Mastering Business Analysis
C O U R S E C ATA L O G
www.b2ttraining.com
INTRODUCTION
B2T Training Overview and History
What Makes B2T Training Different?
Since its inception in 2000, B2T Training has focused solely on providing business analysis training, products, and services. We bring over 15 years experience in business analysis to our offerings. A certified women-owned business, B2T Training was established to provide the highest quality business analysis training and to support the ongoing development of business analysis professionals. Our instructors, mentors, and course developers are considered industry experts in business analysis.
Results Driven Approach to Mastering Business Analysis
We developed the first comprehensive business analysis training program in North America and it has been a model for other training organizations. In 2002, we established our Business Analyst Certification program which certifies that individuals have an understanding of the business analysis knowledge areas and possess the ability to apply the knowledge. We are founding members of the International Institute of Business Analysis® (IIBA®), an association designed to promote the profession, establish standards, and create an industry certification. We are extensively involved in the development of the IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®, a document of business analysis standards. B2T Training is a charter member of the Endorsed Education Provider program with the IIBA and is a registered education provider for the Project Management Institute.
Mastering business analysis requires an investment and a commitment to improving your organizational efficiencies and the quality of your business processes. B2T Training provides a proven approach to help your organization navigate to your desired level of business analysis expertise. B2T Training has the resources and support to help in all phases of your journey. The approach begins with an understanding of the current maturity level for individuals and the organization. B2T Training has a comprehensive training curriculum for any gaps in skills identified. Customizable templates for requirements planning, elicitation, analysis, and validation are available and reinforced throughout the training program. Individualized mentoring is included as a part of each training course and is provided as ongoing professional development. For self study and continuing education, a complete library of recommended resources, an industry specific magazine called the bridge, white papers, a listing of business analysis tools and a BA blog are available on www.b2ttraining.com for your organization. Additionally, B2T Training will work with your organization to capitalize on your business analysis training investment. B2T Training has gathered successful approaches, from our experience and that of our clients, for maximizing business analysis training. As a customer, an account manager will provide you with our confidential checklist and work with you to achieve the highest return for your investment.
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S B2T Training Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Specialized Courses
Certification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Business Analysis Essentials for Project Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
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IIBA BABOK Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Certified Core Courses Essential Skills for Business Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Business Process Improvement (BPI) using BPMN Diagramming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Overview of Business Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Developer’s Introduction to Business Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Detailing Business Data Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Self Study Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Advanced Courses
Mentoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Developing a Business Analysis Work Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
CBAP® Study Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Facilitating Requirements for Business Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Requirements Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
TRAINING CURRICULUM
B2T Training Curriculum We provide a cohesive learning experience that takes the extremely complex elements of business analysis and simplifies them into manageable learning components. All of our courses include hands-on workshops giving students many opportunities to experience the techniques in class so students can return to their desks with the ability to better do their job. Students are encouraged to their bring projects to class to help reinforce the concepts being taught. Our curriculum is developed utilizing business analysis subject matter experts as well as education specialists. This brings together the knowledge of best practices and techniques, with the emphasis on education and adult learning.
Core Courses
Advanced Courses
Our core training program is appropriate for new or experienced business analysts. These courses comprise a complete curriculum and are written for organizations looking to level-set the business analyst role in their companies and for individuals seeking a solid foundational skill set. Our certification program and study guides are based on these three core courses.
Our advanced courses are designed for students who have completed the core courses and individuals who are experienced in business analysis.
Essential Skills for Business Analysis—4 days
Detailing Business Data Requirements—3 days
Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements —4 days
Developing a Business Analysis Work Plan —3 days
Facilitating Requirements for Business Analysis —3 days
Requirements Validation—2 days
Specialized Courses These courses and seminars are ideal for organizations with specific training needs, and provide management and technical teams an understanding of the business analyst role and review components of a business requirements document.
Business Analysis Essentials for Project Managers —3 days
Business Process Improvement (BPI) using BPMN Diagramming—3 days
Overview of Business Analysis—1/2 day
Developer’s Introduction to Business Analysis—1 day
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 3
C E RT I F I C AT I O N
Certification B2T Training believes that a certified business analyst
BA Associate
should exhibit real-world knowledge and experience.
The BA Associate is a certificate that recognizes business analysts who possess foundational knowledge of business analysis topics and skills taught in our three core courses. It is designed for new and experienced business analysts. Obtaining the BA Associate certificate requires candidates to pass all three online proficiency area exams of our three core courses. Candidates wishing to test-out of the three core courses may purchase our study guides for each of these courses to help prepare for passing the proficiency exams.
Our certification program tests a business analyst’s ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world circumstances and offers two levels of recognition. Our business analyst certification program recognizes individuals who have proven skills, knowledge, and experience in eliciting, organizing, analyzing, documenting, communicating, and verifying requirements to facilitate the development or purchase of software applications and/or business process improvement efforts. Our certification program is based on the essential business analysis skills covered in our three core courses.
BA Certified Essential Skills for Business Analysis 4 day class
Detailing Business Data Requirements 3 day class
Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements 4 day class
Pass Proficiency Exam*
Pass Proficiency Exam*
Pass Proficiency Exam*
*Test out option available
Receive Certificate
Case-Study-Based Final Exam 2 Years Business Analysis Work Experience
2 Professional References
Develop Requirements Package
Complete Multiple-Choice Questions
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After obtaining the BA Associate certificate, candidates are qualified to work toward BA Certified. BA Certified is an elite certification that recognizes individuals who possess proven skills, knowledge, and experience in eliciting, organizing, analyzing, documenting, communicating, and verifying requirements. Becoming BA Certified consists of:
earning the BA Associate certificate
possessing two years of business analysis experience
providing two professional references
passing a final exam
The case-study-based final exam consists of developing sections of a requirements package and answering questions about the requirements.
Receive Certification
4 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
BA Certified business analysts are able to confidently provide their employers or perspective employers with evidence that they possess not only business analysis knowledge, but the ability to apply that knowledge in day-to-day real-world business analysis environments.
BABOK ALIGNMENT
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速
IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge and B2T Training Courses BABOK速 Version 2.0 Framework Tasks BA Planning and Monitoring Plan business analysis approach Conduct stakeholder analysis Plan business analysis activities Plan business analysis communications Plan requirements management process Manage business analysis performance Elicitation Prepare for elicitation Conduct elicitation activity Document elicitation results Confirm elicitation results Requirements Management and Communication Manage solution and requirements scope Manage requirements traceability Maintain requirements for re-use Prepare requirements package Communicate requirements Enterprise Analysis Define business need Assess capability gaps Determine solution approach Define solution scope Develop the business case Requirements Analysis Prioritize requirements Organize requirements Specify and model requirements Determine assumptions and constraints Verify requirements Validate requirements Solution Assessment and Validation Assess proposed solution Allocate requirements Assess organizational readiness Define transition requirements Validate solution Evaluate solution performance Underlying Competencies Analytical thinking and problem solving Behavioral characteristics Business knowledge Communication skills Interaction skills Software applications
CORE COURSES Essential Skills
Data
ADVANCED COURSES
Process
Work Plan
Requirements Validation
Facilitating
Mentoring and Coaching
5
4 DAYS C E RT I F I E D C O R E C O U R S E
Essential Skills for Business Analysis Overview To identify the best solutions for real business needs, this course provides an extensive inventory of tools and techniques for use in business analysis work. The business analysis skill set includes critical thinking skills, elicitation techniques and requirements analysis and management. Equally important are communication and relationship building skills, whether they be in person or virtual environments. Expertise with analysis tools and techniques becomes even more necessary in today’s fast-paced environment. It is further complicated by the use of dispersed or outsourced teams, complex business processes, time-driven business initiatives, new agile software development approaches, and poorly integrated legacy applications. Regardless of the person’s title, the need for strong business analysis skills is necessary for companies to remain competitive in any economy. Through education and practice business or technical professionals will develop and enhance their analytical skills and provide significant value to projects and the business enterprise. This course teaches business analysis essentials to both new and experienced practitioners. It supports and expands on the standards outlined in the IIBA BABOK® Guide V2.0. Mentor-led workshops allow students to practice the techniques as they learn them. Depending on the participant’s skill level, the workshop cases and discussions inspire learning insights for every level of experience. Students are requested to bring their own projects to class to use in developing a personal post-class action plan for taking their project to the next step.
