COURSE SPECIFICATIONS

Course Code:		C317
Duration:		3 hours
Author:		The Information Architecture Group
Rating:
Pre-requisites:		None
Level		Intermediate Level

Course Summary

This is one in a series of courses that focus on the skills and competencies of The Requirements Discovery Process. This course is intended to take the participant through the aspects of capturing and documenting Business Requirements completely, accurately and consistently regardless of your subsequent system development efforts. In fact, the skills that you will learn in this course can be used to capture discussions that are completely unrelated to developing systems. 

Whether you are an experienced analyst, or new to the field, at the end of this course you will be able to:

• walk into any requirements meeting and synthesize the information from your subject matter experts and document their true business requirements in the context of how they are needed;
• compose business requirements that are clear, concise, complete and unambiguous that any developer or client and others can understand and use; and 
• organize and package the requirements in a deliverable or work product quickly and use it as the source for subsequent development, RFP or build/buy decisions.

Delivery Options

Who Should Attend

Business Analysts, Business Systems Analysts, Systems Analysts, Project Managers, Business Managers

Sample Screen Shot

Learning Objectives

In this course you will learn: 

• learn what you should be listening for to ensure that you capture all the information necessary to identify business requirements;
• learn why it is important to capture discussions while they are taking place;
• consider who should be involved in the process and what your role is;
• you will discover and practice how to effectively capture business requirements in a 'live' setting, and
• you will review when to utilize special tips and techniques to capture as much information as possible in a session.

Features

Video			Flash
Audio			Interactive Components
Exercises			Live Instructor
Quizes			Printable Reference Material
Completion Certificate

Reviews

Making sure everyone is on the same page 
Reviewer: Scott B, Project Manager from Eastman Kodak

...a good experience, I learned a lot. The material was well presented. This is an excellent course (process) for capturing requirements. It standardizes the structure you can use to make sure you don't overlook something. I liked the documentation that comes out of it. I'm a firm believer in making sure everyone is on the same page.

User Friendly - Clear Examples  Jan 1, 2003 
Reviewer: Tim D, HON Industries

This will provide a good solid foundation for our new internal process

Immediate Benefits  Jan 1, 2003 
Reviewer: Trenton, Commerce Bancshares

This course offered an easily understood process that can be implemented with little effort and yield immediate benefit.

Course Content

Documenting Requirements Meetings

The Who, What, Why, When and How of Documenting a Requirements Meeting

Seven Factors to Successful Capturing

Considerations when preparing to document

• Preparing yourself, your facilitator, your environment and your participants

Tips for active listening

• Listening to general discussions, scenarios, data discussions and process discussions with opportunities to practice and test your listening skills.

How to successfully capture a discussion 

• Write first, organize later
• Capture what was said, not what you think you heard
• Write so your clients can understand
• Capturing general discussions, scenarios, discussions about process and discussions about data

Building in Quality

• Hints and techniques on how and when to seek clarification
• Things to do after the discussion

Identifying Requirements 

• Identifying requirements from a general discussion, from a scenario, from a process discussion and from a data discussion
• Opportunities to practice identifying requirements 
• Considerations when packaging your documentation
• Ten ways to succeed

Reference Material Available

	Additional supporting information available as part of the Ask The Expert feature including:
	The Requirements Discovery Process The Requirements Discovery Forum Using a Template Documenter - Facilitator Teamwork Proper Typing Position Using a recording device Dealing with variations The Five "C's" to Quality Specifications