I got a few questions lately about the status of the PMI Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide which I helped write last year. The primary question was whether the PMI-PBA exam was now based entirely on the Practice Guide.
The practice guide was released
electronically in December 2014 and in print in January 2015. It was available
for free download from PMI through June of this year. As far as I know, the
guide is still just one of 11 books on which the PMI-PBA exam is based. Although,
each of the five writers of the guide, including myself, submitted 50 to 100
questions to be included in the question bank for the exam. So there may be
some bias in the questions toward information in the guide. Additionally as we
wrote the guide we were aware of the books in the last (for example several of
the sections I wrote were based on my book, which is a natural thing to do of
course).
I advise anyone taking the exam to read
the guide because for the most part it is a very good summation of all of the
books. However I don't know whether just reading the guide will be enough for
someone without a lot of experience as a business analyst. I have not taken the
exam, even though I have the certification. But remember that the exam was
given for six months during the pilot before the guide was released so the first set of questions were based solely on the BA reading list.
In general, after talking to many business analysts who have taken, and passed, the exam, a solid understanding of the general aspects of business analysis will likely suffice although all the books on the list are certainly worth reading even if they weren't part of the PBA exam.
