The CBAP and CCBA certification exams are based on all the six knowledge areas from the BABOK ® Guide.
The exams are used to test your personal business analysis experience and the your knowledge on the information in the BABOK ® Guide. The CBAP ® exam is meant for experienced business analysts, while the CCBA ™ exam is for applicants with less experience in the business analysis profession.
You can apply and pay for the exams online using the IIBA ™ website and take the exam online. If the exam is taken online, then the results are immediately produced at the end of the exam.
Let’s talk about the CBAP exam in more detail:
The CBAP ® exam is used to test the knowledge and experience of seasoned business analysts. The exam consists of 120 questions that must be answered within 3.5 hours.
To be approved to take this exam, the applicant must have 7,500 hours of business analysis work experience in the last 10 years, demonstrate experience and a minimum of 900 hours in four of the six knowledge areas, must have taken 35 hours of an IIBA approved business analysis professional development training in the last four years.
The applicant would also need to provide two references from a career manager, internal or external client or CBAP ® recipient.
Now let’s talk about the CCBA exam in more detail:
The CCBA ™ exam is used to test the knowledge and experience of newer, less experienced business analysts.
This exam is meant for individuals who are competent in some business analysis knowledge areas and who can apply business analysis to smaller scope and less complex tasks and projects. The exam contains 130 questions that must be answered within 3 hours.
The requirements for candidates taking the CCBA ™ exam include a minimum of 3,750 hours of BA work, in the last seven years with at least 900 hours in two of the six knowledge areas or 500 hours in four of the six knowledge areas; a minimum of 21 hours of an iiba approved business analysis professional development training in the last four years.
The applicant would also need to provide two references from a career manager, internal or external client or CBAP ® recipient.
The CBAP ® and CCBA ™ Exam Blueprints indicate the relative weight of each knowledge area by providing you with the percentage of questions from that knowledge area.
The percentages are provided for you in the table below. Due to rounding issues, some of the percentages do not add up to exactly 100 percent.
| Knowledge Area | CBAP ® Exam % of Questions | CCBA ™ Exam % of Questions |
| Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring | 14 % | 12 % |
| Elicitation and Collaboration | 12 % | 20 % |
| Requirements Life Cycle Management | 15 % | 18 % |
| Strategic Analysis | 15 % | 12 % |
| Requirements Analysis and Design Definition | 30 % | 32 % |
| Solution Evaluation | 14 % | 6 % |