Credits: 21 PDUs / 3 Days

Course Level:
Basic/Intermediate

Prerequisites:
No prerequisites – This course suitable for both novices and experienced people who need to elicit and write effective requirements. It is recommended that participants complete the BA01 – Business Analysis Essentials course prior to enrolling or have equivalent experience.

Course Abstract:
Why do more than 50% of the IT implementation projects fail to achieve the original objectives for which the project had started? Why are there so many projects “re-starts”?  There is several key challenges organizations face in translating user needs into systems specifications.  Any of these challenges can ultimately lead to project failure. How do you address this? The options and solutions available can be overwhelming.

Successful projects are built on the foundation of well-written requirements. This course provides the skills to write well-formed, testable, verifiable user requirements so that you can translate client needs into clear and measurable metrics. These metrics provides a means to track success throughout your development cycle to ensure that business and user requirements are implemented in your final product.

Course Objectives:
You will learn to identify your audience, determine their requirements, and provide them with adequate and appropriate information.

You’ll learn the technical writing techniques that apply directly to writing requirements documents and you’ll learn to apply the five Cs of writing-correct, clear, concise, comprehensive, and cohesive-to writing requirements. You will use lists, tables, and graphs to structure requirements information for clarity. And you will use white space, information chunking, and headings to improve readability.

Included:

• Full Student Guide
• Requirements templates

Intended Audience:
This course is intended for Business analysts, requirements analysts, technical writers, systems analysts, developers, software engineers, IT project managers, project managers, project analysts, project leaders, senior project managers, team leaders, program managers, testers, and QA specialists.

Learning Objectives:

• Write well-formed and validated user requirements
• Organize and sequence requirements into a user requirements document
• Prepare a plan for completing a user requirements project
• Conduct efficient user requirements elicitation meetings
• Analyze requirements using a process mapping methodology
• Manage changes to the user requirements

Course Outline:

Section 1: Introduction

• Requirements  and types of requirements
• Requirements in the product life cycle
• Project roles and requirements
• The role of the Business Analyst (BA)

Section 2: Writing Effective requirements

• Attributes of effective requirements
• Audiences of the requirements and the audiences’ needs
• Level of detail
• Business vs. technical point of view
• Need for formality

Section 3: Knowing your audience and their needs

• Specific needs of business stakeholders and management
• Specific needs of Subject Matter Experts (SME)
• Specific needs of the technical team (developers, testers, etc.)
• Establishing a roles and responsibilities matrix

Section 4: Preparing to Gather Effective Requirements

• Functional requirements
• Quality of Service (QoS) requirements
• Assumptions and constraints
• General techniques used

Section 5: Conducting Requirements Elicitation Activities

• Tracing requirements
• Metrics used
• Capturing requirements attributes
• General techniques used

Section 6: Confirming Elicitation Results

•  Managing scope and stakeholder expectations
• Managing requirements that conflict
• How to structure requirements for review
• General techniques used

Section 7: Capturing and Communicating Requirements

• The 7 Cs
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Tables and graphs
• Models and other graphics
• Using white space and fonts
• Chunking requirements information and the use of headings

Section 8: Assessing Requirements have been met

• Validation vs. verification
• Goals and participants in verification activities
• Goals and participants in validation activities
• Holding formal review sessions

Section 9: Additional Information

• Useful books and links on writing effective requirements

Download PDF:
BA04-Eliciting and Writing Effective Requirements – 3 days