How to Capture and Tame Business Requirements

1. General Introduction

• Requirements Definition
• IT Project Landscape
• Causes of Project Failure
• The Relative Cost of Errors
• Analysis of Business System Analysis
• What is an Integrated Business Solution?
• The Uncertainty Principle
• The Fate Chart
• A Question File
• A Problem with Language
• Requirements Categories
• The Three C’s of Requirements Definition
• Benefits of High Quality Requirements

2. Information Gathering Techniques

• Requirements Capture (Gathering) Techniques
• Stakeholder Exercise
• User Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
• How to Ask
• System Vision
• Transcribed "Vision Statement" from CEO
• Exercise: From Vision to Requirement Statements
• Vision Statement Evaluation
• Characteristics of a "Good" Interviewer
• Interviewing Steps
• Plan for the Interview
• Perform the Interview
• Close the Interview
• Follow Up the Interview
• Interviewing Some Other Ideas
• Using Interviewing Techniques
• Email Interviews 10 Steps
• Requirements by Email
• The Delphi Technique (Survey)
• Workshop Sessions
• Focus Groups
• User Groups
• Accelerated Workshop Sessions
• Time Compression and Understanding
• Comparison of Interviewing Approaches
• Analysis by Walking Around

3. Asking the RIGHT Questions

• Requirements Capture (Gathering) Techniques
• Ten Critical Questions
• Business Events and Responses
• Our Area of Interest
• Business Events Defined
• Business Event Naming Convention
• Defining Business Events
• Finding Business Events
• Identifying Project Scope
• Confirming Project Scope
• Determining Event Responses
• Event Response Naming Convention
• Exceptions versus Errors
• Exception Event & Requirements
• Documenting Business Events
• Event/Response Table (v 1.0)
• Understanding Triggers
• Non-Triggered Events
• Scheduled Events
• Adding Event Triggers
• Event/Response Table (v 1.1)
• Additional Event/Response Information
• Event/Response Table (v 1.2)
• Prototyping and Requirements
• Prototyping & Ten Critical Questions
• Other Graphical Capture Techniques
• Defining the Real Problem
• The Tunnel from the Twilight Zone
• Aristotelian Problem/Symptom Reduction
• Rewriting the Problem Statement
• Getting Written Problem Statements
• Written Problem Statements
• Problem Statements
• Problem to Requirement
• Summary of Capture Techniques
• Visual Tools
• Event/Response Symbols and Conventions
• Event/Response Example Diagram
• Creating Event/Response Models

1 day

Business Analysts
Business Mangers
Business Systems Analysts
Developers
End Users
Project Leaders
Requirements Analysts
Subject Matter Experts
Systems Analysts
Technical Analysts

NONE

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