Detailed Class Syllabus

REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION (DAYS 1 & 2)

Effectively managing stakeholders: Strong elicitation skills are a ‘must have’ for anyone charged with defining requirements for their project. Success is dependent on a mixture of technical skills (i.e. knowing which technique to use and how to use it) and interpersonal skills (i.e. building relationships, listening, and gaining consensus). Whether you plan to meet with your stakeholders in one-on-one sessions, in a requirements workshop, or remotely, you will need to know how to select and implement techniques to accurately and efficiently identify the needs of your business.

Unit 1: Introduction

Unit 1: Introduction

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

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

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

Purose 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

REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS & USE CASES (DAYS 3 & 4)

Writing clear & concise business requirements: Use Cases are an industry best practice for defining, documenting, and analyzing functional requirements. A use case approach is a user-centered approach for developing a solution to your business needs. Unfortunately, methods for developing use cases vary substantially across the industry. What information belongs in a use case? How can a use case be utilized to capture all the desired functionality? Are use cases applicable to all projects? Is there a template for writing use cases that is considered best practice? If you’ve ever been involved in a project involving use cases, you’ve probably encountered some confusing answers to these questions.

Unit 1: Introduction

Unit 1: Introduction

Unit 2: Overview of Use Cases

Describe the purpose and value of a use case approach
Use case terminology
Introducing a use case approach

Unit 3: Needs Assessment

Purpose of Needs Assessment
Needs Assessment and use cases
Defining and understanding the strategic goals and objectives
Understanding the business process
Identifying actors
Identifying business information
Analyzing locations and operations
Drawing the business use case diagram
Building the business architecture
Defining solution options

Unit 4: Defining System Scope

Product scope/project scope
System actors versus business actors
Analyzing the business process model
Analyzing business use cases
Identifying candidate use cases
Identifying scenarios
Diagramming use cases
Draw a use case diagram
Create a use case catalog

Unit 5: Evaluating, Prioritizing, and Packaging Use Cases

Iterative nature of this work
Evaluating use cases
Use case priority
Use case risk
Use case complexity
Use case dependencies
Evaluate and Prioritize use cases
Dividing work up between releases
Packaging
A process for how to perform packaging

Unit 6: Writing the main success scenario

Use case descriptions
Primary and secondary goals
Assumptions
Pre-conditions
Triggers
Post-conditions
Scenario example
Main success scenario
Conditional execution
Use cases and requirements
Best practices for writing a use case description

Unit 7: Writing the other scenarios

Scenarios and flows
Alternate scenarios and flows
Alternate vs. basic flow
Guidelines for alternate flows
Exception flows
Failed post conditions
Write alternate and exception flows

Unit 8: Process Modeling to describe use case flows

UML® Activity Diagram Notation
Sequencing activities
Developing an activity diagram
Facilitated sessions
Draw a UML® Activity Diagram

Unit 9 Using Advanced Diagramming Techniques

Commonality
Dependency Relationships
<< Includes >>
<< Extends >>
Identify << include >> and << extend >> relationships
Comparing the different relationships

Unit 10: Developing a Requirements Specification

Requirements and use cases
Detailed requirements
Common approaches to specifications
Non-functional requirements
Write non-functional requirements
User interface requirements
UI data descriptions
Business rules
Decision tables and inference rules
How to document simple calculations
Reporting requirements
Data requirements
Data accessibility requirements
Traceability

Unit 11: Course Summary

Wrap-up
Finding more information

Credits

Students will receive 28 Professional Development hours from IIBA.