Requirements Elicitation

Requirements Elicitation Introduction

In this highly interactive 2-day course, you will learn how to enhance and refine your elicitation skills. Industry best practices are explained and then augmented with professional tips and methods. Working in small groups, you will practice new techniques and discuss strategies that your organization should be using to better define stakeholder needs. A case study driven workshop comprises more than half the course and provides a real-world example, templates, and job aids to reference once you are back on the job. If you are struggling with missing requirements, lack of stakeholder involvement, out of control scope, or the inability to know which tools to apply to elicit the most thorough requirements, you’ll want to consider this workshop!

Course Objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Apply best practices to resolve common problems encountered in requirements elicitation
• Establish and communicate the scope for eliciting requirements on a project
• Identify, analyze and manage stakeholders during the elicitation process
• Determine the appropriate mix of elicitation techniques to utilize on a project
• Plan and conduct an interview to elicit requirements
• Plan and conduct several different forms of requirements elicitation

Course highlights

• Describe the planning, techniques, and partnerships that are vital to the success of requirements elicitation
• Identify and differentiate between the different types of requirements that need to be elicited
• Describe the importance of documenting business objectives and product scope before eliciting requirements
• Utilize a context diagram to scope the solution space
• Utilize a process, techniques, and templates for stakeholder identification and analysis
• Apply industry best practices to common issues with stakeholders during requirements elicitation
• Plan and conduct an effective Interview
• Introduce standards in process modeling
• Obtain information about two professional associations that support business analysts

Prerequisites

• A basic understanding of the requirements process is helpful.
• We recommend taking the Business Analysis Essentials (BA-01) course as a foundation.

Audience

This course is perfect for:

• Business Analysts
• Business Systems Analysts
• Systems Analysts
• Requirements Engineers
• Project Managers
• Business Sponsors

Requirements Elicitation Outline

Day 1

Unit 1: Introduction

• Objectives
• Course Goals
• Business Analysis Resources
• BABOK^® Guide Components
• Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide
• Areas of Knowledge Compared
• BABOK^® Guide Knowledge Areas
• BA Elicitation Tasks, Techniques, and Outputs
• Business Analysis Competencies

Unit 2: Fundamentals of Requirements Elicitation

• Challenges with requirements elicitation and requirements
• Best practices to overcome elicitation and requirement challenges
• Common elicitation techniques
• Requirement types

Unit 3: Understanding the Objectives and

Product Scope

• Strategy Analysis; the start to defining the business need
• The importance of documenting business objectives and product scope before elicitation
• Context diagramming to define product scope

Unit 4: Identifying and Analyzing

Stakeholders

• The importance of stakeholder analysis and management
• Factors to consider when determining which elicitation techniques to utilize

Unit 5: Interviews, Focus Groups, & Surveys

• The interviewing technique and when best used
• Benefits and weaknesses of interviews
• Questions types
• Conducting a good interview
• Benefits and weaknesses of Focus Groups and Surveys
• Best practice tips for focus groups and surveys

Day 2

Unit 6: Brainstorming and Workshops

• The benefits and weaknesses of workshops
• Types of workshops
• Facilitate a workshop
• Decision rules
• Practicing facilitation skills
• Benefits and weaknesses of brainstorming

Unit 7: Process Modeling using Activity Diagrams

• Purpose and benefits of process modeling
• Using process modeling to elicit
• The UML^® equivalent – Activity Diagrams
• Observation as an elicitation technique

Unit 8: Prototyping

• Benefits and weaknesses of prototyping
• Key prototyping terms
• Three forms of prototyping; storyboard, wireframes, and HTML (functional prototypes)

Unit 9: Document Analysis, Reverse Engineering, and Interface Analysis

• The role of document analysis in requirements elicitation
• Benefits and weaknesses of document analysis
• Reverse engineering to uncover unknown information about an existing solution
• The value of Interface Analysis

Unit 10: Course Wrap-up

• What will you take away?
• How to obtain additional information