Requirements Elicitation – Getting User Requirements for IT Projects
Learn Effective Communication Techniques to Get More Complete and Correct IT Requirements, User Stories, and Examples
Classroom Live ONSITE – Duration: 2 days (14 PDU/CDU)
Classroom Live ONLINE – Duration: 2-5 days (14 PDU/CDU)
Public Schedule
Some of this content is also available in our eCourses, Books, and FREE KnowledgeKnuggets™
Course Overview
Eliciting Requirements — Art or Science?
It is day one of your project. How can you as "the one wearing the business analysis hat" determine what the application should do when it goes into production? There are many stakeholders involved, each with different expectations and needs. How can you deal with these challenges, gather reasonable requirements quickly, and not waste the effort?
This business analysis techniques course gives you a proven set of core techniques, methods, and tricks to elicit (gather or capture) business, stakeholder, solution, and transition requirements. Getting requirements requires much more than simply asking stakeholders what they want or need. Our techniques go beyond capturing obvious requirements. They force stakeholders to consider different dimensions of the solution so they recognize and express requirements they did not even know they had. That is the true are of “elicitation”.
NOTE: The techniques taught in this course are methodology-neutral, meaning they are relevant to traditional or Agile development environments. We will deliver this instructor-led course live at your site or in a series of virtual sessions via the Internet.
We Tailor the Content to Fit Your Needs
At no cost to you, we can assemble an optimal set of training topics based on your group’s current and desired business analysis skill levels. We can also use our Business Analysis Skills Evaluation (BASE) tool to establish these levels.
or call 702-625-0146
Target Audience
- Product Owners
- Business Analysts
- Requirements Engineers
- Business- and Customer-side Team Members
- Agile Team Members
- Subject Matter Experts (SME)
- Project Leaders and Managers
- Systems Analysts and Designers
- AND “anyone wearing the business analysis hat”, meaning anyone responsible for defining a future IT solution
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this skill-building experience, you can:
- Define and distinguish business, stakeholder, solution and transition requirement levels
- Defend the need for distinguishing actors, roles, stakeholders, and users to improve the completeness of requirements
- Use three different approaches for identifying project stakeholders and roles
- Identify, document, and analyze business problems to discover requirements
- Perform basic root cause analysis on problems to improve the quality of requirements
- Prepare, perform and follow up effective requirements gathering interviews focused on requirements elicitation
- Weigh the merits of different interviewing approaches
- Defend the need for requirements discovery site visits as a requirements elicitation technique
- Define effective informational listening techniques and hurdles
- Contrast active and informational listening
- Describe interviewing versus inquisition approaches for eliciting requirements from stakeholders
- Assess the viability of using requirement gathering workshops on a project
- Plan to incorporate selected techniques to improve your performance on the job
Detailed Course Outline
1 Requirements Elicitation Defined
Surviving in Uncertainty
- The Uncertainty Principle
- Exercise: Ambiguity Exposed
- Levels of Business Analysis
- Current Software Development Approaches
2 Requirement Levels
Requirement Types a la BABOK®
- Requirement Hierarchy
- Business Requirements Define Business Objectives
- Stakeholder Requirements Capture the People’s Needs
- Solution Requirements Provide Necessary Details
- Transition Requirements Pave the Project Path
- Common Transition Requirement Targets
- Exercise: Categorizing Requirements
What Are User Stories?
- Agile Business Analysis Concepts
- Business Analysis in an Agile Environment
- User Story Basics
- Common User Story Structures
- Qualities of a Good User Story
3 Early Project Activities
Stakeholder Identification
- Revealing Hidden Stakeholders
- Using an Org Chart
- A Stakeholder Is….
- Exercise: Stakeholder Identification
Basic Business Problem Analysis
- Defining the Real Problem
- Aristotelian Problem/Symptom Reduction
- Developing a Problem Statement
- Gathering Written Problem Statements
- Exercise: Getting Requirements from Problem Statements
4 Discovering Requirements for Agile and Traditional IT Projects
Simple Interviewing Techniques
- Exercise: Characteristics of a “Good” Interviewer
- Interviewing Steps
- Plan for the Interview
- Exercise: Ten Questions and the Case study
- Maintaining Control in an Interview
- Perform the Interview
Listening Techniques
- Hurdles to Informational Listening
- Après Interview Tasks
- Exercise: Advanced Interviewing Techniques
- Exercise: Interviewing Worksheet
- Exercise: Capturing Interview Results
Email Interviewing Tips
- Exercise: Face-to-Face vs. Email Interview
- The Delphi Technique Defined
- Using The Delphi Technique
- Exercise: Analysis by Walking Around (site visits)
- Walking Around Notational Technique
- Exercise: 3-Minute Interview Evaluation
Requirements Gathering Workshops
- What is an Requirements Gathering Workshop (RGW)?
- Stages of an RGW
- The Promise of RGW
- The Flip Side of an RGW
5 Capturing Requirements and User Stories
Review of Requirements Writing Rules
- Keep it Simple, Silly
- A Complete Sentence Forces a Complete Thought
- Structured Requirement Statements
- Think “What”, Not “How”
- A Requirement …
- Exercise: Creating Complete Sentence Requirements
Focusing on Relevant Requirements
- Common Components of IT solutions
- Requirements in Scope
- The Project Scope Statement
- Exercise: Requirement Statement Relevance
Misinterpretation Ruins Requirements
- The Challenge to Understanding
- Increasing Clarity of your Requirements
- Ambiguity Ruins Requirements
- Exercise: Reducing Ambiguity in Requirements
The Functional Perspective
- The Data Dimension
- The Problem Dimension of Requirements
- Types of Non-Functional Requirements
- Business Rules and Constraints Defined
- Detailed Clarification
6 From Showtime to Go Time!
Personal Improvement Plan
- Understanding the Learning Curve
- Developing Your Personal Implementation Plan