CURRICULUM USE GUIDE

Curriculum Use Guide

How the curriculum is structured, the recommended learning sequence, the module roadmap, and how progress is evaluated.

Curriculum Overview

Purpose of the Curriculum

What This Curriculum Develops

1.This curriculum develops Operational Functional Analysts (OFAs) at Level 1, Foundational Stewardship.
2.It exists to build the habits, vocabulary, and judgment an OFA needs before taking on the broader independence described in the companion OFA 2 curriculum, Developing Stewardship, and, further out, the accountability described in the Level 3-5 curriculum.
3.Where those later curricula develop OFAs who own workstreams, facilitate discussions, and eventually shape direction, this curriculum develops OFAs who can reliably contribute to work someone else is accountable for - which is the correct, deliberate starting point for the entire OFA career path.

Stewardship as the Organizing Concept

1.The curriculum treats stewardship the way every curriculum in this career path does: not as a job title, but as a standing of trust.
2.A new OFA is given a small stewardship - a set of notes, a requirement, a test case - and is evaluated on whether that stewardship was cared for responsibly.
3.OFA 1 is the first rung of that ladder, and this document is written to be a complete, standalone treatment of it: thorough enough that no other resource should be required to understand what OFA 1 is, what it asks of a learner, and how to know when it has been mastered.

II.

Intended Audience

Primary Audience

1.New OFAs who have recently entered the role at Level 1
2.These individuals already meet the position's formal qualifications — typically a bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience, plus roughly two years of professional, related experience — but have little or no prior exposure to OFA-specific terminology, artifacts, or ways of working.
3.Aspiring OFAs
4.Individuals with roughly two years of related professional experience in an adjacent role (business analysis, IT support or coordination, project coordination, or other junior analyst work) who are preparing to move into an OFA 1 position and want to understand what will be expected of them.

Assumed Background

1.It assumes no prior familiarity with the Church's technical delivery organization, its terminology, or its systems.
2.It does assume the professional and analytical maturity that roughly two years of related work experience typically brings.
3.A learner who completes this curriculum should be able to function as a capable OFA 1 without needing to consult resources beyond this document and a mentor.

III.

Prerequisites and Entry Expectations

Formal Qualifications

1.OFA 1 is entry-level within the OFA career ladder - it is not entry-level for a career overall, and this curriculum is written on that correct premise.
2.Consistent with the Church's official workforce role description for this position (Functional Analyst 1 - Hybrid, Job Code FNA1; reproduced in Appendix N), the position calls for a bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience, two years of professional, related experience, and working knowledge and application of two to four of the six competency areas introduced in Module 1.
3.Practical, relevant experience and demonstrated skill in emerging technologies may be given strong consideration in place of formal education, and skills testing or project experience may be used to evaluate a candidate.
4.Under supervision, the work assigned may be diverse and can call on genuinely complex functional-analyst competencies - supervision describes how independently the work is done, not how simple it is allowed to be.

Expected Entry Point

1.A learner entering this curriculum is therefore expected to already bring roughly two years of related professional and analytical experience — business analysis, IT support or coordination, project coordination, or similar junior analyst work is a common and appropriate background — but is not expected to already know OFA-specific terminology, tools, or artifacts, which is what this curriculum exists to teach.
2.Completion of this curriculum, together with a supervisor's confirmation of the readiness signals described in Modules 9 and 11, is what qualifies a learner to begin the separate OFA 2 - Developing Stewardship curriculum.

Curriculum Usage

Recommended Learning Sequence

Sequencing Principles

1.Modules are numbered in the order they should generally be completed.
2.Modules 1 and 2 orient the learner to the role and give an overview of the six core OFA 1 behaviors; they should not be skipped or reordered.
3.Modules 3 through 9 each develop one of those six behaviors in full depth and may be paced against the learner's actual day-to-day assignments, provided the sequence within each module is preserved.
4.Module 10 provides business-case exercises that apply Modules 3 through 9 to realistic project scenarios and should be used throughout the curriculum, not saved only for the end.
5.Module 11 closes the curriculum with a short, honest look at what comes next.

Module Roadmap

Module	Title	Core Focus
1	The OFA Role and the Stewardship Model	Orientation to the role and the stewardship model
2	OFA 1 Role Definition and the Six Core Behaviors	Overview and map of the six behaviors
3	Learning OFA Terminology and Team Processes	Behavior 1, in depth
4	Contributing to Requirements Documentation	Behavior 2, in depth
5	Discovery and Communication Basics	Supporting skill beneath Behaviors 2 and 3
6	Maintaining Notes, Action Items, and Artifacts	Behavior 3, in depth
7	Supporting Testing and Validation	Behavior 4, in depth
8	Supporting the Launch of Fundamental Solutions	Behavior 5, in depth
9	Working Under Direct Guidance	Behavior 6, in depth
10	Applied Business Case Exercises for OFA 1	Applied practice across all behaviors
11	Readiness for Growth	Closing bridge to the OFA 2 curriculum

II.

Methods of Use

Consistent Module Pattern

1.A Module Foundation that states the purpose and outcomes,
2.Body content that teaches the concept
3.An Industry Standards and Frameworks section connecting the behavior to recognized professional practice
4.Guidance on Building This Skill Set and the Tools of the Trade used to practice it
5.An AI-Assisted Work section, one or more Applied Examples that show the concept in a realistic OFA situation
6.An Applied Practice and Evaluation activity that lets the learner demonstrate the behavior
7.A set of Business Case Applications
8.Completion Indicators that a mentor or supervisor can use to confirm readiness

Learners should not move to the next module until the Completion Indicators of the current module are met.

III.

Pacing and Delivery

This curriculum is designed to be completed over eight to fourteen weeks, delivered alongside normal work assignments rather than as a stand-alone training block.

Appendix K provides a detailed week-by-week onboarding plan, spanning roughly 90 to 100 days, that ties specific weeks to specific modules and can be used directly as a training program scaffold.

Modules 1 and 2 typically take less than two weeks combined.

Modules 3 through 9 are best delivered in short increments tied to real assignments as they arise, rather than as back-to-back classroom sessions.

Evaluation and Stewardship

Application and Evidence Expectations

Because OFA 1 is an early-career level, evidence of learning is expected to come from real, if small, assignments rather than simulated exercises alone.

A new OFA should be given an actual set of meeting notes to maintain, an actual requirement to document, or an actual test case to support, and should be evaluated against the Strong and Weak Performance Indicators provided in each module's Applied Practice and Evaluation section and Business Case Applications.

II.

Curriculum Stewardship

This curriculum is a companion to the OFA 2 - Developing Stewardship curriculum and to the Operational Functional Analyst Stewardship and Capability Development Curriculum for Levels 3-5.

It is maintained under the same stewardship principle: it should be revised as the OFA role, tools, and organizational context evolve, and any OFA who identifies a gap between this material and real practice should raise it with the curriculum owner rather than silently working around it.

Appendix A