In this course students will learn to: Analyze and scope the area of analysis, working with project managers and business sponsors to clarify the level and complexity of the business analysis effort needed for the project. Select the appropriate elicitation technique to efficiently identify critical requirements. Analyze and refine business and functional requirements. Ask the right questions through the use of interviewing templates developed specifically for business analysis elicitation. Identify the five core components necessary to analyze a business area. Plan an approach for analyzing, categorizing, and managing requirements. Determine the level of formality required and consider options for documenting and packaging requirements based on project type, priorities, and risks. Identify techniques and documentation options appropriate for various software development approaches and project types (COTS, maintenance, business process improvement, new development, etc). Define testing objectives and verify requirements are testable. Conduct effective requirements reviews to improve the quality of requirements deliverables. Build strong relationships with project stakeholders. Apply new communication strategies for eliciting and interacting with virtual teams. Anticipate issues, think proactively, and use critical thinking skills to plan stakeholder elicitation sessions.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for business analysts, project managers, business systems analysts, system architects or any other project team member involved with analysis. New practitioners will learn the tasks they are expected to perform and why each task is important. Experienced practitioners will learn new techniques and more structured approaches to improve their requirements activities. This course may also be appropriate for individuals who manage analysis activities and business stakeholders who need a more in-depth understanding of the requirements process and deliverables.
$2,395 per student
Prerequisites None
Earn 28 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
6 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Public Class Schedule Feb 8 – Feb 11, 2010 • Des Moines, IA Mar 22 – Mar 25, 2010 • Atlanta, GA May 3 – May 6, 2010 • Orlando, FL Jun 14 – Jun 17, 2010 • Chicago-Oakbrook, IL Aug 2 – Aug 5, 2010 • Dallas, TX Sep 20 – Sep 23, 2010 • Atlanta, GA Oct 18 – Oct 21, 2010 • Las Vegas, NV Nov 15 – Nov 18, 2010 • Chicago-Oakbrook, IL Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
This class is a part of the B2T Training Business Analyst Certification Program. For more information on the program, see page 4.
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What is business analysis? • Review the major tasks performed by the business analyst. • Define the essential skills needed to perform their tasks. Project Participants and their Roles – 1hr. • Identify project stakeholders and their roles. • Discuss how the business analyst interacts with these participants. Elicitation Techniques – 3 hrs. • Learn to use and determine the appropriate elicitation technique: • One-on-one interviews • Requirements workshops • Surveys • Brainstorming • Document analysis • Focus group • Job shadowing/observation • Competitive analysis • Interface analysis • Reverse engineering • Learn to proactively plan interactions with stakeholders to make the most effective use of their time. Scoping the Project from the Business Analyst’s Perspective – 5.5 hrs. • Understand why the project is being done. Without this understanding it will be difficult for business analysts to elicit and document the right requirements and focus their business analysis work in the appropriate areas. Get an introduction to Enterprise Analysis. • Understand the organizational environment. Identify the business stakeholders who will be involved in the project and how they will impact business analysis. • Learn to ask probing questions about the requirements scope and facilitate a discussion with project stakeholders using visual representations of the requirements boundaries. • Learn the context level dataflow diagram technique to identify and scope “what is" and, more importantly, "what is not" to be analyzed. Analyze interfaces with people, other organizations, existing systems, and other software applications. • Discuss how a business analyst should collect, organize, and maintain requirements for efficient analysis and reuse on future projects. • Workshop - Scope the class case study project. • Workshop - Reinforce the analysis techniques on a current project. Students will leave class with a draft visual representation of their current business area along with a list of follow up questions. Defining and Detailing Requirements – 4 hrs. • What is a requirement? Why is it important to gather and document requirements? What are
the criteria used to judge the quality of “excellent” requirements? • Learn how software developers use requirements • Understand the difference between analysis and design or “business” vs. “technological” requirements. Why is it necessary to understand the problem before deciding on a solution? • Learn the 5 core requirement components, what they describe, and why they are important. • Entity • Attribute • Process (use case) • External Agent (actor) • Business Rule Requirements Analysis Techniques – 5 hrs. • Learn the recommended approach to categorizing requirements. Why should requirements be categorized? Who uses each category? Why is it difficult to create distinct categories? • Business Requirements • Functional Requirements • Non-functional Requirements • Technical Requirements • Learn the concept of traceability of requirements. • Discuss the most commonly used analysis techniques to organize and refine requirements. Business analysts should have expertise in many analysis techniques to be able to adapt to different types of projects and businesses. • Structured textual templates (process descriptions, data descriptions, business rules, use cases) • Entity relationship diagram • Decomposition diagram • User stories, use case diagram and use case descriptions • Workflow diagram (UML, BPMN, ANSI, swim lane) • Prototyping • Consider options and level of formality for packaging requirements and choosing the appropriate documentation techniques for each project. • Review currently available software tools that can be used for requirements management. • Workshop - Put into practice several of the analysis techniques on the course case study requirements. Conducting a Requirements Review – 2 hrs. • Learn how to conduct a requirements review: Who should participate? What are the required steps? How is a session conducted? What are the common challenges? • Workshop - Review a sample requirements package. • Identify missing or incomplete requirements. • Identify potential test cases. • Document issues and develop an approach for going forward. Validate the Requirements – 2 hrs. • Understand the role of business analysis in validating requirements and software testing.
• Introduction to software testing: Why is testing important? What is the business analyst’s role in testing? What is the primary objective of testing? What are the phases and types of testing? • Learn to verify that the business requirements are complete by identifying test cases. • Practice identifying test cases and refining requirements based on quality assurance principles. Analysis Communication Skills – 2.5 hrs. • Learn the importance of building strong relationships with project stakeholders. How should business analysts communicate with users? How should business analysts communicate with the technical team? • Improve your ability to develop in-depth, detailed questions for stakeholders by identifying the appropriate source of information, deciding on an approach, and using clear, consistent language. • Review selected analysis techniques to frame questions driving stakeholders to reveal core needs and problems. Ask the right questions through the use of interviewing templates developed specifically for business analysis. • Recognize active listening as the most powerful elicitation communication skill, learn to listen for key phrases that reveal specific types of requirements. • Improve listening skills by recognizing common barriers to listening, understanding verbal and nonverbal messages, acknowledging the message, and responding with appropriate feedback. • Learn to effectively plan communications and facilitate groups to consensus. • Workshop - Practice active listening and receive feedback from the instructors and other students. Working with Virtual Teams – Optional • Understand what constitutes a virtual team. • Learn about virtual team structures and terminology. • Learn about technology requirements for virtual teams • Consider business analysis process changes for virtual team work • Set policies for the team. • Utilize the Six Thinking Hats® technique. • Effectively utilize the people on the virtual team • Understand the critical success characteristics. • Tips for conducting virtual meetings successfully. • Choose the appropriate elicitation techniques for virtual teams. Develop Your Action Plan / Course Summary – 2 hrs. • Review Business Analysts tasks and skills. • Workshop - Draft an initial Business Analysis Communications Plan for a CRM project. • Develop an Action Plan with next steps on the student’s current project. • Student questions/discussion topics.
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3 DAYS C E RT I F I E D C O R E C O U R S E
Detailing Business Data Requirements Overview Understanding and documenting business data requirements is a critical component in defining complete requirements. Eliciting information needs often uncovers additional processes and business rules. Every business process uses data and almost all business rules are enforced by data. Missing a critical piece of data or incorrectly defining a data element contributes to the majority of maintenance problems and results in systems that do not reflect the business needs. This course teaches students an in-depth approach to data modeling: identifying and defining all necessary data components using both textual templates and an entity relationship diagram. This course teaches business analysis techniques for eliciting, analyzing, and documenting data requirements to both new and experienced practitioners. Students will be given data templates with a suggested documentation structure for defining Business Data Requirements. It supports and expands on the techniques in the IIBA BABOK® Guide V2.0. Mentor-led workshops require students to practice the techniques as they learn. Students are encouraged to bring their own projects to class.
“... the data sees the big picture, while the various people and machines and organizations that work on the data see only a portion of what happens. As you go about doing a Structured Analysis, you will find yourself more and more frequently attaching yourself to the data and following it through the operation. I think of this as “interviewing the data.”’ It is usually more productive than any other single interview.” Tom DeMarco
In this course students will learn to: Identify core data requirements beginning with project initiation. Identify excellent data requirements at the appropriate level of detail. Detail the data requirements (using a data dictionary and data model). Detail complex data related business rules. Assist with the transition of business data to database design. Utilize easy normalization techniques (without all the mathematical theory). Validate data requirements with activity (process or use case) requirements. Even if your organization has a data administrator or data warehouse team who is responsible for documenting and managing the organization's information needs, every project uses a subset of that enterprise information in its own unique way. Business analysts must understand the importance of data in all of their projects and include data requirements in their business requirements documentation. Failing to document which data elements need to be used in a calculation, or displayed on a report, leaves the developer the responsibility of choosing the correct pieces of business data from hundreds if not thousands of available fields. These missing requirements often lead to expensive and lengthy project delays during the testing phase.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for business analysts, systems analysts, data administrators, database administrators, or any other project team member involved with business analysis. This course may also be appropriate for individuals who manage business analysts or those who work with the business requirements document and need a more indepth understanding of the process and documentation.
$1,995 per student
Public Class Schedule Mar 8 – Mar 10, 2010 • Dallas, TX Mar 15 – Mar 17, 2010 • Des Moines, IA May 10 – May 12, 2010 • Chicago-Oakbrook, IL Jul 19 – Jul 21, 2010 • Atlanta, GA
Prerequisites
Aug 17 – Aug 19, 2010 • Louisville, KY
We recommend that students first attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis class or have experience in project scope definition, gathering requirements from subject matter experts, and understand how business requirements fit into the entire systems development effort.
Dec 6 – Dec 8, 2010 • Irvine, CA
Earn 21 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
8 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
This class is a part of the B2T Training Business Analyst Certification Program. For more information on the program, see page 4.
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What is a business data requirement? Why are these requirements important? • Review requirements categories and classifications. • What is the difference between business data and database design? • Review the 7 characteristics of “excellent” requirements. • Review the core requirements components. Entities and Attributes – 5 hrs. • Review the components of excellent project initiation and scope analysis. • Learn to use the context level dataflow diagram as a starting point for identifying data requirements. • Entity types are the basic building blocks of the business data. This section defines entities, gives suggested naming guidelines, teaches the importance of entity definitions, gives criteria to evaluate potential entities, describes entity unique identifiers, and has students identify and document entities from the case study. • Attribute types are characteristics of entity types. This section defines attributes, a data dictionary, gives suggested naming guidelines and class words, gives criteria to evaluate attributes, and has students identify and document attributes from the case study. • Templates for analyzing and documenting data requirements are provided.
Transition from Business Data to a Physical Design – 2 hrs. • Learn how to link the data and process elements to identify missing or incomplete requirements. Each essential process must use data, and each data element must be used by at least one essential process. • How does business data become a database design? Review the data requirements for completeness, understand how logical components are translated to physical components, and develop a strategy for maintaining the business requirements. • Introduction to database design. • Scope the design area using subject areas. • What is de-normalization? Why de-normalize a database design? Workshop - Identify and document data requirements for the case study – 4 hrs. • Identify and document entities. • Identify and document attributes. • Identify and document data related business rules. Appendix - Data Normalization – Optional • What is data normalization and why is it important? • What are the rules of normalization?
Entity Relationships and Diagramming Conventions – 4 hrs. • Learn how business data requirements are displayed in an entity relationship diagram. • Relationships are data associations that define the business rules of the project as they relate to data. This section defines relationships and business rules, gives suggested naming guidelines, teaches relationship cardinalities, and has students identify and document relationships from the case study. • Review common diagram notations for data related business rules. Detailing the Data Requirements – 5 hrs. • Detailing repeating data elements. Repeating attributes must be broken down into their components, properly named, and clearly documented with example data values. Students will refine their requirements document based on additional business requirements. • Detailing complex business rules. Complex business rules (many-to-many relationships) should be properly named and clearly documented with example data values. Students will refine their requirements document based on additional business requirements. • Detailing sub-category entities. Some business data naturally falls into sub-categories and should be documented as such.
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4 DAYS C E RT I F I E D C O R E C O U R S E
Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements Overview
In this course students will learn to: Understand and document the business environment using industry best practices. Use provided templates to elicit and document processes and business rules. Look beyond the current technology or procedures to discover the true nature of the business activity. Ask the right questions to identify the core business processes and analyze the business rules that control or guide them. Document functional requirements that specify how users will interact with the software and how the software will respond. Deliver consistent, detailed use case descriptions. Use several diagrams including the decomposition diagram, use case diagram, and workflow diagrams. Look at the business area objectively after business requirements are documented and organized to present alternative design solutions that meet the customer needs. Validate business processes against data requirements. Consider usability when developing prototypes.
Understanding business processes provides the foundational element of every business solution. This course focuses on the skills of elicitation and business analysis by defining the essential processes and business rules. The most effective approach to ensure business success is to understand the business environment and use this understanding to elicit and document business and functional requirements. Students are taught proven techniques to identify and define the essential business processes within the scope of the project and then detail them into functional requirements. These techniques include AS IS and TO BE modeling, workflow modeling, functional decomposition diagrams, use cases, and prototypes. Students will learn how and when to effectively use these techniques at the appropriate level of detail for varying audiences. Business rule analysis is also a key skill presented in this course. Business analysts are uniquely qualified to elicit and document process and business rule requirements because of their understanding of the business needs and the user's work environment. Business analysts are expected to analyze and understand business problems and present solution recommendations to the business stakeholders. Business process modeling adds value to projects by ensuring the technology solution will meet the business needs. This course supports and expands on the techniques in the IIBA BABOK® Guide V2.0. Mentorled workshops require students to practice the techniques as they learn. Students are encouraged to bring their own projects to class.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for business analysts, systems analysts, or any other project team members responsible for eliciting and documenting business requirements and designing functional requirements. Students are encouraged to bring examples of their requirements documents to the class for review and feedback. This course may also be appropriate for individuals who manage business analysts or those who work with the business requirements document and need a more indepth understanding of the process and documentation.
$2,395 per student
Public Class Schedule Feb 22 – Feb 25, 2010 • Dallas, TX
Apr 26 – Apr 29, 2010 • Atlanta, GA May 24 – May 27, 2010 • Des Moines, IA Jun 21 – Jun 24, 2010 • Irvine, CA Aug 23 – Aug 26, 2010 • Chicago-Oakbrook, IL Oct 25 – Oct 28, 2010 • Orlando, FL
Prerequisites We recommend that students first attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis class or have experience in project scope definition and gathering requirements from subject matter experts.
Earn 28 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs 10 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
This class is a part of the B2T Training Business Analyst Certification Program. For more information on the program, see page 4.
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What are business requirements? Why are they important? • Review requirements categories and classifications. • What are the differences between business and functional requirements? • Review the 7 characteristics of “excellent” requirements. • Review the core requirements components. Identifying and Defining Essential Business Processes – 3 hrs. • Learn to identify essential business processes. An essential business process is a core requirement of the business area necessary to provide the right solution deliverable. Each business process must be clearly defined, consistently named, and completely decomposed. • Students are given a template to document this detailed information and learn to identify essential processes from a case study. • Learn to extract essential processes from realworld, detailed user description interview notes. • Learn to use the process template as both an interviewing and documentation tool. Capture metrics and key performance indicators for each process. • Learn to look for redundant or reusable processes. Process Analysis – 3 hrs. • Learn to organize essential business processes in a process outline and functional decomposition diagram. • Learn 3 major business process identification approaches and the situations in which each would work most effectively. • Students will use each approach to identify detailed processes from a case study. • Top down • Bottom up • Events (and tie events back to the scope model) Documenting Business Rules – 2.5 hrs. • Learn about types of business rules (structural and operational) and why each one should be documented. • Review data-related business rules as they are documented in an entity relationship diagram. • Learn to detail business rules that involve both data and process components. • Learn several techniques for documenting business rules. • Learn to extract business rules from different sources.
Finalizing the Business Requirements – 2.5 hrs. • Learn to link the data and process elements to identify missing or incomplete requirements. Each essential process must use data, and each data element must be used by at least one essential process. • Learn how test cases can help solidify requirements. • Review a requirements completeness checklist. • Obtain approval signoffs from appropriate stakeholders. Translating Business Requirements to Functional Requirements – 3.5 hrs. • Define the solution scope model. Once the analysis is complete and the business requirements have been documented, the project team defines and allocates the solution components that will support each business process. • Learn a six-step approach to defining the design area scope: • Document the functional design of each process. • Document business priority. • Document technical priority and estimated cost. • Break project into phases. • Workshop: Create a scope model using a use case diagram: • Define actors involved with the application. • Identify actor interactions. • Learn multiple techniques to derive use cases from essential business processes. • Obtain signoff. Utilizing Workflow Analysis – 3hrs. • Learn to create detailed process models in workflow diagrams using a number of techniques: • ANSI standard flowchart • Swimlane diagram • BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) • UML activity diagram • Understand the benefits of each diagram to target each technique to a specific audience and need. • Document AS IS and TO BE scenarios with responsibilities, decision points, and metrics.
Documenting System Functionality – 3 hrs. • Learn to identify use cases. • Outline each use case for a high-level understanding of broad behavior. • Identify primary path, alternate path, and exception paths. • Decompose large use cases into smaller subsets, identifying reusable use cases where possible. • Learn how and where to document system user messages. • Learn 8 steps for excellent use case generation. • Learn to create detailed use case descriptions. • Workshop: Learn to document detailed use case descriptions using the B2T template. Designing User Interfaces – 2 hrs. • Learn to use completed documentation to identify where prototypes are necessary. • Learn to document report requirements, including ad-hoc and predefined. • Create and document prototypes. • Learn to use provided templates to document field edits and screen functionality. • Review usability considerations. Documenting Non-Functional Requirements – 1 hr. • Identify requirements not previously addressed by business, functional, or technical requirement categories: • Performance requirements • Security requirements • Quality requirements • Scalability • Discuss the business analyst role in the documentation of these requirements. Workshop - Maintenance Case Study – 3 hrs. • Identify essential processes and build a decomposition diagram. • Determine the design area scope. • Write a use case description. • Document functional requirements for an online screen, report, and manual procedure. Course Summary – 1 hr. • Review techniques appropriate for each project using real-world scenarios. • Pull it all together; review the complete steps to business analysis.
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3 DAYS A D VA N C E D C O U R S E
Developing a Business Analysis Work Plan Overview Having trouble getting started with your business analysis work? Unsure about how much time to request from your project manager? Developing a business analysis work plan will prevent major problems by ensuring that all of the appropriate stakeholders are involved and the requirements will be analyzed and presented using the most effective communication approaches. This class teaches students to consider all of the project and stakeholder characteristics before deciding on appropriate deliverables and producing a time estimate. The work plan also helps the business analyst develop realistic time estimates based on the chosen deliverables. These estimates provide detailed justification for negotiation with project managers and project sponsors. During class students are presented the Business Analysis Planning Framework™ and are given worksheets to guide their planning efforts.
Students are encouraged to bring their own project initiation documentation for a current or past project to the class. During the workshops, students will develop their business analysis work plan. If students do not have a project, a class case study is available and should be reviewed prior to the first day of class. Regardless of when the BA joins a project or the project type, this class will guide planners to deliver an intelligent business analysis work plan to the project manager and have a detailed roadmap upon which they can immediately begin to execute. The business analysis work plan may be a single sheet of brief notes on a small project or a more formal document on larger projects. Regardless of the output produced, an excellent business analyst thinks through the plan before starting work. This course supports and extends the techniques in the IIBA's BABOK® Guide V2.0.
“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.” - Kenichi Ohmae, management consultant
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is intended for anyone who is interested in learning a practical approach to planning the necessary business analysis tasks for their project.
$1,995 per student
Public Class Schedule Mar 8 – Mar 10, 2010 • Atlanta, GA
Prerequisites Business analysts registering for this course must have attended Essential Skills for Business Analysis, or have at least 2 years experience in requirements elicitation, analysis, and documentation using structured techniques. Contact B2T Training if you would like to pass out of these prerequisites.
Earn 21 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
12 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Sep 27 – Sep 29, 2010 • Chicago-Oakbrook, IL
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • Business analysis planning. • Overview of business analysis planning activities. • Discuss the relationship of the project manager and the business analyst in planning. • Use of the BA Planning Framework™ approach to planning. • Project - Understanding the project characteristics. • People - Identifying stakeholders and planning for communications. • Process - Planning the analysis activities. • Root cause analysis and the fishbone diagram. • The business analysis work plan. Planning for Different Types of Projects – 4 hrs. • Introduce the concepts of plan driven vs. change driven approaches to projects. • Planning around unique project characteristics: • A large development project. • Enhancement or maintenance projects. • A COTS (commercial off-the-shelf software) project. • A reporting or data warehouse project. • A process improvement or re-engineering effort. • An infrastructure upgrade (getting a new e-mail or operating system). • Planning around methodology and process characteristics: • An outsourced or off-shore development project. • Iterative style development methodology. • Agile style development process. • Group workshop: Discuss planning considerations for case study projects Project - Understanding the Project Characteristics – 4 hrs. • Let’s get started - A checklist to assess the current state of the project and to help get started. • The Project Overview Worksheet - Is the project clearly defined? • Business objectives • Problems/opportunities • Requirements scope • High-level business processes • The Business Impact Worksheet - What is the relative importance of the project to the organization? • Size (number of stakeholders, number of business processes involved, number of business rules). • Importance (estimated cost, potential benefits, criticality of business area, level of key stakeholders). • Risk analysis (project, business, technology). • Enterprise analysis - Understanding how this project fits into the organization's overall strategy. • Group workshop - Assess the project and score the business impact of a sample project.
People - Stakeholder Analysis and the Communication Plan – 4 hrs. • Why plan for stakeholder interactions? • Assess the project sponsor • Identify both primary and secondary stakeholders: • Searching for all stakeholders, not just the obvious ones • Understanding each stakeholder’s area of concern • Documenting stakeholder’s needs • Consider the characteristics of each stakeholder group • Determine effective communication practices for each stakeholder group: • Is this group providing requirements, using requirements, or supporting the project work? • Which elicitation technique(s) will be most effective? • What requirement presentation format will be most comfortable for this group? • The Stakeholder Analysis Worksheet • When and where will communications with each stakeholder be most effective? • What are the best communication techniques for each stakeholder? • Group workshop - Identify and analyze the stakeholder groups for an example project and identify the appropriate communication techniques Process - Planning the Analysis Activities – 3.5 hrs. • Plan the analysis activities • Step one - Assess which requirements components are needed? • Step two - Determine which deliverables are needed using the Deliverable List Worksheet • Step three - Develop an approach for creating each deliverable using The Deliverable Worksheet • Consult with organizational standards/ methodologies for required deliverables.
