How to Gather, Analyze, and Define Business System Requirements

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Web-based Mar 9 - 12, 2009 Internet $1000 Register
Classroom Jul 14 - 16, 2009 Chicago, IL $1595 Register
 
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Overview

Requirements are the foundation upon which systems are constructed. They are the key connection points between the business and system developers. However, business requirements and system specifications are not the same thing. The two major groups (business and systems) speak different languages and think in different ways. The starting point is the business requirements that are most often written or verbalized by business personnel and reflect how the business wants to operate. It is critical to capture and understand the business requirements before trying to create system specifications.

We provide a proven set of core techniques, methods and tricks to help create clear, unambiguous, complete requirements. Most requirements start with language and to create "good Requirements" you must know and use the "language and techniques" of Requirements Definition. The course also includes a set of techniques to help you evaluate requirements written by someone else.

NOTE: The techniques taught in this course are relevant to traditional, UML or Agile development environments.

Objectives
  • Capture (Gather) Requirements
  • Manage questions and open items lists
  • Categorize requirements based on focus
  • Identify the problem with language based requirements
  • Identify stakeholders
  • Evaluate a management vision statement
  • Prepare, perform and follow up requirements interviews
  • Develop and process surveys
  • Describe how “analysis by walking around” creates requirements
  • Use 10 critical requirements questions to guide the requirements capture process
  • Develop requirements based on business events and responses
  • Describe how to use the six types of requirements gathering workshop sessions
  • Identify the pros and cons of prototyping for requirements
  • Clarify (Understand) Requirements
  • Apply the five rules of a “good” requirement sentence
  • Use templates to guide writing requirements
  • Verify the “testability” of a requirement
  • Group requirements based on shared characteristics
  • Decompose requirements into the major types of requirements and their subtypes
  • Identify and document business rules as requirements
  • Apply the four rules for managing a group of requirements
  • Further clarify business rules, performance and constraining requirements
  • Prioritize requirements
  • Identify exceptions as requirements
  • Discuss the difficulties in writing quality, "-ability" requirements (ex: reliability)
  • Confirm (determine relative importance and feasibility) of requirements
  • Create a requirement/problem matrix to confirm requirements completeness
  • Evaluate the completeness of requirements
  • Confirm feasibility
  • Identify high-risk requirements and list risk reduction alternatives
  • Evaluate your requirements development process
  • Identify the value of good requirements

ILT: 3 days
Virtual: 4 Mods

Target Audience

Business System Analysts
Requirement Managers
System Analysts
Business Process Users
Business Process Managers
Business Analysts
Subject Matter Experts
User Liaison Personnel
Anyone involved in defining or deciphering business system requirements.

Pre-requisites

NONE

Expansions

How to Model, Analyze, and Improve Business Processes

How to Manage Changing Business Requirements

How to Discover and Develop Use Cases

Instructors

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