Eliciting and Writing Effective Requirements (BA04)

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

Intended Audience: This course is intended for beginner to intermediate business and requirements analysts who are looking to improve their elicitation and requirements writing and documentation skills. This course is also a great fit for technical writers, product and software testers, project managers, product owners who work closely with business analysts or who perform some for of business analysis themselves.

Prerequisites:

No prerequisites - This course is suitable for both novice and experienced practitioners who desire to improve their skills at eliciting and writing effective requirements. It is recommended that participants complete the BA01 – Business Analysis Essentials course prior to enrolling or have equivalent experience.

Course Outline:                  

Day 1 – Agenda 

Module 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

Module 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
• Workshop:
  • Identifying Non-Functional Requirements

Section 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

Module 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
  • Unplanned elicitation
• Workshop
  • Planning for elicitation

Day 2 – Agenda

Module 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

Module 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
  • Correcting Poorly Written Requirements
• Workshops:
  • Documenting Requirements
  • Identify Characteristics of Good Requirements

Day 3 – Agenda

Section 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
  • Obtaining Signoff

Section 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

Section 9: Wrap up and Next Steps

• Useful books and links on writing effective requirements
• BABOK® Guide
• Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide