Writing Effective Business Requirement Statements

Series: How to Write Business Requirements for IT Projects

Overview

This online, self-paced course teaches business analysts and subject matter experts (SME) how to express business needs in simple, complete, well-structured, and focused requirement statements. Your business requirements, stakeholder requirements, solution requirements, and transition requirements are not well-expressed until they communicate in terms that the intended audience can interpret as intended what it is that you need or want the technology to deliver. These business analysis techniques will help you write better business requirements from the very beginning of the project.

1. How to Write a Good Business Requirement

Rules for Writing Business Requirements

What Is the Value of Good Requirements

What Are the Benefits of High-Quality Requirements?

The Uncertainty Principle

A Question File

Interaction: A Problem with Language

The "Real" Problem With Natural Language

Expressing Requirements

Rules for a "Good" Requirement Sentence

Reducing Complexity Increases Comprehension

A Complete Sentence Forces a Complete Thought

Structured Requirement Statements

Interaction: Complete Sentence Requirements

Rules for a "Business" Requirement Sentence

Think "What", Not "How"

Interaction: Finding the What versus the How

Rules for a Relevant Requirement Sentence

Interaction: Applying the "What — Not How" Rule

Focused Requirements

Scoped Requirements

The Project Scope Statement

Identifying Relevant Requirement Sentences

Interaction: Determining Requirement Relevance

Rules Review

Interaction: Final Exam

Objectives
  • Find missing requirements using the components of a business information system
  • Reduce the number of wrong assumptions by using a question file
  • Confirm that your requirements are in scope for your project
  • Apply 3 simple rules to create component-focused business requirements
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90+ minutes

Target Audience

Business Process Managers
Business Process Users
Business System Analysts
Subject Matter Experts
System Analysts
User liaison personnel
Anyone who would like to write better business requirements for IT projects

Pre-requisites

NONE

Instructors

Our instructors have extensive experience in applying these techniques on projects with business experts from a wide variety of fields.