Planning and Managing Requirements
(course code BANR2)

Overview

It is now well recognized that good requirements are critical to the success of any major project. This means that a planned requirements approach is essential to a successful and smooth-running project. Just like the project itself needs a project plan, the requirements process needs a requirements plan.

To be effective in their role and to provide value to the project and to the organisation, Business Analysts must be able to develop a requirements plan and have a thorough understanding of what activities they will perform, what deliverables they will produce, and how they will control and manage changes to those deliverables.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Determine and plan the requirements activities needed for the project, identify the deliverables that will be produced, and how to control and manage changes to those deliverables;
• Distinguish between planning as done by a business analyst (BA) and the project manager (PM );
• Differentiate between the roles and responsibilities of project managers, business analysts and business clients;
• Develop a solid requirements plan with risk and communication plans;
• Learn techniques to handle additional requirements that surface throughout the project;
• Learn different requirements prioritization techniques and how to identify requirements dependencies;
• Develop a requirements management plan based on different lifecycles (waterfall, iterative, incremental, and agile).

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for business analysts, requirements managers, project managers, and anyone who is involved in software development projects. It also provides excellent information for business clients and sponsors, quality assurance analysts, and other stakeholders involved in software development projects.

Prerequisites

No technical experience is necessary, but an understanding of applications development is required.

Course Content

This course covers:

• Introduction:
  
  • A business case for requirements;
  • BABoK® Knowledge Areas;
  • Requirements planning vs. project planning;
  • Requirement Management Plan Components;
  • Requirements Definition.
• Stakeholder Analysis:
  
  • Stakeholder Definition;
  • RACI Matrix;
  • Stakeholder categorization;
  • Stakeholder analysis;
  • Stakeholder authority levels;
  • Case study workshop: Develop a RACI matrix, categorize & analyze Stakeholders.
• Planning Considerations:
  
  • Identify various planning considerations;
  • Identify various project approaches;
  • Case study workshop: Determine project approach.
• Understanding Scope:
  
  • Project versus product scope;
  • BA’s role in developing a scope statement;
  • Scope statement components;
  • BA and product requirements deliverables;
  • Acceptance criteria;
  • Requirements boundaries;
  • Assumptions and constraints;
  • Case study workshop: Review and enhance a scope statement draft.
• BA Activities Plan:
  
  • Planning overview;
  • BA deliverables;
  • BA activities;
  • Elicitation techniques overview;
  • Modeling techniques overview;
  • Common estimating methods;
  • Estimating assumptions;
  • Case study workshop: Identify and estimate requirements activities.
• BA Risk List:
  
  • Risk overview;
  • Requirements risks;
  • Requirements risk by knowledge area;
  • Risk plan elements;
  • Risk approach;
  • Monitor and control requirements risks;
  • Case study workshop: Develop a requirements risk plan.
• BA Communication Plan:
  
  • Communication considerations;
  • Communication paths;
  • Stakeholder communication preferences;
  • Communication elements;
  • Case Study Workshop: develop a BA communication plan.
• Requirements Management Process Plan:
  
  • Requirements management processes;
  • Requirement attributes;
  • Requirements organization;
  • Prioritization;
  • Case study workshop: Develop a list of organized & prioritized requirements;
  • Traceability overview;
  • Case Study Workshop: Create a traceability matrix;
  • Documentation & Change Management Processes;
  • Case Study Workshop: Create a change management process.
• BA Performance Plan:
  
  • Performance evaluation process overview;
  • Metric guidelines;
  • List of common BA metrics;
  • Collect, measure & report BA metrics;
  • Case study workshop: Identify BA metrics and measures for case study.
• Course Summary

Certification Exams

There are no exams with this course.

Course Fees

We offer a range of delivery styles and packages for this course. Please go to the Packages and Inclusions page to review the inclusions provided with each package.

Professional Development

Successful completion of this course may entitle you to credits in various professional development programmes:

• For AIPM CPD points, check here;
• For PMI PDUs, check here (see page 11).

Follow-on Courses

We recommend that delegates who complete this course should proceed with our Eliciting Requirements course.