Gathering, documenting & validating requirements

Duration : 3 days
Course Reference : HJB-BA102
Price : € 795,– excl. VAT per participant

Course Description : According to the Stanley Research Group appr. 38% of all failed and challenged projects, improper business analysis activities performed in the early stages of the project are identified as the reason for failed or challenged projects. Requirements elicitation, management and validation,the essence of business analysis, is crucial to successful project delivery and organizational change. This increasingly vital function requires you to elicit justifiable, verifiable and traceable requirements and manage them through the entire requirements process.

Course Objectives : This workshop will provide the participants with:

    • Types of requirements including business, stakeholder, functional, non-functional, and transition requirements
    • Elicitation techniques including their advantages and disadvantages for the various requirements stakeholders
    • Analysis and modelling of requirements
    • Various types of requirement documents
    • Best practices for requirements writing
    • How to avoid requirements writing pitfalls
    • Steps for requirements verification, validation, and sign-off
    • Requirements management processes including data management, tracing, and change management
    • Validation techniques

Course Setup : A balanced mix of lecture, group discussions, and individual and team exercises are used to develop the skills necessary to elicitate, document and validate requirements.

Target Audience : Systems analysts, business analysts, requirements analysts, developers, software engineers, IT project managers, project managers, project analysts,
project leaders, senior project managers, team leaders, program managers, testers, and QA specialists.

Professional Development Units : 21 PDU’s, 2.1 CEU’s. 21 IIBA CDU’s

BABOK Knowledge areas : This workshop will address the following knowledge areas:

    • Business analysis planning & monitoring
    • Elicitation
    • Requirements management & communication
    • Enterprise analysis
    • Requirements analysis
    • Solution analysis & validation

Course Outline : The following topics will be addressed in this workshop :

    • Session 1. Roles and Definitions
      • Critical role of the business analyst
      • Creating and adopting a formal documentation strategy
      • Key requirements documents
      • Roles and mutual expectations among team members
    • Session 2. Types of Requirements
      • Attributed and other types of effective requirements
      • What is an effective requirement?
    • Session 3. Vision & Scope
      • Defining problem, vision and scope
      • Importance of a solution’s scope statement
      • Documenting project vision and scope
      • Including quality measures
      • Managing change
    • Session 4. Modelling Techniques
      • Value of Modeling Techniques in Analysis
      • Modeling Techniques
        • Organizational model
        • Location model
        • Process/flow models
        • Use case model
        • Data model
        • State model
        • Business Interaction model
    • Session 5. Business Analysis Planning & Monitoring
      • The value of planning
      • Elements of a requirements work plan
      • Planning the analysis activities
        • Identifying business analysis tasks
        • Stakeholder identification and prioritisation
        • User identification and profiling
    • Session 6. Requirements Elicitation
      • Investigative approach
      • Iterative approach
      • Elicitation Techniques
    Session 7. Documenting Requirements
    • The purpose of documenting requirements
    • Elements of a business requirements document
    • Technical writing guidelines
    • Requirements analysis
    • The role of modelling in requirements documentation
    • Use case and activity diagrams
    • Presenting requirements
  • Session 8. Validating Requirements
    • Validation techniques
    • Decision making and approvals
    • Managing change and risk post-validation
    • User and acceptance testing

Project Management, Business Analysis & Business Improvement Consultancy