Ongoing Requirements Management – 1 hr. • What is Requirements Management? • Using a requirements repository • Develop a requirements management plan • Reusing existing requirements • Reusing existing data • Identifying requirements attributes • Plan for requirements traceability • Learn about traceability matrices and requirements links • Understand the purpose of forward and backward traceability • Determine which requirements should be “traced” • Determine the appropriate approach for managing traceability • Exercise: Perform impact analysis using traceability Course Summary – 0.5 hr. • Final thoughts • Planning Worksheet Map • Optional Exercises Appendix - Advanced Project Initiation Requirements – Optional • Advanced project initiation requirements: • Learn techniques to identify strong project objectives. • Learn a technique to help subject matter experts scope a project with unclear boundaries. • Group workshop - scope an unclear project. Appendix - Advanced Topics – Optional • Developing a cost/benefit analysis for a business case • Evaluating software applications for purchase (COTS)
Creating the Business Analysis Work Plan – 3 hrs. • Step one - Create the business analysis task list • Step two - Estimate analysis time • Using historical and expert data to estimate • Tracking actual time to estimate • Step three - Finalize the business analysis work plan • Group workshop - develop a task list of analysis and requirements activities for a sample project. • Intelligent negotiation skills. • Getting signoff on the plan. • Base lining the plan and initiating change control.
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 13
3 DAYS A D VA N C E D C O U R S E
Facilitating Requirements for Business Analysis Overview The art of bringing people together, face-to-face or remotely, to elicit requirements and gain consensus on solutions is a critical success factor for all business analysis professionals. This course teaches facilitation techniques that can be used for structured sessions and “facilitation-onthe-fly.” This course goes beyond traditional facilitation training by focusing on facilitation techniques specific to gathering business and functional requirements. This class is limited to 8 students, allowing each student the opportunity to practice facilitating multiple requirements sessions in a “safe” environment with personalized feedback. Students will spend 60% of class time participating in interactive, real-world business case studies and performing each key role in at least one session. The workshops in this course require students to plan the requirements workshop, develop the correct questions to ask the group, and facilitate the group to a consensus on the requirements using one of the learned techniques. Students will conduct a requirements workshop for at least one requirement deliverable (i.e., context level dataflow diagram, workflow diagram). This course supports and expands on the techniques in the IIBA BABOK™ v2.0.
In this course students will learn to: Facilitate using proven techniques for eliciting detailed business, functional and non-functional requirements. Identify when and how to use each technique. Develop confidence and a skill set to conduct requirements workshops. Actively practice learned skills and techniques. Use a requirements planning session template. Prepare the participants for the requirements session. Perform each facilitation role through role playing each session. Conduct the session to stay focused on the core requirement that was planned as a deliverable. Select which facilitation technique to use for each core requirement being gathered. Complete checklists for managing and conducting the session. Facilitate a requirements workshop.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for experienced, knowledgeable business analysts or project mangers involved with requirements elicitation and analysis. Students are expected to understand the purpose of business and functional requirements.
$1,995 per student
Prerequisites
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
We recommend that students first attend our Essential Skills for Business Analysis class or have experience in project scope definition, eliciting requirements from subject matter experts, and understanding how business requirements fit into the entire systems development effort.
Earn 21 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
14 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Public Class Schedule Apr 19 – Apr 21, 2010 • Las Vegas, NV Oct 4 – Oct 6, 2010 • Atlanta, GA
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • Learn guidelines for requirements facilitators. • Set session rules and manage the session. • Learn reactive techniques to use during the session: • Encourage participation. • Manage group focus. • Manage group conflict. • Consider remote facilitation techniques. Student Workshop – 1.5 hrs. • Conduct a mini-requirements workshop. • Practice techniques used for requirements workshops. Session Feasibility – 1 hr. • Determine when requirements workshops are appropriate: • Determine need/requirements deliverable desired. • Determine commitment level. • Determine risks. • Practice determining session need using realworld scenarios. • Review the core requirements components and discuss how they are best gathered. • Learn when not to use requirements workshops.
Planning and Preparing for a Facilitated Session – 4 hrs. • Plan the session: • Determine the number session(s) needed and the length of the session(s). • Document the purpose of the session. • Identify potential participants. • Define session requirements deliverables. • Document the plan using session planning templates. • Prepare for a session: • Outline the goals and requirements deliverables. • Select session participants and determine if pre-session interviews are appropriate. • Learn facilitation techniques: • Brainstorming • Consensus building • Flowcharting • Force field analysis • Hip pocket techniques • Nominal group • Root cause analysis • Storyboarding • Facilitating across distance • Develop focused questions to gather requirements: • Direct • Open-ended • Clarifying • Leading • Re-focusing • Create a detailed agenda for the facilitation team. • Learn group-oriented facilitation techniques. • Create a formal agenda for the session participant. • Orient the facilitation team. • Prepare the facilities.
Conducting the Session – 1 hr. • Learn the stages of group development/productivity. • Facilitate decision making – work toward consensus. • Conducting the session: • Introducing the session. • Managing the session. • Creating a follow-up action plan. • Review/approve requirements deliverables. Student Workshop – 8 hrs. • Plan and conduct a requirements workshop. • Use one or more of the learned facilitation techniques. • Produce the requirements deliverable using one of the facilitation techniques. • Personal feedback will be provided to drive skill development. Session Follow-Up – 1 hr. • Produce the final requirements document. • Share session feedback. • Determine the next steps to finalize the requirements.
Student Workshop – 3.5 hrs. • Each student will practice elicitation techniques in a requirements workshop. • Personal feedback will be provided to drive skill development.
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 15
2 DAYS A D VA N C E D C O U R S E
Requirements Validation Overview This course takes you through the steps to ensure that business requirements are validated, that the solution is usable and meets the business needs. Validating requirements improves the likelihood of project success, making sure that we are building the right solution. The cost to correct a software defect may be as high as 2900 times the cost to correct a requirement. Finding missing requirements and requirements inconsistencies decreases the overall length and cost of the project. Business analysis and quality assurance professionals must use risk assessments to prioritize requirements and requirements validation activities. The highest risk areas of the business must be addressed first. This course teaches business and quality analysts to design efficient requirements validation tests to make the best use of limited resources and time.
This course answers many of the key questions about requirements validation including: How do we validate requirements? Which types of validation and verification processes are appropriate for my project? How does the team ensure that the solution meets the business stakeholder needs? Where does validation fit in the software development life cycle (SDLC)? What is software usability? Why is it important? How does the team correct problems when they are discovered? How do I work with technical members of the solution team? What do they need from a BA to be successful?
Solution Assessment and Validation is one of the key knowledge areas in the IIBA BABOK® Guide V2.0. This course addresses many of the important tasks in the knowledge area along with giving business analysts the ability to design efficient and effective tests to demonstrate that the application solutions meets their user’s needs.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for business analysts, quality analysts, project managers, or anyone interested in improving and validating the quality of their requirements.
No public classes currently scheduled.
Public Class Schedule No public classes currently scheduled.
Prerequisites We recommend that the Business Analyst has already attended our 3 core courses (or at a minimum Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements) before enrolling for this course.
Earn 14 IIBA CDUs and PMI PDUs
16 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What are requirements? • Understand the value of acceptance and evaluation criteria • How do we validate requirements? • When should requirements be validated? • Who validates requirements? Validating and Testing Requirements – 3 hrs. • What does it mean to validate requirements? • Conducting effective structured walkthroughs of requirements. • Review guidelines. • Examine a sample review invitation and results form. • Review question checklists. • How do reviews improve future projects? • Workshop: validate requirements using a formal review • Introduction to usability testing. • Effective user acceptance testing (UAT). • Conduct a post implementation user assessment to identify lessons learned. • How to correct problems that are discovered during requirements validation? • Use a consistent problem tracking procedure. • Track defect/problem types to improve requirements on future projects. • Assess each problem for its type, severity, and status. Usability Testing – 2 hrs. • Learn the principles of usability. • Learn how usability testing differs from traditional testing. • Discuss methods of usability testing. • Learn to use requirements to design usability tests. • Workshop: Conduct a usability test.
