BA930 | Length: 2 days
Overview
This is a fast-paced, highly interactive primer that is designed for anyone who needs to understand and apply the basic principles of business analysis – specifically, the elicitation, capture, analysis, and documentation of project requirements. Topics are covered at a high level and positioned to provide a broad perspective on the discipline. Detailed coverage of specific topics is provided in further courses.
Audience
This course is intended for:
- Individuals beginning a career in Business Analysis.
- Project Managers.
- Systems Analysts.
- Software Developers.
- Quality Analysts.
- Implementation Analysts.
- Business and Project Stakeholders.
- End Users.
Prerequisites
None. While there are no formal prerequisite courses, basic familiarity and experience working within a project environment will be beneficial.
Content Outline
Unit 1: The Context for Business Analysis
- The International Institute of Business Analysis® and the Project Management Institute® perspectives:
– Business Analysis as a discipline – structure and purpose.
– Business Analysis competencies and value proposition. - Requirements versus design specifications, constraints, and solutions.
- The interdependencies among requirement types:
– Regulatory (external and business rule), business level, technical, process functional, and solution non-functional requirements. - The relationship between business functions and business processes.
- You get what you ask for: requirements elicitation and capture.
- Static/structure versus dynamic/behaviour focused process modeling.
Unit 2: The Practice of Business Analysis Within Projects
- The role of the Business Analyst throughout the solution development life cycle:
– Ongoing, embedded value within business units.
– During project initiation, requirements capture, solution development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, solution delivery and deployment, post project satisfaction level capture and assessment. - Business Analysis practice within traditional Waterfall project management.
- Business Analysis practice within Iterative project management.
- Business Analysis practice within Agile project management.
Unit 3: Requirements Elicitation and Capture
- Comparative Analysis for Value: interview variants, facilitated requirements workshops, requirements joint application design, surveys, checklists, and questionnaires.
- Staging elicitation for maximum throughput and ease of approval.
- The Business Requirements Document and its popular variants.
- Dealing with requirements change.
Unit 4: Interpersonal and Communication Skills and Techniques
- Active Listening.
- Four question types and when to use them.
- Proactive Conflict Management.
- Adapting your approach for different people:
– Types and Tactics assessment for Social Styles: Driver, expressive, humanist, and analyst types.
Unit 5: Business Process Modeling with Diagrams
- Business and System Context Diagrams:
– When to use them, external agents, inputs and outputs, things to watch for: black holes, gray holes, and miracles. - Business and System Use Case Diagrams:
– When to use them, comparison with system context diagrams, the subject system, actors, use cases, associations, staying focused on requirements. - Workflow Diagrams:
– Comparative analysis: Swim lane diagrams, UML Activity Diagrams, and BPMN workflow.
Unit 6: Requirements Modeling for Fully Automated or Manual/Automated Business Solutions
- Data Catalogues:
– Logical data modeling of business data.
– Message Catalogues.
– Capture of system to user messages. - Business Rule Catalogues:
– Establishing business rule scope.
– Writing effective and actionable business rules. - Decision Tables.
- User Interface Requirements.
- Declarative Text: Seventeen guidelines for establishing requirements clarity and precision using text.
- Documenting Business Process: System use case detail.
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