As a BA professional, you are usually not in a formal leadership role. Yet, you have the knowledge, skills and perhaps even position to lead stakeholders to better choices and more meaningful results. However, are you leading consciously, to the best of your abilities, and with lasting impact?

Let's

• raise the bar by rethinking what defines success, focusing on outcomes over outputs;
• own the stage to reconnect stakeholders through facilitation and guidance;
• make a dent by revolutionising the design of truly future-proof solutions.

(Oh, we'll talk about pizza too…)

Unlocking Digital Transformation in the Public Sector
Join us for an insightful session on the Business Analyst’s role in digitalizing local government, with a special focus on implementing Document Management Systems (DMS). Drawing from hands-on experience across multiple public sector projects, this presentation sheds light on the critical responsibilities Business Analysts and Consultants hold in driving digital change.
From presales and system setup to user training and post-go-live support, we’ll walk through the full DMS implementation lifecycle. You’ll hear real-world stories about overcoming challenges like bureaucracy, compliance, and stakeholder alignment—plus discover the immense value DMS brings in terms of efficiency, data security, and regulatory adherence.
Ideal for Business Analysts, Project Managers, and Public Sector Professionals, this session will leave you with practical insights, tools, and inspiration to lead successful digitalization initiatives in government. Don’t miss this opportunity to bridge strategy with technology and make a lasting impact in public service!

Business Analysis is all about listening - deeply and intentionally - and then transforming what we hear into actionable insights for software development. We engage with stakeholders, ask the right questions, capture their goals, pain points, and aspirations. From these conversations, we craft requirements, user stories, and system capabilities. In many ways, we act as interpreters of intent, bridging the gap between business vision and technological execution. And we’re good at it.

However, in today’s data-rich world, we must ask ourselves: are we leveraging data as effectively as we could? While we excel at drawing insights from dialogue, workshops, and user journeys, we sometimes risk basing solutions on anecdotes rather than evidence. We may prioritize the needs of the most vocal stakeholder instead of the most impactful customer segment. We might optimize a process that feels inefficient, without validating whether it’s truly the source of the bottleneck.

This is where data-driven business analysis steps in. Data goes beyond feelings. It overrides even a major stakeholder with a loud voice. If correct, data holds mathematical truths: a two-minute delay in a process is quantifiably more significant than a one-minute one, regardless of perception.

Last but not least, we live in a world of data. Data is there for us to use. Data-driven business analysis doesn’t replace stakeholder engagement - it enhances it. It helps us prioritize changes based on impact, not instinct; it helps us spot hidden patterns no one’s talking about or it helps us justify recommendations with credibility.

I believe the future of Business Analysis lies in this balance - conversation and calculation, empathy and evidence, strategy and statistics. Join me to explore this enhanced approach to business analysis.

Stakeholder Archetypes
There is a lot of literature about stakeholder management. How important stakeholders are in a business analyst's life is best proven by the fact that the word is mentioned 1,211 times in our dear BABOK!

In this presentation, I would like to cover what the literature says about types and stakeholder personas, but also share hands-on experiences from my 15 years of interaction with stakeholders, including over a hundred stakeholders in various corporations and connected companies like vendors, sponsors, etc.

The main goal of this presentation is to emphasize that stakeholders are just human. This means they have their own personalities, interior motives, and subconscious influences marked by their professional and personal experiences. Using methods like MBTI or SDI profiles will help define archetypes of stakeholders with all their strengths and weaknesses.

In the fast-paced world of Business Analysis, we often focus on data, processes, and tools—but what about the human side? This session will show you how emotional intelligence and empathy are game-changers in building stronger relationships with stakeholders and ensuring project success. It’s not just about understanding the numbers; it’s about understanding people.

Learn practical tips and real-life examples on how to read the room, manage conflicts, and create a more collaborative environment. Discover how developing your emotional intelligence can help you lead with empathy, improve communication, and tackle tough situations with confidence. The best solutions aren’t just technically sound—they’re human-centered.

In a world where technology is constantly changing, your ability to connect with people will set you apart. Come ready to explore how small shifts in mindset and approach can lead to big results. It’s time to bring the human touch back into Business Analysis! 

Discover how Business Analysts (BAs) and Quality Assurance (QAs) professionals work as a dynamic duo to ensure stability and agility in banking. Through real-world examples, engaging discussions, and a hands-on simulation, you’ll explore their roles, collaboration points, and impact on delivering top-notch solutions.

What you’ll gain:

• Understand BA & QA core responsibilities in the banking lifecycle
• Identify key collaboration points for seamless teamwork
• Learn how requirements quality shapes the final product
• Define KPIs to track BA & QA performance
• Spot common errors and who’s responsible
• Walk away with 3 actionable ideas to boost your projects

Banking landscape is rapidly changing. Banks are under constant pressure to innovate, adapt to regulatory changes, and meet rising customer expectations. Business Analysts play a crucial role in this transformation—not just as requirement gatherers, but as strategic partners driving innovation.