Documenting Requirements Validation Deliverables – 3 hrs. • Designing a requirements validation plan • IEEE testing templates. • What is a test design, test case, test procedure? • Identifying tests from requirements documentation. • Using use case descriptions to develop testing procedures. • Tracking test cases. • Workshop: Validating requirements using test cases. • Tracing test cases to requirements - cross checking the solution. • Designing a requirements validation plan. • Planning considerations: • Who will validate requirements? • How will this be accomplished? • Where are the highest risks? • Where will tests be conducted? • Who will conduct testing? • Who will review test results? • What test data will be used? Solution Assessment and Validation BABOK Knowledge Area – 2 hrs. • Understanding the tasks in the IIBA BABOK Solution Assessment and Validation. • Assess the proposed solution • Allocate requirements. • Assess Organizational Readiness. • Define Transition Requirements. • Validate Solution. • Evaluate Solution Performance.
Working with IT Stakeholders – 3 hrs. • Communicating with IT development stakeholders. • Verifying requirements or specification. • Unit testing. • Integration testing. • Systems testing. • Evaluate solution performance - validate non functional requirements. • Validate solution against requirements. • Business requirements. • Functional requirements. • Technical requirements. • Regression testing - re-testing after a change. • Testing environments. • Common IT testing methods. • White box and black box testing. • Positive and negative testing. • Choosing data values for testing. • Working with QA stakeholders. • Software quality assurance (SQA) planning and structure. • Utilizing SQA personnel throughout the SDLC.
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 17
3 DAYS SPECIALIZED COURSE
Business Analysis Essentials for Project Managers Overview The best way to guarantee success of any type of project is to have a strong, experienced Project Manager and strong, experienced Business Analyst. These two individuals, working together from the beginning of the project, set the stage for success by accurately planning and clearly defining the expected outcomes. Both roles are necessary because they are each responsible for a different set of tasks and they each possess a set of skills that complement each other. The two roles are closely tied, but exactly what are the similarities and differences, and why does a project need both? This course discusses the role of Business Analysts and the business analysis skills that a Project Manager should also possess. The business analysis skill set includes critical thinking skills, elicitation techniques and requirements analysis and management. Experienced project managers may already possess some of these skills, but may apply them differently than BAs. Understanding the complexity of the business analysis role will allow the PM and BA to work seamlessly and increase the project efficiency. Scoping is one of the most critical areas on which the PM and BA should work together. In addition to the project scope, as defined in the PMBOK™, the BA is responsible for defining the scope of business analysis. When these two components of scope are combined they define the entire boundary of the project. In this course, Project Managers will learn how Business Analysts define the scope of the area for which they will be performing analysis. This is just one example of a task with separate roles for the PM and BA. Understanding their unique roles is critical to project success.
In this course students will: Learn to analyze and scope the area of analysis to clarify the level and complexity of the business analysis effort needed for the project. Learn what is an excellent requirement and the difference between business and functional requirements. Learn the five core components necessary to analyze a business area. Be introduced to the most commonly used analysis techniques. Discuss alternatives for traceability of requirements. Plan an approach for analyzing, categorizing, and managing requirements. Determine the level of formality required and consider options for documenting and packaging requirements based on project type, priorities, and risks. Identify techniques and documentation options appropriate for the various software development. approaches and project types (COTS, maintenance, business process improvement, new development, etc). Understand how validating requirements impacts the project and the components of software testing. Review business analysis requirements to improve the quality of your deliverables.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course is designed for Project Managers who are responsible for reviewing requirements, managing the business analysis efforts, overseeing the testing efforts, or obtaining sign-off on the business analysis deliverables. For PMs who are also responsible for gathering the business requirements, we recommend that they attend all of the core courses on business analysis.
No public classes currently scheduled.
Prerequisites None
18 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Public Class Schedule No public classes currently scheduled. Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What is business analysis? • Review the major tasks performed by a business analyst. • Define the essential skills needed to perform these tasks. Project Participants and their Roles – 1 hr. • Identify typical project stakeholders and their roles. • Discuss how the business analyst interacts with these participants. Scoping the Project from the Business Analyst's Perspective – 4.5 hrs. • Understand why the project is being done. Without this understanding it will be difficult for business analysts to elicit and document the right requirements and focus their business analysis work in the appropriate areas. Get an introduction to Enterprise Analysis. • Understand the organizational environment. Identify the business stakeholders who will be involved in the project and how they will impact business analysis. • Learn to ask probing questions about the requirements scope and facilitate a discussion with project stakeholders using visual representations of the requirements boundaries. • Learn the context level dataflow diagram technique to identify and scope “what is” and, more importantly, “what is not” to be analyzed. Analyze interfaces with people, other organizations, existing systems, and other software applications. • Discuss how a business analyst should collect, organize, and maintain requirements for efficient analysis and reuse on future projects. • Workshop - Scope the class case study project. Defining and Detailing Requirements – 4 hrs. • What is a requirement? Why is it important to gather and document requirements? What are the criteria used to judge the quality of “excellent” requirements? • Learn how software developers use requirements. • Understand the difference between analysis of the business and design of the solutions or “business” vs. “technological” requirements. Why is it necessary to understand the business problem before deciding on a solution? • Learn the 5 core requirement components, what they describe, and why they are important. • Entity • Attribute • Process (Use Case) • External Agent (actor) • Business Rule
Requirements Analysis Techniques – 5 hrs. • Learn the recommended approach to categorizing requirements. Why should requirements be categorized? Who uses each category? Why is it difficult to create distinct categories? • Business Requirements • Functional Requirements • Technical Requirements • Learn the concept of traceability of requirements. • Discuss the most commonly used analysis techniques to organize and refine requirements. Business analysts should have expertise in many analysis techniques to be able to adapt to different types of projects and businesses. • Structured textual templates (process descriptions, data descriptions, business rules, use cases) • Entity relationship diagram • Decomposition diagram • User stories, use case diagram and use case descriptions • Workflow diagram (UML, BPMN, ANSI, swim lane) • Prototyping • Consider options and level of formality for packaging requirements and choosing the appropriate documentation techniques for each project. • Review currently available software tools that can be used for requirements management. • Workshop – Put into practice several of the analysis techniques on the course case study requirements.
Course Summary – 1.5 hrs. • Review business analysis tasks and skills. • Workshop – Draft an initial Business Analysis Communications Plan for a CRM project. • Develop an Action Plan with next steps on the student’s current project. • Student questions/discussion topics. Appendix - Overview of Application Development Processes and Standards – Optional - as time allows • Discuss various methodologies for application development. • Learn which models are used in each approach: • Waterfall • Information Engineering • IDEF • RAD • Iterative/Agile • BPMN • Object Oriented - UML • Spiral/RUP
Conducting a Requirements Review – 2 hrs. • Learn how to conduct a requirements review: Who should participate? What are the required steps? How is a session conducted? What are the common challenges? • Workshop - Review a sample requirements package. • Identify missing or incomplete requirements. • Identify potential test cases. • Document issues and develop an approach for going forward. Validate the Requirements – 2 hrs. • Understand the role of business analysis in validating requirements and software testing. • Introduction to software testing: Why is testing important? What is the business analyst's role in testing? What is the primary objective of testing? What are the phases and types of testing? • Learn to verify that the business requirements are complete by identifying test cases. • Practice identifying test cases and refining requirements based on quality assurance principles.
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 19
3 DAYS SPECIALIZED COURSE
Business Process Improvement (BPI) using BPMN Diagramming Overview Every business is searching for better ways of getting work done. Improving efficiency, decreasing costs, increasing productivity and customer service are goals that are universal. The best way to identify process improvements is to: 1) study the current procedures, 2) find the core or essential work being done, and 3) re-design the way this essential work is accomplished. This course teaches an approach to these three steps that is very structured and has proven successful in thousands of organizations. Process improvements may include procedural changes, software changes, organizational changes, personnel changes, etc. When the analyst understands the core business processes they can suggest alternative solutions which meet core business needs while improving the way that work gets done. Management can then evaluate each alternative for its potential improvement and the cost of implementation. BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) is quickly becoming the standard modeling notation for presenting process models. It is a structured approach to representing business processes in an easy to review format that can be read and understood by business stakeholders along with technical stakeholders. This common "language" makes business process re-design much easier to develop and communicate.
