Seminars
The IT Strategies Business Requirements Course is designed to teach analysts how and what to collect and document to determine the business needs as opposed to the technology needs for a particular project. This phase of the system development life cycle is the most important yet many analysts do not understand how to complete this phase properly. This course will enable the analyst to truly gather the business requirements so that the ultimate technology solution meets the business needs and objectives.
The course is structured for two days and contains lectures, discussion and exercises. Day one will include discussions on project phases, communications, establishing the project and an exercise in what to collect. Day two will concentrate on the interview process, specific data gathering information and preparation of the Business Requirements Document. Each student will receive a workbook with samples of actual business requirements and documentation.
Day One: Project and Communication
- Learn why the requirements phase is arguably the most important phase of an MIS project.
- Receive a definition of requirements and see it's direct impact of quality
- Use your project management skills to formally define a project and the requirements phase
- What type of project must have a requirements phase?
- "Who's the boss?" of your project. Learn why it's important to have an executive user in charge of the computer project.
- Become and advocate of phase estimating, particularly of the business requirements phase.
- Why communication is central to the entire business requirements process
- Learn of different communication bottlenecks common when gathering business requirements from users
- Discuss communication techniques that help you overcome communication bottlenecks
- What's the difference between "key users" and "users of a lessor god" and the importance of this distinction
- Why the business analyst must be aware of the impact of time on the analysis process
Day two: Business Requirements, Tasks and Analysis
- General considerations you must know regarding the business requirements phase
- How to best organize a business requirements study to maximize clarity to the reader
- Special considerations you need to address up front such as will you develop software internally or purchase software from a vendor
- Learn an analysis technique that will help get your business requirements analysis started. The "departmental" or "functional" approach is presented with detailed examples
- Review the current business environment to establish a baseline. A task list will be presented to help the business analyst develop this baseline
- Why being judgmental concerning user needs before gathering the facts is a common pitfall for business analysts
- Determine future business requirements following a simple 13 point task list. These points will help the business analyst organize requirements and ensure a comprehensive analysis
- Learn how to analyze the current environment, future requirements and effectively construct an enterprise solution to overall business requirements
- Setting priorities is a key activity when assessing user requirements. Learn how to effectively prioritize requirements that users will agree with
- Walk-thru the steps necessary to create a complete cost-benefit analysis
- Review the process to create the final requirements documentation to present to management and users
