Course Description:

This two day applied course provides the steps and practices to effectively gather business and system requirements. Participants learn a variety of practical communication, analysis and modeling techniques -- the best practices used in the Requirements Elicitation Process. And even more importantly, participants are taught - and given the opportunity to practice how to apply them on systems development projects.

The course teaches a very practical systematic approach to requirements analysis and definition. This is a proven, effective, real world approach that will enable a defined and consistent method that is easily learned and easily applied. Participants will learn specific modern methods, strategies and techniques that can be easily integrated into a company's existing methodologies and practices.  

  Click here for information on claiming IIBA professional development credits

Course Content:

• The Software Development Life Cycle and The Requirements Discovery Process
• Requirements Best Practices; Principles & Standards

• Requirements Planning Activities
• How to Discover & Describe Business and Project Objectives
• How to Discover & Describe Project Scope

• Methods to Elicit Requirements
• How to Discover & Describe Business Activities
• How to Discover & Describe Information Requirements

• Documenting the Requirements
• How to Discover & Describe Functional Requirements
• Documenting the Non-Functional Requirements

• Refining the Requirements

• Prioritizing the Requirements

Learning Objectives:

• How to use the right elicitation techniques, models, steps and questions appropriate for the various stakeholder groups (users, senior management, non-technical, business subject-matter-experts, detail oriented, high-level, etc.)
• Understand the critical success factors for a requirements meeting including setting SMART objectives and expectations, using a systematic process and questioning techniques, using visual modeling, keeping the meeting focused, using business language
• Identify clients’ business needs easily, without needing to be a subject matter expert  
• How to work directly and interactively with business clients in defining project requirements 
• Conduct fast and efficient analysis – maximizing the time and resources of the company
• How to apply industry best practices for discovering, describing and documenting requirements for various projects (new development, maintenance and package) and in various environments (iterative, incremental and waterfall)
• Identify true user requirements versus "nice-to-have"
• How to organize and model the information requirements into business objects and data elements
• Learn the steps, questions and techniques for business process and data modeling – using such tools as context diagramming, use-case modeling, data flow diagramming, functional narratives, process modeling, data descriptions, entity relationship diagrams) 
• How to analyze client business requirements and produce requirement specifications
• Complete a business requirement specification that’s ready for design, development or sourcing software

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