In this course students will learn to: Start a BPI project with clear objectives and an agreed upon goal. Define key terms used by the business domain to improve communications within the business. Identify and document complex business process steps in an easy to review diagram using industry standard notation. Schedule and conduct discovery/elicitation sessions to learn about current business processes. Ask detailed questions to get a complete understanding of business procedures, business rules, information use and events that impact the business process. Identify the most important business component: Essential Processes. Decompose complex processes into lower level tasks and sub-processes. Conduct a formal review of a process model to assure accuracy. Identify areas for process improvement by reviewing AS IS models. Develop process re-design strategies and present them for approval.
Intended Audience
Public Pricing
This course will be beneficial to any person, in any size organization, hoping to improve their business processes. The techniques presented can be used without any sophisticated software to quickly identify areas for improvement and fix broken processes.
No public classes currently scheduled.
Prerequisites None
20 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
Public Class Schedule No public classes currently scheduled. Visit www.b2ttraining.com for other dates and to register!
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • Discuss the definition of business process improvement. • Formulate strong project objectives and goals. • Learn the importance of the glossary to process modeling. AS IS Workflow Analysis – 5 hrs. • Utilize workflow analysis to understand the current business process (AS IS). • Discuss key terms in process modeling and their subtle differences (process, sub-process, function, activity, essential process, task, procedure). • Learn to create detailed Business Process Diagrams (BPD) using BPMN workflow modeling. • Identify and define process participants using Pools and Lanes. • Learn the key BPMN symbols and their usage (tasks, connections, events, gateways). • Discover and analyze tasks in the business domain. • Identify events within the business process including delays, communications, and triggers. • Decompose complex processes into subprocesses and create related diagrams. • Use data artifacts to collect and analyze information currently used by the business. • Collect metrics or measurements for business tasks to use for process improvement prioritization. • Learn to capture business rules during analysis and document them in a useful fashion. • Learn to review a business process model looking for process improvement opportunities. • Learn an approach to managing your workload on a large business process modeling project. • Workshop: Create an AS IS Business Process Model for the course case study and present it to the class. Essential Business Process Modeling – 3 hrs. • Learn to identify essential business processes. An essential business process is a core requirement of the business area necessary to re-design the process for improvement. Each process must be clearly defined, consistently named, and completely described. • Learn to extract essential processes from detailed user descriptions and the AS IS process models. • Learn to identify redundant and reusable processes. • Use an interviewing template to document business narratives for each essential process.
Process Analysis – 3 hrs. • Learn to organize essential business processes in a process outline or decomposition diagram. • Learn to decompose business processes into sub-processes and tasks. • Workshop: Identify and present essential processes for the class case study. Conducting a Requirements Review – 1-2 hrs. • The best way to verify that business process models are correct is to conduct a formal review. Learn how to conduct a requirements review: Who should participate? What are the required steps to ensure success? How is a session conducted? What are the common challenges? • Workshop: Review a business process model (a case study will be provided or students may bring a project to class for review). TO BE Workflow Analysis – 5 hrs. • Review BPMN AS IS Models and transition to a TO BE Model. • Identify areas for improvement from the AS IS Models. • Review current process metrics. • Examine handoffs and communications between process participants. • Prioritize areas for improvement. • Brainstorm on TO BE alternatives. • Create TO BE models with a re-design or the business procedures supporting the essential processes. • Use Root Cause Analysis to find the true reason for each problem. • Involve all stakeholders in developing alternative solutions and evaluating each one. • Perform gap analysis to analyze gaps between the AS IS Process and the recommended TO BE Process. • Workshop: Create a TO BE Business Process Model for the course case study and present it to the class. Elicitation Techniques – 2-3 hrs. • Learn to use and determine the appropriate elicitation techniques for gathering process information: • One-on-one interviews • Requirements workshops • Surveys • Brainstorming • Document analysis • Focus Group • Job shadowing/observation • Competitive analysis • Interface analysis • Prototyping • Reverse engineering
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 21
0.5 DAYS SPECIALIZED COURSE
Overview of Business Analysis Overview This seminar presents the business analyst role to managers and others who lead and work with business analysts. In order for the business analyst to be successful, both the IT and business community must embrace the business analysis process. The seminar can be used as a working session to discuss how your organization will implement the business analysis process and approaches for documenting the requirements. Both large and small organizations are realizing the benefits of using Business Analysts on all of their application development projects. A business analyst acts as a liaison between business people who have a business problem and
technology people who know how to create automated solutions. Improving the communication between your business areas and your IT team significantly increases the quality of the systems developed. A business analyst’s main responsibility is to elicit, analyze, and communicate requirements in a format that is useful to their business stakeholders and the technical developers. Analysis is a very important and time-consuming phase of every project. Business analysts need strong leadership as they elicit, analyze, and document requirements that are often unclear, inconsistent, and expensive. Business Analysts work most effectively when they have clear direction and frequent reviews of progress.
Course Outline Introduction – 0.5 hr. • What is the role of a business analyst? • Review the major tasks performed by the business analyst. • Define the essential skills needed to perform their tasks. • Identify other project participants and their roles. • Discuss how the business analyst interacts with these participants. Managing Project Scope – 0.5 hr. • What are the key components of a project initiation document? • Business analysts must understand why the project is being done so that they can focus their analysis work in the appropriate areas. BAs should be involved in the development of project scope. • Manage the change control process to ensure that once the scope of the project has been approved, all project participants will operate within the scope or formally approve any scope changes. • Keep your business analyst within the scope of the project. Documenting Requirements – 1 hr. • Understand what is a requirement and why is it important to gather and document requirements. • Learn the recommended approach to categorizing requirements. Why should requirements be categorized? Who uses each category? Why is it difficult to create distinct categories? • Business requirements • Functional requirements • Technical requirements
• Understand the difference between analysis and design or “business” vs. “technological” requirements. Why is it necessary to understand the business problem before deciding on a solution? • The requirements package. Review the components of the requirements package and look at a sample of the structured text, diagrams, and format. • Overview of the core requirements components: data, process, externals, business rules. Why is it important for business analysts to document each component? Planning the Analysis Work – 1 hr. • Assist business analysts with identifying the sources of information, scheduling information gathering sessions, getting user commitment, scheduling requirements reviews. • Discuss how a business analyst should collect, organize, and maintain project information. • Determine the project type and which requirements are appropriate. • Assist business analysts in deciding the appropriate requirements format for the project. • Use the project scope documentation to estimate the time required to complete business analysis. • Understand the project and business risks to help keep business analysts focused in the right areas. • Understand the user and stakeholder viewpoints and goals for the project. • Make analysis tools available for the business analyst.
Managing the Requirements Process – 0.5 hr. • Supporting the requirements gathering process. • Resolve project issues and problems by working with the project sponsor. • Assisting the business analyst with complex requirements. • The importance of formal requirements peer reviews. • Project success factors. Current Industry Trends – 0.5 hr. • Application development project trends. • Why do 80% of all projects fail to meet the business unit’s original objectives? • Analysis and testing are the most resource intensive activities - make the best use of these resources. • What happened to methodology? • Working with fewer IT personnel, off shore and contract programmers, outsourcing companies. • Globalization causes the rate of change in business to increase. • Introduction to the business rules approach. • Current status of UML and the Object Oriented approach. • The importance of enterprise systems and reusability. • Where do business analysts come from? Who makes a great business analyst?
This course is customized for each organization’s unique environment to maximize the effectiveness of the business analysis practice.
22 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
1 DAY SPECIALIZED COURSE
Developer’s Introduction to Business Analysis Overview This class provides an overview of the Business Analyst role and a detailed review of the Requirements Document provided to the development team. To ensure an integrated team, IT developers need to understand the role of the Business Analyst. They should also be familiar with the requirements that Business Analysts are gathering and documenting. This includes understanding categories of
requirements, the core requirement components, and the documentation formats used for each type of requirement. IT team members must also understand the testing life cycle and the personnel involved. This course gives students an overview of the role of the Business Analyst, requirements documentation, and software testing.
