Last year, after starting a position with a new company, my new boss asked me the inevitable question… Have you ever thought about pursuing your CBAP designation?

Yes of course I had thought of it, many times actually, and then I would look at the application process and think nope, not ready for that yet; however, after 6 years of working as a Business Analyst and taking several professional development courses, it was getting harder and harder to justify that I wasn’t ready and my boss knew that.

After that initial conversation, I was feeling excited about the opportunity to obtain my designation and to have the support of my company behind me so I started my application… 7500 hours is a lot of time to allocate and although I had tracked my project hours over the years (thank goodness!) I still had to align the time to the specific knowledge areas; this was going to take some time.

Over the next few weeks I worked away at completing my application, reaching out to old Project Managers and Team Leads and when I finally had the application completed and ready to submit, I felt a wave of relief, for about 5 seconds, and then the thought crept in… what if they reject my application? Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner, I would be so embarrased if they rejected my application, so I waited and a few months went by and my boss asked me about my application again and I begrudgingly admitted that I had not submitted it yet and explained why. We talked and with a lot of encouragement, reasoning and maybe a little ego stroking, I went back to my desk and finally submitted my application.

Within a few minutes I received my confirmation email from the IIBA stating they would review my application and provide their answer within 21 business days. 21 days, business days no less, feels like an eternity when you are waiting to hear the fate of your career, okay maybe that’s a tad dramatic but that’s how it felt. Luckily it only took 5 days and I had my answer… Approved!!

Next up, preparing to write the CBAP Exam…