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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