This session will explore how Business Analysts in Banking bridge the gap between business and technology, enable customer-centric solutions, and influence decision-making at a strategic level.

Let’s talk about:

• The unique challenges and opportunities of business analysis in banking
• How the BAs are driving innovation while ensuring compliance
• Leveraging AI to generate smarter business insights, automate repetitive tasks and improve decision-making

This session showcases how AI is redefining the roles of Business Analysts and Project Managers through a hands-on case study from a telecom Service Order Management (SOM) project. Using a custom AI model, the team uploaded TM Forum (TMF) documentation to extract relevant industry standards and best practices, which served as the foundation for generating high-quality Epics and User Stories aligned with TMF specifications.

The AI-assisted workflow continued through the agile lifecycle—automatically producing Acceptance Criteria to support QA teams and populating JIRA with structured, traceable tasks. Additionally, Motiff was used to generate mockup screens based on user stories, providing developers with a visual starting point and reducing turnaround time in UI design. In a later phase, the same JIRA content was repurposed to generate user-facing help documentation, ensuring consistency between product development and end-user support with minimal duplication of effort.

This presentation offers actionable insights on how AI can support research, accelerate analysis, and enhance collaboration across teams. It demonstrates how Business Analysts can evolve into AI-augmented practitioners—leveraging machine learning to improve precision, speed, and traceability from project initiation through delivery.

Join us for an engaging session where we share practical experiences and concrete examples from our work on digital transformation in banking product development across diverse markets. This presentation will delve into the organizational setup and challenges faced during the SME Lending product development, providing valuable insights into how to navigate the complexities of digital transformation. We will explore the strategies and methodologies employed to enhance customer engagement, streamline operations, and drive business growth across different geographical regions.
Throughout the session, we will highlight the importance of agile practices and stakeholder engagement in achieving successful digital transformation. By examining real-world scenarios from various markets, we will demonstrate how to overcome common obstacles and implement effective solutions while considering different mindsets and cultural nuances. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the key factors that contribute to the success of digital transformation initiatives in a global context.
Our talk will be interactive, with opportunities for the audience to ask questions and engage in discussions. We aim to provide actionable insights that can be applied to your own banking product development efforts, helping you to navigate the complexities of digital transformation and drive innovation within your organization, regardless of market or cultural differences.

Networking event for conference attendees.

Address: Calea Rahovei, nr 157A (15 min walking distance from the venue)

https://hanuberarilor.ro/uranus/

In an age of increasing complexity where time is precious, building meaningful connections with stakeholders is becoming more challenging. Business Analysts must find new innovative ways to engage their audience. In recent years, the concepts of ‘Visual Thinking’ and ‘Sketchnoting’ have grown in popularity with many companies now starting to recognise the power of visualisation as a means of exploring complex problems, making information easier to retain and recall, generating ideas, creating engagement, and so much more…

This hands-on workshop aims to provide BA's with a practical introduction to Visual Thinking and Sketchnoting. It will explain what visual thinking is and why it is such a powerful tool for BA's to capture the attention of their teams and stakeholders. Delegates will get a firm grounding in the building blocks of visual thinking with practical exercises that will help to build confidence and overcome ICD (“I can’t draw”) syndrome! 

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand what visual thinking is and how it can help BA's in their work
• Learn how to create a Business Analysis visual dictionary (no art training necessary!)
• Be able to apply principles of design, structure & layout
• Gain useful tips and tricks to help get started with ‘sketchnoting’ (visual note-taking that helps improve understanding and retention)
• Understand the tools of the trade and be given useful references to allow delegates to further explore this exciting field!

Product vision is a must-have. But it's rarely written—and when it is, it’s often just a broad statement, too vague to guide and too distant to be useful.

In this workshop, you'll explore how a product vision can become a shared compass, something that’s clearly understood by everyone: from users to business stakeholders to tech teams. A guiding star that keeps you aligned when you start building, and when you need to check if you’re still heading in the right direction.

A strong product vision goes beyond features or roadmaps. It reflects a purpose and answers the bigger question: What kind of future are we creating for our users?

It’s a hands-on session where you won’t just hear about product vision—you’ll write one. Through practical exercises and teamwork, you'll walk away with a new lens for crafting product visions that inspire and align.

Understanding what customers and stakeholders truly need can be challenging, as traditional methods like interviews and surveys often fail to uncover deeper insights. This workshop explores how structured, interactive techniques can help teams extract valuable information in an engaging and collaborative way. Through real-world examples and hands-on exercises, participants will discover how these techniques enhance strategic planning, product development, and decision-making.

Facilitation is a core part of the Business Analyst’s role, but it’s rarely treated as a strategic skill. This workshop invites BAs to explore a critical yet often overlooked element of successful facilitation: psychological safety.

Participants will discover how to design and lead meetings where people feel safe enough to speak, and bold enough to challenge assumptions. Through engaging exercises and practical tools, they will learn to navigate difficult conversations, unlock honest input, and build alignment across diverse stakeholders.

