Essential Skills for the Business Analyst

Location: Massey Business Center, Belmont University

Course Duration: 3 Days
Course Fee: $1,595

Instructor Led, Facilitated Workshop
PDU Credits:  21 for eligible PMPs

Course Overview

Successful projects begin with clearly defined requirements that trace to specific business needs.  Most companies rely heavily on the IT Business Analyst to make this happen.  The Business Analyst serves as the liaison between non-IT employees who have a business problem to solve and the IT team who provides the technical solution.  The Business Analyst must be tech-savvy, must be able to build consensus, and must be a great communicator as these two sides of the company often speak very different languages.

In this era of bare-bones IT budgets and extreme cost-cutting pressure, the Business Analyst role is growing in importance.  This introductory course provides knowledge and the essential skills needed to be an effective Business Analyst.  The full life cycle of Requirements planning, gathering, modeling, analysis, specification, documentation, and verification are covered.  Both object oriented and structured techniques for modeling are introduced. Learn the practical skills required to grow in the Business Analyst role.  Gain skills in communication, consensus building, and management of scope creep though many engaging exercises, discussions, and tips/techniques.
Key Benefits

By taking this workshop, participants will be able to:
  • Understand the role of a Business Analyst and why “good” requirements are essential to project success
  • Describe the key tasks performed by a Business Analyst
  • Introduce a requirements framework that aligns with evolving industry standards
  • Utilize popular requirements gathering techniques
  • Leverage analysis and modeling techniques
  • Identify the characteristics of a “quality” requirements and practice good documentation techniques
  • Recognize the impact that un-controlled change can have on a project and apply techniques to control it
  • Introduce Best Practices for planning and managing the requirements process
  • Establish checkpoints for quality assurance throughout the requirements process
  • This course is endorsed by IIBA™

Who Should Attend

This course is targeted for Associates who are new to the Business Analyst role.  It may also be appropriate for experienced Business Analysts who are taking on a broader scope of work. System Analysts, Managers, and project team members who work closely with the Business Analyst will also benefit from this course.

Prerequisites
Good communication skills and a general knowledge of business requirements.
Recommended Follow-On Courses

  • Requirements Gathering Techniques Workshop
  • Planning and Managing a Successful Requirements Baseline
  • Use Case Workshop
  • Analyzing, Documenting, and Validating Requirements

Course Contents
 
Course Introduction

 Defining Business Analysis
  • The Role of the Business Analyst through the project life cycle
  • Key tasks performed in Business Analysis
  • The value of quality requirements
 Understanding the Project Objectives and Scope
  • Define requirements and differentiate between business and system requirements
  • Understanding the business context for your requirements
  • Nail down Project Objectives and Boundaries
  • The Context Diagram
  • Communicate scope to your stakeholders
 Gathering Requirements
  • An approach to gathering requirements
  • Challenges associated with gatherings requirements
  • Best practices to overcome challenges
 Popular Techniques
  • Brainstorming/Brainwriting
  • Interviewing
  • Facilitating Requirement Workshop Sessions
 Business Process Modeling using Activity Diagrams
  • The value of process modeling in gathering and analyzing requirements
  • Key features of BPM
  • As-is, To-be models
  • Using UML for BPM notation
 Using Use Cases to Elicit, Analyze and Document Requirements
  • Purpose and Value of use cases
  • Key Terms
  • The Use Case Diagram
  • The Use Case Specification
  • Best practices in developing use cases
 Analyzing Requirements
  • The requirements analysis process
  • Techniques that can be used for analysis
  • When, why, and how to use each
 Documenting and Communicating Requirements
  • Rules for writing good requirements
  • Traceability of requirements
  • The appropriate formality and content of documentation
  • How to communicate requirements
 Planning and Managing Requirements
  • The requirements team
  • Selecting and estimating requirements activities
  • Managing requirements scope
  • The importance of Change Control
 Validating Requirements
  • The importance of Quality and its relationship to requirements
  • Validation vs. Verification
  • The role of the BA in QA/Test
 Course Summary