BA04 – Eliciting and Writing Effective Requirements

With elicitation serving as a major component of the requirements process, it is imperative that business analysts maintain high competency levels in elicitation practices and technique use to help organizations overcome the requirements related challenges faced on projects. Regardless whether you are a practitioner just starting off your career in business analysis or whether you have been performing the role for some years, this course will provide insight into the latest thoughts on elicitation and writing effective requirements and present a number of current techniques that are being applied on projects across industries today.

This course may earn a Credly Badge.

ENROLL NOW
Price: $2195.00
Duration: 3 Days
Delivery Methods: Virtual
DIR Discount: 55.0%







    For questions call: (469) 721-6100
    Find More Training

    Why choose TOPTALENT?

    • Get assistance every step of the way from our Texas-based team, ensuring your training experience is hassle-free and aligned with your goals.
    • Access an expansive range of over 3,000 training courses with a strong focus on Information Technology, Business Applications, and Leadership Development.
    • Have confidence in an exceptional 95% approval rating from our students, reflecting outstanding satisfaction with our course content, program support, and overall customer service.
    • Benefit from being taught by Professionally Certified Instructors with expertise in their fields and a strong commitment to making sure you learn and succeed.

    Course Outline

    1 – Review of Foundational Concepts
    • Definition of a business analysis
    • Definition of business analyst
    • BA role vs. PM role
    • Business analysis competencies
    • Benefits of business analysis
    • Purpose for having a BA standard
    • IIBA’s BABOK® Guide and PMI’s Practice Guide in Business Analysis
    • Business analysis core concepts
    • Discussion: Project challenges
    2 – Understanding Requirements
    • Common problems with requirements
    • Understand the problem first
    • Define the business need
    • Situation statements and moving to requirements
    • Understanding requirement types
    • Business requirements
    • Stakeholder/User Requirements
    • Solution Requirements
    • Functional Requirements
    • Non-Functional Requirements
    • Assumptions and Constraints
    • Discussions: Requirement problems, business needs, and identifying non-functional requirements
    3 – Discovering Stakeholders
    • Definition of a stakeholder
    • Stakeholder types
    • Identifying stakeholders
    • Performing stakeholder analysis
    • Stakeholders and requirements
    • Tips for identifying stakeholders
    • Grouping stakeholders
    • Creating a RACI model
    • Tips for analyzing stakeholders
    • Documenting results of stakeholder analysis
    • Workshop: Discovering stakeholders
    4 – Preparing for Requirements Elicitation
    • Planning for elicitation
    • Benefits of elicitation planning
    • What do you plan?
    • The elicitation plan
    • Setting objectives for elicitation
    • Determining the scope for elicitation
    • Establishing pre-work
    • Determining the outputs for the session
    • The iterative nature of elicitation
    • Elicitation roles
    • Elicitation planning techniques
    • Discussions: Who to involve in elicitation, planning impacts, and unplanned elicitation
    • Workshop: Planning for elicitation
    5 – Conduct Requirements Elicitation
    • Elicitation skillset
    • Types of elicitation techniques
    • Using active listening in elicitation
    • Techniques for performing elicitation
    • Benchmarking/Market Analysis
    • Brainstorming
    • Business Rules Analysis
    • Collaborative Games
    • Concept Modeling
    • Data Mining
    • Data Modeling
    • Document Analysis
    • Focus Groups
    • Interface Analysis
    • Interviews
    • Observation
    • Process Modeling
    • Prototyping
    • Survey or Questionnaire
    • Workshops
    6 – Write Effective Requirements
    • Elicitation and Analysis
    • Requirements related issues
    • Implications of bad requirements
    • Elicitation and documentation
    • Writing skillset
    • Documenting requirements
    • Modeling requirements
    • Defining the project life cycle
    • Impact of project life cycle on documentation
    • Requirements specifications
    • Characteristics of good requirements
    • Guidelines for writing textual requirements
    • Structuring a requirement
    • Writing pitfalls
    • Traceability
    • Requirements attributes
    • Risks associated to requirements
    • Discussions: Project Life Cycle and Correcting Poorly Written Requirements
    • Workshops: Documenting Requirements and Identify Characteristics of Good Requirements
    7 – Confirm and Communicate Elicitation Requirements
    • Business analysis communication
    • Requirements communication
    • Communication skills
    • The 7 Cs
    • Timing of communication
    • Planning communication
    • Importance of Collaboration
    • Planning collaboration
    • Documenting communication/collaboration needs
    • Confirming elicitation results
    • Verify requirements
    • Characteristics of good requirements (revisited)
    • Requirements checklist
    • Requirements validation
    • Signing off on requirements
    • Discussions: Responsibility for Communication, Eliciting Communication Needs, Validation
    • Signoff
    • Workshops: Communicating Requirements and Obtaining Signoff
    8 – Evaluate the Solution
    • Business analyst role in solution evaluation
    • Why solutions under perform
    • What we are looking for in solution evaluation
    • When does solution evaluation occur
    • Performing solution evaluation
    • Planning solution evaluation
    • Metrics that might exist
    • Evaluating long term performance
    • Qualitative vs. quantitative measures
    • Tools & techniques used in solution evaluation
    • Comparing expected to actuals
    • When solution evaluation discovers a variance
    • Tools/techniques for analyzing variances
    • Proposing a recommendation
    • Communicating results of solution evaluation
    • Discussion: Addressing Variance
    9 – Wrap up and Next Steps
    • Useful books and links on writing effective requirements
    • BABOK® Guide
    • Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide

    Actual course outline may vary depending on offering center. Contact your sales representative for more information.

     

    Learning Objectives

    Understand the role of the business analyst and core competencies for performing successfully

    • Discuss the criticality of business analysis and requirements for successful project outcomes
    • Understand the main professional associations and standards supporting business analysts in the industry
    • Discuss the common problems with requirements and explore approaches to address these issues
    • Obtain a clear understanding of the various requirements types and the significance for eliciting each type
    • Demonstrate your ability to identify stakeholders
    • Explore various methods for understanding and analyzing stakeholders
    • Discuss and apply good planning practices to requirements elicitation efforts
    • Obtain knowledge and understanding of over 15 current and commonly applied elicitation techniques
    • Understand how to progress from elicitation to analysis to documentation
    • Write well-formed and validated requirements
    • Gain understanding of the best practices for writing quality requirements
    • Learn the technical writing techniques that apply directly to writing requirements documents
    • Discuss writing pitfalls, risks that impact requirements, and how to address them
    • Learn best practices for communicating and collaborating with stakeholders, sharing the results of elicitation and the resulting documentation
    • Learn approaches for validating requirements
    • Understand the difference between validating requirements and validating the solution
    No special instructions regarding this course's target audience provided. Please contact us to discuss if you are unsure whether this course is for you!
    No special prerequisites for this course provided. If you are unsure whether you might need to take another course first, please contact us to discuss.

    Ten (10) business days’ notice is required to reschedule a class with no additional fees. Notify TOPTALENT LEARNING as soon as possible at 469-721-6100 or by written notification to info@toptalentlearning.com to avoid rescheduling penalties.

    Please contact our team at 469-721-6100; we will gladly guide you through the online purchasing process.

    You will receive a receipt and an enrollment confirmation sent to the email you submitted at purchase. Your enrollment email will have instructions on how to access the class. Any additional questions our team is here to support you. Please call us at 469-721-6100.

    If a student is 15 minutes late, they risk losing their seat to a standby student. If a student is 30 minutes late or more, they will need to reschedule. A no-show fee will apply. Retakes are enrolled on a stand-by basis. The student must supply previously issued courseware. Additional fees may apply.

    You will receive a ‘Certificate of Completion’ once you complete the class. If you purchased an exam voucher for the class, a team member from TOPTALENT LEARNING will reach out to discuss your readiness for the voucher and make arrangements to send it.