Business Analysis Essentials

This 3-day course is designed to provide you a fundamental understanding of core business analysis tools used for planning, elicitation and documentation of requirements.

This course is appropriate for Project Managers, Senior Managers, subject matter experts, and other project resources and will provide you with a better understanding of the value business analysis can bring to a project and the basic tools used to bring that value.

Taught through a series of discussions, examples, and real world hands-on exercises drawn from IT projects and real life, you will walk out with basic tools that can be applied immediately to projects assigned to you, whether your primary role is of a Project Manager, Product Manager, Developer, Quality Assurance Manager or other core project team member. This course is based on BABOK® v2.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will gain practical skills to:

• Evaluate underlying business analysis competencies to gain an appreciation of how BAs add value to an organization.
• Distinguish and give examples of the differences between business analysis and project management.
• List and give examples of different requirement types.
• Analyze and document a business problem.
• Contrast viable solutions against developed decision criteria.
• Describe the important sections of a business case.
• Formulate criteria to determine best technique to elicit requirements.
• Elicit requirements from various stakeholders using various methods.
• Construct common requirement documentation deliverables.
• Analyze business requirements.
• Apply a robust requirement prioritization technique.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

The Business Analysis Essentials course is appropriate for:

• Project Managers
• Senior Managers
• Subject matter experts
• Product Managers
• Developers
• Quality Assurance resources
• Other project resources
• Business Analysts, both junior and senior, who want more comprehensive business analysis knowledge should consider our Comprehensive Business Analysis Seminar Part 1 & Comprehensive Business Analsysis Seminar Part 2, or our Certificate in Business Analysis.

PREREQUISITE

There are no prerequisites for this course. It functions as a stand-alone course.

MATERIALS

You will receive a course binder containing copies of presentation slides, case studies, exercises and suggested solutions.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

Introduction to Business Analysis

• Differences between BA and PM
• Essential skills for a BA
• BA deliverables
• The role of the BA on a project

Enterprise Analysis

• Problem Analysis
• Root Cause Analysis
• Affinity Charts
• Flow Charts
• Cause and Effect Diagrams
• Pareto Chart
• Understanding the Organization
• Developing a Business Case
• Writing a Problem Statement

Requirements

• Requirement Types
• Developing Scope
• Writing High Level and Detailed Requirements

Elicitation

• Planning Business Analysis Work
• Interviewing
• Surveys and Questionnaires
• Workshops
• Joint Application Design
• Focus Groups
• Observation
• Prototypes

Requirement Documentation

• Scenarios / Use Cases
• Process Modeling
• Flowcharts
• Data Flow Diagrams (DFD)
• Activity Diagrams
• Data Modeling
• Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD)
• Business Requirement Document (BRD)

Requirement Analysis

• Prioritizing requirements
• Organizing and Classifying requirements
• Traceability
• CRUD technique

Solution Assessment

• Determine Viable Options
• Developing Decision Criteria
• Recommending Solutions
• Cost Benefit Analysis