way I can at least try some of them without paying for a course?  I am going to phone the institute tomorrow to see if there is some more advice but thought that I would ask on here too.

very best regards,

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn,

You do not need to take a course to take the exams. Finding an exam provider who will let you take the exam without the courses is challenging but not impossible.

Like any exam there are are styles to answering the exam questions and certain jargon that must be used. Sample exam papers can be found on the BCS website but they do not have model answers.

I have written 2 short books that set out to coach you in the syllabus for the exams they cover, present you with exam style revision questions and model answers and at the end of each book there is a full exam style paper with model answer. The exams they cover are ISEB Certificate in Requirements Engineering and ISEB Certificate in Modelling Business Processes - 2 of the core modules you need in order to get the ISEB Diploma in Business Analysis.

Further details of these of these can be found here.

Guy