Join us to explore the space where trust meets performance, and leave equipped with the courage and methods to lead the conversations that move transformation projects forward. 

Influence starts with presence — how you show up, engage others , and position yourself in every conversation.

As a Business Analyst, your role is central to shaping outcomes, yet it often requires deliberate effort to claim your space and be heard.

This workshop will help you build your own and unique presence, clearly define and clarify your role in projects, and create real, measurable impact from day one.

Learn how to step in confidently, communicate with clarity, and become the trusted voice that drives decisions and alignment across teams

When it comes to business analysis, all too often BAs get stuck right in to doing their work, eliciting requirements, creating models, consulting stakeholders, running workshops, and writing documentation without much planning. The BA work required may be included as a task (or two) in the project plan by the project manager, if at all.

This lack of planning can be the cause of missing or inaccurate requirements and solution failure, not to mention lots of re-work, stress and unmet stakeholder expectations – regardless of being an agile project or not. Due to change and uncertainty, detailed plans will inevitably become outdated, and a lot of waste can occur trying to keep them accurate. However, not enough planning is equally problematic.

This session will explore business analysis planning along with the ‘BA Planning Canvas’, a new tool to help us plan our work efficiently. By planning our BA activities more effectively, we will help ensure our projects deliver business value though better business analysis.

This session introduces a hands-on approach to building and organising a backlog that keeps the big picture in mind, tracks progress with ease, and facilitates upcoming releases and sprints to deliver a potentially shippable product the business can "touch and feel".

Attendees will practice how to start with end-to-end processes—BPMN? A good idea, especially when systems interact. They will then learn how to structure epics and tasks, refine backlog items using the SPIDR technique for user story splitting, and present everything in a User Story Map to maintain visibility and alignment.

Participants will engage in active collaboration, working with real-world scenarios and plenty of sticky notes.

Interested in some key aspects of the role of a dashboard designer?
During this workshop, we will touch topics like BI tools, specific graphs, different types of data sources, and KPIs.

You will have the chance to witness and practice:

• Import of an Excel-based dataset.
• Prepare the data to be analyzed by blending different tables.
• Slice and dice different business measures using several Strategy₿ 
  visualizations.
• Depict your business story and share it with your stakeholders.

!Prerequisite – Creating a Strategy₿ community user based on your organization email address. There will be hands-on activities, so please bring your laptop.

Can a prompt shape a product?

In this hands-on session, we’ll explore how AI can validate and improve requirements, uncover edge cases, and enhance your stories before they reach devs. We’ll also tackle the real craft: how to write better prompts and how thinking like a BA helps you do that. 

Visual Thinking is a key skill for people working with lots of information.
Visual Maps specifically are tools for aligning people on the same page, facilitating shared understanding and increasing the chances for successful sessions with stakeholders.

In this workshop, you will be practising creating such Visual Maps to help you when facilitating stakeholder meetings in your day-to-day work.

You will be guided by one of the leading practitioners in Romania when it comes to applied visual thinking, and you will have the opportunity to be inspired by the practices of other colleagues from the IIBA community that will go through the workshop with you. 

Step into a world of intrigue and innovation with "Murder, Mayhem, and Mastering Agile: A Team Experience." This high-energy, game-based adventure combines storytelling, gamification, and hands-on learning to transform how you approach Agile practices, team dynamics, and problem-solving.

Set against the backdrop of a failing Agile project and the untimely demise of Mona Leeza, our much-loved Product Owner, this immersive experience challenges you to uncover clues, analyse Agile artefacts, and navigate complex scenarios.

Working in teams, you’ll tackle critical challenges that mirror real-world project environments—enhancing collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and critical thinking along the way.

Whether you're looking to sharpen your Agile skills, improve stakeholder management, or simply enjoy a memorable and innovative learning experience, this session offers practical takeaways in a fun, collaborative format. Walk away with fresh insights, new connections, and skills you can apply immediately in your professional life.

Key Takeaways:

• Transform Team Dynamics: Understand how to build trust, foster collaboration, and improve communication within teams through hands-on exercises that strengthen agile teamwork.
• Sharpen Analytical and Critical Thinking: Enhance your ability to dissect complex problems, analyse scenarios in real-time, and develop creative solutions—all directly applicable to your role as a business analyst.
• Build Lasting Friendships and Networks: Connect with peers in an immersive, collaborative environment, fostering relationships and professional networks that will continue to benefit you long after the conference.

 As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes central to digital transformation, Business Analysts face a double challenge: simplifying overwhelming complexity while ensuring ethical, responsible use of AI-based tools. This hands-on workshop aims at empowering senior BAs to become strategic enablers of clarity and trust - designing solutions that reduce cognitive overload and embed governance at the earliest stage.
Participants will discover how to review digital experiences in order to make them smoother and less tiring for users, frame AI use cases with an ethical lens, and deploy AI copilots or summarizers in a way that enhances stakeholder experience. Through real-world examples and collaborative exercises, participants will leave the session with ready-to-use tools, templates, and mental models to elevate their BA practice in today’s AI-driven landscape.