GCA's methodology for gathering business requirements.

Course Content:

Five (5) days of training which includes:

• One 3- day course on ACCELERATED ELICITATION APPROACH called XCellR8 as described in the attached agenda. This is a training program for a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 20 students. Course curriculum is designed to be practical for professionals with either a technical development or a non-technical business background. They do not necessarily need to have been previously designated as business analysts. During this session the students will be introduced to our XCellR8 approach and will have an opportunity to apply it to practical case studies.

• One 2-day practical application for students who have successfully completed the ACCELERATED ELICITATION APPROACH training. This course is designed to provide advanced case study analysis and facilitation practice to a maximum of 6 students.

ADVANCED ELICITATION training programs are designed to assist analysts that will lead projects using this approach to practice setting up and facilitating requirements sessions. This case-study approach better prepares students for challenging users, more complex projects, and building facilitation skills.

 

Deliverable

At the conclusion of this course, qualified students should be in a position to lead a Business Requirements Facilitation session.

Agenda for Business Requirements Elicitation course

Day 1:
MODULE 1 - STARTING WITH A BLANK PAGE

• What are business requirements?
• Why should business requirements be done?
• When should business requirements be done?
• What questions should you ask of the users in order to jump-start a project?
• What is the basic unit of analysis that you should use when eliciting requirements from a business user?
• What components of functionality should you focus on discovering during the elicitation process?
• What techniques should you apply when asking questions of the stakeholders?
• What are some of the ways used today in gathering business requirements?

Day 1:
MODULE 2 - FOUNDATIONS FOR ELICITATION

• What rules should you use when organizing data discovered during Elicitation?
• What tests can you apply to determine if your business requirements are complete?
• What questions should you ask to determine business rules and data relationships applicable to the data that you discovered?

 

Day 2:
MODULE 3 - THE COMPLETE REQUIREMENTS PICTURE

• What technique should you use in analyzing the requirements for a process?
• What technique should you use when documenting the business requirements for a process?
• How do you crytallize the scope of a Project?
• What components should a BRD contain?

 

Day 2:
MODULE 4 - DOCUMENTATION STANDARDS

• What tools can you use in the real-time information capture and generation of a Business Requirements Document?
• What techniques can you use when eliciting requirements during a Requirements Discovery Session (RDS)?
• What steps should you follow in a RDS?
• Who should be at a RDS and what materials do you need? What role does each participant play?
• How do you plan and schedule a RDS?

 

Day 3:
MODULE 5 - TRANSFORMATION TO DEVELOPMENT

• How can you show the "big picture"?
• How can you show interdependencies?
• How do you translate the information elicited during a RDS into functional documentation?
• How do you ensure completeness of the business requirements?
• How and where do you document the non-functional requirements?

 

Day 3:
MODULE 6 - MANAGING QUALITY

• How do you assess the quality of the Business Requirements documented?
• How do you ensure traceability of the requirements to the original objectives?

 

Days 4 and 5:
MENTORING

We focus on the students' facilitation and documentation of different projects, preferably one of the Client's own. This exercise is designed to ensure that each participant feels comfortable and confident in leading the elicitation of the business requirements using the elicitation techniques they have learned in the previous 3 days. This is the practical application of the course.