Successful projects are highly dependent on well-defined and understood business requirements, product requirements and specifications. Investments in requirements processes have proven to be key contributors to delivering projects on time and on budget with the required product functions and features that meet or exceed those requirements.

This 3-day program focuses on the requirements management process. Using a real-life workshop exercise, you will define the real problem, assess the business impact, identify and manage stakeholders' expectations. We will use elicitation tools and techniques to discover real requirements that contribute deliverable solutions that produce desired outcomes. You will develop deliverable lists and discover overlooked requirements. We will discuss requirements verification, traceability and change management. You will prioritize and select the best requirement solutions and present in a business case format.

Learning objectives

Participants will gain practical skills to:

• Utilize an enterprise requirements management processes and improve project success
• Use a Plan-Build-Test-Deploy requirements management model
• Identify project stakeholders, and discover and define their real problems
• Realize and uncover real requirements using various methods and tools
• Create great questions to ask in surveys, interviews, shadowing users, and JAD
• Discover functional requirements that deliver value to business requirements
• Document requirements clearly using standard formats and use cases
• Analyze, verify, validate requirements
• Refine, manage, control changes to requirements
• Use a hierarchical solution selection process to build a foundation for future requirements
• Conduct financial analysis of requirements solution(s) for benefits realization
• Prioritize, select and present the best requirements solutions to problems/opportunities
• Transfer a practical requirements management methodology back to your workplace

Prerequisite

There is no prerequisite for this stand-alone course.

Materials

The course binder contains presentation content, case studies, exercises, and suggested solutions.

What you will learn:

Introduction to Business Analysis

• IIBA and the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
• Definitions of business analysis and business analyst
• Differences among roles and responsibilities

Introduction to Requirements

• Scope, requirements
• Where do requirements come from?
• Types of requirements, high level vs detailed
• Characteristics of a good requirement

Stakeholder Analysis

• Impact and value of stakeholder analysis
• Techniques to analyze stakeholders
• Affinity diagram

Defining the Business Need

• Business goals and objectives
• Business problem or opportunity statement
• Cause and effect diagram
• SWOT Analysis, Gap Analysis

Elicitation

• Structured and unstructured interviews
• Preparing for an effective interview
• Question types to use and avoid in an interview
• Organizing questions in an interview
• Questionnaire response types
• Developing an effective questionnaire
• Types of observation & preparing for observation
• Data that can be collected during observation

Process Modeling

• Types of organizational processes
• Elements of and four types of process models
• SIPOC
• Functional and cross-functional process flowcharts
• Context diagram to elicit and document scope
• Identifying areas for improvement within a process

Viable Solution

• Defining viable options for solution
• Assessing the proposed solutions
• Identifying requirement risks and risk plans
• Acceptance and evaluation criteria
• Decision matrix

Requirements Management

• Managing scope/requirements change
• Traceability

Who should attend:

The Defining and Managing Business Requirements course is appropriate for individuals who are:

• Project Managers
• Senior Managers, Product Managers
• Developers, Quality Assurance resources
• Subject matter experts, other project resources

Price: 

$900