Requirements Development, Documentation and Management

In this course, you will further explore the business analysis lifecycle in both waterfall and agile projects, with a focus on planning, documentation, analysis, management, and communication activities.

You will:

• Engage in up-front enterprise analysis to ensure that scope and problem statements are clear
• Build on the planning skills covered in Business Analysis Essentials to create a comprehensive business analysis plan
• Analyze the impact and influence of stakeholders to enable more effective elicitation of requirements
• Learn about how and when to use modeling techniques used in business analysis, and practice creating swimlane diagrams, use case models and descriptions, user stories, state diagrams, data dictionaries, and entity relationship diagrams
• Write effective requirements and accurately revise existing requirements to meet quality criteria
• Effectively manage the requirements to ensure accuracy, efficiency, and consistency in communication; to ensure requirements traceability, and to manage change
• Plan a review process to ensure the validity of requirements

This course is aligned with IIBA's A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide) standards.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

1. Foundations

• BA Lifecycle
• Waterfall vs. Agile
• Documenting and Managing Requirements
• Types of Requirements
• Types of BA Roles
• Risks, Assumptions, and Constraints
• Product vs. Project Scope
• IIBA and PMI

2. Strategy Analysis

• SMART Objectives
• Scope and Problem Statements
• Business Needs
• Root Cause Analysis
• Business Requirements
• Business Case
• Product Scope

3. Requirements Planning

• PM vs. BA Roles
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Requirements Management Plan
• Business Analysis Plan

4. Elicitation

• Elicitation and Analysis
• Elicitation Techniques
• Selecting the Appropriate Elicitation Technique

5. Requirements Analysis and Documentation

• Applying the BAP to Analysis
• Modeling Techniques
• Validation and Verification
• Requirements Documentation Templates
• Purpose of Modeling
• Textual and Graphical Requirements
• Documenting Requirements in Agile
• Traceability

6. Requirements Lifecycle Management

• Communicating Requirements Between Projects
• Signoff
• Changes to Requirements in Agile vs. Waterfall
• Managing Projects for Value
• Applying the BAP

7. Solution Assessment and Validation

• Transition Requirements
• Solution Validation
• Close Out

There are no required prerequisite courses; however, completion of the Business Analysis Essentials course is recommended. At least one year on the job serving in a BA related role is recommended.

• Junior business analyst (BA) working on small projects or on one team
• Project managers wanting to understand more about documenting requirements
• People who have several years of business analysis experience but their organizations want to standardize the process or roles
• People who are new to the business analysis role but who have several years of business experience
• Managers who want a better understanding of business requirements and documentation
• Software developers and testers