Business Analysis Essentials

In this introductory course, you'll discover the role and responsibilities of a business analyst. As the communication link between all business areas, the business analyst is a critical player in a project’s success. From identifying and analyzing potential projects to making sure that the final product meets the requirements you identified—you’ll learn techniques for ensuring project success every step of the way.

Through practical, experiential learning exercises you'll discover how to define the scope of work and master requirements-gathering techniques that will work for a variety of projects and audiences. You will also learn how to consider the needs of customers, stakeholders, and the IT department as you work toward building, documenting, communicating, and managing requirements.

• Role of the business analyst
• Build and evaluate a business case
• Plan, manage, analyze, document and
  communicate requirements
• Conduct effective interviews, group
  workshops and questionnaires
• Data mining
• Capture and document business rules
• Earn agreement
• Ensure requirements are met

HANDS-ON EXERCISES

• Identify Business Analysis (BA) concepts and
  activities in your organization
• Propose project scope based on your analysis
  of a business architecture, feasibility study
  and risk assessment
• Define team roles and work division strategy
• Plan requirements activities for a project
• Plan scope and requirements change
  management
• Choose elicitation techniques
• Choose techniques to structure, model and
  analyze requirements
• Identify project assumptions and constraints
• Determine requirements verification
  and validation activities
• Draft a requirements communication plan
• Prepare for requirements presentation
  and signoff
• Determine solution assessment and
  validation activities
• Compile an individual professional
  skills inventory
• Produce a professional growth plan

• The solutions life cycle
• What is business analysis?
• Business analysis terminology
• International Institute of Business
  Analysis course
• CBAP® certification

Enterprise Analysis

• The business architecture
• Feasibility studies
• Project scope
• Business case
• Risk assessment
• Decision package
• Selecting and prioritizing projects

Requirements Planning and Management

• Team roles for the project
• Work division strategy
• Requirements risk approach
• Planning considerations
• Requirements activities
• Selection
• Estimation
• Requirements scope
• Requirements change management

Requirements Elicitation

• Elicit requirements
• Techniques
• Workshop
  —Reverse engineering
  —Survey/questionnaire

Requirements Analysis and Documentation

• Requirements package
• Business domain model
• Analyze user requirements
• Analyze functional requirements
• Analyze quality of requirements
• Assumptions and constraints
• Requirements management
• Modeling techniques

Requirements Communication: Communication plan and manage conflicts

Course Outline

1.Overview of Business Analysis

• The solutions life cycle
• What is business analysis?
• Business analysis terminology
• International Institute of Business Analysis
• CBAP certification

2.Enterprise Analysis

• Introduction
• Definitions
• The business architecture
• Feasibility studies
• Project scope
• Business case
• Risk assessment
• Decision package
• Selecting and prioritizing projects

3.Requirements Planning and Management

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Team roles for the project
• Work division strategy
• Requirements risk approach
• Planning considerations
• Requirements activities -Selection -Estimation
• Requirements scope
• Requirements activity -Measurement -Reporting
• Requirements change management

4.Requirements Elicitation

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Elicit requirements
• Techniques
  -Brainstorming
  -Document analysis
  -Focus groups
  -Interface analysis
  -Interviews
  -Observation
  -Prototyping
  -Workshop
  -Reverse engineering
  -Survey/questionnaire

5.Requirements Analysis and Documentation

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Requirements package
• Business domain model
• Analyze user requirements
• Analyze functional requirements
• Analyze quality of service requirements
• Assumptions and constraints
• Requirements
  -Attributes
  -Document
  -Validate
  -Verify
• Modeling techniques
  -Data and behavior models
  -Process/flow models
  -Usage models

6.Requirements Communication

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Communication plan
• Manage conflicts
• Determine format
• Requirements package
• Requirements presentation
• Requirements review
• Requirements sign-off

7.Solution Assessment and Validation

• Introduction
• Definitions
• Solution alternatives
• Technology options
• Solution selection
• Solution usability
• Quality assurance
• Solution implementation
• Solution impacts
• Post implementation review

8.BA Fundamentals

• Communication skills
• Leadership skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Business knowledge
• IT knowledge

9.Case studies

10.Exercises