By mastering the project requirements process, business analysts and project managers can better
manage customers’ expectations and satisfy their needs. Requirements discovery is the first step to a
successful project. This workshop focuses on the skills necessary to thoroughly gather requirements
from stakeholders, procedures, system components, and various business documents. Quality
requirements statements are the next step in a successful project. This workshop provides the best
practices to write specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and traceable, requirements statements.
Finally, requirements must be properly communicated, validated and signed off to achieve a successful
project outcome. By the end of this course, participants will have accomplished all three. Overall the
workshop is designed to give participants the skills, hands-on application and confidence they need to
tackle any project by producing and gaining approval for a quality requirements document.
Audience:
Those who need an advanced and detailed approach to defining business/technical
requirements and implementing new processes or methodologies.
Prerequisites
Previous professional experience in business analysis is required
Course duration:
3 days
Course outline:
1. Introduction
- What is a Requirement?
- Workshop Objectives
- Analysis Work
- Business Analysis Body of Knowledge
(BABOK) Companies
- Workshop Agenda
- The Cost of Bad Requirements
- The System Development Life Cycle
- Workshop Logistics
2. Requirements Process
- Requirements
- Types of Requirements
- Developing Requirements – Where do
We Begin?
- Current State vs. Future State
- Discovery
- Performing Enterprise Analysis
- Requirements Documentation
- The Requirements Attributes for
Traceability to the Source
- Requirement Identification
- Organizing Requirements
- Requirements Exclusions – Out of Scope
- The Phased or Iterative Approach
- Dictionary of Terms
- Planning on Requirements Work
3. Requirement Essentials
- How Shall We Write Requirements?
- SMART Requirements
- Guidelines for Documenting Requirements
- Quality Requirements?
- The Grammar of Requirements
- Ambiguous Words
- Pronouns
- Synonyms
- Negative Words
- Adverbs
- Adjectives
- Measuring Success (Testing Requirements)
- Requirements Statements vs. Design
Statements
- Turning Design Statements into
Requirements
4. The Business Case
- Documenting the Business Case
- Building the Business Case
- Project Context
- Actors and External Entities
- The Context Diagram
5. Stakeholder Requirements
- The People Side of Requirements
- Best Practices for Stakeholder
Interactions
- Working with People
- Requirements Elicitation Techniques
- Identifying Stakeholder Requirements
- Facilitating a Requirements Discovery
Session
- Structure of a Facilitated Session
6. Functional Requirements
- Functional Requirements
- Level of Detail for Functional
Requirements
- So What Are Functions?
- Words to Avoid
- Where Can We Find Functional
Requirements?
- Writing Functional Requirements from
Stakeholder Requirements
- Writing Functional Requirements from a
Use Case
- Use Case
- Writing into Functional Requirements
from Artifacts
7. Non-Functional Requirements
- Reliability Requirement Statements
- Performance Efficiency Requirement
Statements
- Operability & Usability Requirement
Statement
- Security Requirement Statements
- Compatibility Requirement Statements
- Maintainability and Supportability
Requirements
- Transferability and Portability
- Where Can We Find Quality of Service
Requirements?
- Other Places to Look for Non-Functional
Requirements
- Writing Non-Functional Requirements
from Stakeholder Requirements
- Writing Non-Functional Requirements
from Use Cases
- Writing Non-Functional Requirements
from Functional Requirements
- Writing Non-Functional Requirements
from Artifacts
- Transition Requirements
8. The Requirements Communication
- Purpose of Requirements
Communication
- Requirement Document
- Levels of Requirements Communication
- Peer Review
- Stakeholder Walkthrough
- Requirements Inspection
- Sign-Off Approval
- The Requirements Baseline