Models will not ordinarily be named in Strategic Business Leader, but that is not the only difference. SBL is more practical rather than a demonstration of knowledge of the syllabus.  

Although the models/frameworks are not specifically given in the requirements, they should be used to help structure the answer and also help to observe what is missing in the answer. Students will not get extra technical and professional marks for naming the model nor lose technical marks for discussing the model. They may lose professional marks if they unnecessarily discuss the model/framework rather than using it appropriately to complete the task required. A key difference between P1/P3 and SBL is the inclusion of 20% Professional Skills marks in addition to the 80% technical marks.

Preferably before the options, although ACCA is flexible on this and it depends on individual preference.

The technical content of Strategic Business Leader develops all the technical content of applied knowledge and skills while options exams develop specific knowledge and skills. Therefore it makes technical sense to do SBL immediately after doing the Applied Skills examinations before choosing to develop your own specific skills further in the options.

We advise against using P1/P3 past exam questions.

Although most of them will provide a good technical content for Strategic Business Leader, the examining team and approved content providers have produced a lot of materials tailored specifically for SBL, some of which have been taken from past P1 and P3 questions. We advise that these should be used instead.

There are some differences, but also some similarities. The differences are in the scope of the information provided and the scope of the tasks.

This is to demonstrate the scope of extremes students may see in real exams. Each exam will be different, which will include:

• the roles

• number and type of exhibits

• number and size of tasks

• format of responses, etc.

For example, specimen exam one had a team of consultants carrying out several tasks and specimen two a number of roles. The similarities are in the overall experience in terms of style and the demands of the exam.

Each exam will have the same layout.  It will start with the introduction (background), then the list of exhibits, requirements and finally detailed information of each exhibit.

Each exam will also test each of the five professional skills, although total marks for each will not be equally weighted. For example in one exam total evaluation skills would be say 6 marks, while in another the total for evaluation would only be 4 marks.

Each task requires to be presented in a specified format which students have to use in their responses. Common formats include letters, emails, memos, reports, presentations slides and visual aids such as grids (BCG, Mendelow’s matrix) and heat maps (for risk assessment).

The examining team have written an article, ‘Strategic Business Leader presentation format’ that gives guidance on presentation of the common formats.

It all depends on individual circumstances, but it is strongly advisable to answer in order. As the case study is usually an evolving story with events happening in a logical order this would be advantageous, particularly where the role changes or there is a time change or where tasks build on what has happened previously.

If a part of a task cannot be answered, general exam rules will apply - move on and come back at the end so time is not wasted in trying something that is proving hard to do.

ACCA recognises that students are often not actually at the level of the role they are asked to take and hence the requirements have been tailored to reflect this and provide a little more direction. Also this is a reflection of the fact that there is no pre-seen information and often in the real world managers do (or should) give some guidance or context to employees when instructing them to carry out tasks.

Extra time is allowed in the Strategic Business Leader exam for deeper reading and planning, to develop professional skills in the answer.

Although the volume of information in the exhibits may appear more and longer to read, the overall time to read and understand the information provided in SBL is not expected to be any more than P1 and P3. This is because SBL is only one business case introducing new pieces of information for each task, while in P1 and P3 there were four completely different business cases or scenarios to consider. Candidates had to read and understand all four to prepare for the three questions they eventually would choose to answer.

Only one professional skill will be required to be demonstrated per requirement, but not every requirement will have a professional skill assigned to it. There may be cases where a requirement or part requirement does not require the demonstration of a specific professional skill.

Professional skills will not always match the verbs used for technical skills being tested.  For example a technical requirement may be to ‘evaluate’ but may additionally require demonstration of scepticism or analysis as a professional skill to carry out the evaluation professionally.

So the professional skill tested will be a specific skill that can be displayed alongside the technical skills being tested. Most importantly the professional skill assigned to the requirement should guide the technical answer. For example, presenting an answer that is more sceptical if scepticism is professional skill required while doing the evaluation.

In other words, if the technical requirement is to evaluate a project proposal and scepticism is the professional skill being examined, this should guide the student to questioning deeply some of the assumptions within the proposals or highlighting any key omissions from the proposal.     

Is there a maximum limit of marks assigned for each professional skill tested in a requirement?