Course Outline Introduction – 1 hr. • What is the role of a business analyst? • Review the major tasks performed by the business analyst. • Define the skills needed to perform their tasks. Project Participants and their Roles – 0.5 hr. • Identify project participants and their roles • Discuss how the business analyst interacts with these participants. Defining and Detailing Requirements – 1.5 hrs. • What is a requirement? Why is it important to gather and document requirements? What are the criteria used to judge the quality of “excellent” requirements? • Understand the difference between analysis and design or “business” vs. “technological” requirements. Why is it necessary to understand the business problem before deciding on a solution? • Learn the 5 core requirement components, what they describe, and why they are important. • Entity • Attribute • Process (Use Case) • External Agent (Actor) • Business Rule
Documenting Requirements – 2 hrs. • Learn the recommended approach to categorizing requirements. Why should requirements be categorized? Who uses each category? Why is it difficult to create distinct categories? • Business requirements • Functional requirements • Technical requirements • Review a sample requirements package including: • Textual templates • Entity relationship diagram • Decomposition diagram • Use case diagram and scenarios • Workflow diagram • Prototyping Validate the Requirements – 1 hr. • Introduction to software testing: Why is testing important? What is the business analyst’s role in testing? What is the primary objective of testing? What are the phases and types of testing? • Learn the two main testing documents: test plans, test cases. • Learn to verify that the business requirements are complete by identifying test cases.
This course is customized for each organization’s unique environment to maximize the effectiveness of the business analysis practice.
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 23
SELF STUDY OPTIONS
Self Study Options Study Guides B2T Training offers study guides for experienced business analysts who would like to obtain certification. The study guides, like our certification program, are based on our three core courses. The study guides help business analysts practice and review material to validate their understanding of business analysis techniques and approaches. Additionally, these study guides are appropriate for business analysts who are considering pursuing training, but are not sure at what level they should begin training. These study guides will help identify areas where business analysts may need to strengthen their knowledge. Each study guide includes an initial online assessment test and two online practice exams consisting of multiple choice questions that test a business analyst’s knowledge regarding each proficiency area. Feedback provided for each response to the questions gives further assistance and insight for studying.
Additionally, each study guide consists of a textual file that includes high-level content review for each course’s proficiency area, a case study with analysis exercises, and a list of recommended additional study resources. This file will be made available for use to download as a “pdf.”
$99
each To purchase a study guide visit www.b2ttraining.com.
Requirements Template Roadmap Each project that a business analyst works on is unique and may require different combinations of requirements components. Templates provide a checklist for planning requirements work. The Requirements Template Roadmap helps the business analyst choose appropriate templates to use for each project. To assist business analysts in documenting requirements, we offer a Requirements Package Template that is available on the “Downloads” section of our website. The templates in this package provide business analysts with a structured format for eliciting and documenting requirements. Standard, re-usable templates allow for faster and easier requirements review and approval.
24 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
The Requirements Template Roadmap may be used as a companion to B2T Training’s Requirements Package Template. This “Roadmap” serves as a reference tool for business analysts when completing the requirements package based upon the templates. Using this Roadmap as a guideline or “map” for the requirements templates will help business analysts determine what to include in a requirements package, who should prepare A “must have” which sections of the package, and when and why the reference tool requirements components $19.95 should be prepared. Additionally, the Roadmap provides examples of complete requirements templates. The Requirements Template Roadmap is available for purchase at www.b2ttraining.com.
SELF STUDY OPTIONS
Education is ongoing. Go beyond the classroom with easy-to-access online resources! B2T Training Web Site BA Blog Downloadable templates Library BA tools CBAP Study Guide the bridge archives
Online Communities Business Analysis Times (www.batimes.com) LinkedIn BA groups (www.linkedin.com) BA Collective (www.bacollective.com) Business Rules Community (www.brcommunity.org) Business Process Management (www.bpm.com) International Institute of Business Analysis (www.theiiba.org) Modern Analyst (www.modernanalyst.com) Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org) Requirements Networking Group (www.requirementsnetwork.org)
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/B2T_Training
Now Available at www.b2ttraining.com and all major booksellers “Barbara Carkenord has put together an excellent ‘How to’ manual to help BAs deliver on the value of business analysis to their organizations. The step-by-step instructions provide a practical guide to the practicing BA, translating her experience and insight to show you what it takes to be a great BA.” - Kathleen Barret President, IIBA “Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis has gone beyond what we discuss in the BABOK™ to address the real challenges business analysts face in the workplace. I wish this book had been available years ago, but I’m glad that BAs have the opportunity to benefit from it today!” - Kevin Brennan, CBAP® Vice President, Body of Knowledge, IIBA
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 25
MENTORING
Business Analysis Mentoring Our classes include one hour of after class business analysis mentoring for each student. Students love having the opportunity to work with an industry expert to apply techniques learned in class to their unique situations during a one-on-one session.
In the current economic climate, organizations need to maximize the capabilities of their existing business analysis practitioners. Effective business analysis training and mentoring can help companies raise employee results. Proper business analysis mentoring can give access to new ideas, tips and strategies that will help you build upon the team’s current skills and strengths to give you a competitive edge. Learn how to drive more revenue by leveraging your business analysts. Mentoring is available additionally as an on-demand service to jump start a new project, a new skill development effort, and to reinforce concepts or techniques. This real time service is provided by our experts at B2T Training onsite or virtually. Virtual mentoring can be purchased online. Examples of mentoring assistance provided: Guidance for selecting the appropriate deliverables for your project Assistance in determining and estimating business
analysis activities Strategies for effectively engaging all stakeholders
and project team members Coaching you to become a more agile BA Provide direction for adapting and customizing
templates Help with roles, career paths and skill development
identification Direction for building and sustaining a Community of
Practice or Center of Excellence Contact us at 866.675.2125 or email sales@b2ttraining.com for more information.
26 B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com
CBAP STUDY GUIDE
CBAP® Study Guide v2.0 The CBAP Study guide is the “nucleus” of studying for the exam. This study guide provides tips, suggestions and other guidance needed to help prepare individuals for the CBAP exam. Get prepared for the CBAP exam at your own pace by: Answering questions in each knowledge area to assess where your experience requires more development. Learning valuable tips for exam prep and exercises to
strengthen your memory skills Practicing over 450 sample CBAP exam questions
written by CBAPs Understanding why an answer is correct or incorrect
to reveal areas that may need more targeted conditioning Focusing on key BABOK® concepts to maximize your
study effects
“After many years of no formal study, I found it almost impossible to concentrate on subject matter that I believed I already knew and had been practicing for years. Your study guide is not an alternative to the BABOK. It led me to read the BABOK several times; each time with an inquiring mind to examine how the authors’ views differed from mine.
Purchase our CBAP Exam Prep Study Guide v2.0 on our website for only $149!
High marks on the choice of the 450 questions. The ‘practice exam’ format perfectly prepared me to comfortably pace myself in the exam that I had ample time to recheck my answers.”
B2T Training • 866.675.2125 • www.b2ttraining.com 27
11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 Alpharetta, GA 30009 www.b2ttraining.com
B2T Training International Partners
B2T Training’s public classes Core Courses Essential Skills for Business Analysis - 4 Days Detailing Business Data Requirements - 3 Days Detailing Process and Business Rule Requirements - 4 Days
Canadian Partner Visit www.achieveblue.com for more information.
Advanced Courses Developing a Business Analysis Work Plan - 3 Days Facilitating Requirements for Business Analysis - 3 Days
South African Partner Visit www.indigocube.ca.za for more information.
Locations Atlanta, GA • Chicago, IL • Dallas, TX • Des Moines, IA • Hartford, CT • Irvine, CA • Las Vegas, NV • Louisville, KY • Orlando, FL RECEIVE A 10% DISCOUNT!
Australia Partner Visit www.pmworks.au for more information. Contact sales@b2ttraining.com if you would like to become an international partner.
1. When you register and pay for three courses. 2. When groups of 3 or more employees from the same company register and pay for one course.
Visit www.b2ttraining.com for the latest public class schedule, pricing information, and to register.