BA01: BA01: The Business Analysts Crash Course
About this Course
About This Course
A quick immersion course in all the key knowledge areas of Business Analysis.
Duration: 2 days (14 CDUs)
What’s changed:
- Expanded coverage of agile business analysis
- Application of BA tools to Maintenance and Enhancement projects
- Expanded coverage on creating high-quality tests from BA artifacts
Description:
An immersive, practical course covering all aspects of the Business Analyst role – from requirements elicitation to QA support. The emphasis of the course is on learning practical tools and techniques that can immediately be put to use in interactions with business stakeholders and the creation of subsequent requirements artifacts. All major tools and techniques, including Waterfall and Agile approaches – are addressed. The course supports the most up-to-date standards and guidelines in the industry, including the BABOK and the UML.
The course is applicable to all those serving a Business Analysis (BA) function – whether as part of other duties or as a dedicated role: New BA practitioners gain hands-on experience in applying Business Analysis techniques, while more experienced BAs are able to upgrade their skills and learn how all of the techniques fit together. Trainees learn not only how to use the tools for new development, but how to use the resulting BA artifacts after they’ve been developed to create quality tests and as effective inputs for future Maintenance and Enhancement (M&E) projects.
Each trainee receives a hard copy of all course materials as well as a Job Aids booklet, containing useful templates, examples, guidelines and glossaries for use back on the job.
Why:
- Most large companies and organizations that rely heavily on software for business operations, employ Business Analysts to communicate business needs to software developers. When analysts do not do their job effectively, the result is incomplete or incorrect requirements – leading causes of spiraling development costs and project delays.
- In the Crash Course, you’ll learn how to cut costs and delays by improving communication between business stakeholders and developers through comprehensive requirements analysis and documentation.
What makes this course stand out from the competition?
- Value for money: No course on the market offers this amount of content in so little time. How can we do this? By removing all of the “fat” traditionally found in BA courses.
- Tool-focused: This course focuses on the tools and techniques used by the BA to perform the role. Unlike in other introductory courses, you won’t waste time learning generalities; you’ll actually learn how to use the key BA techniques so you can hit the ground running.
- BABOK and PMI alignment: Our course is aligned with the most current release of the BABOK and is approved for CDU credits towards IIBA’s CBAP certification.. Our course designer, Howard Podeswa was a reviewer for both the BABOK and PMI’s Business Analysis Practice Guide. His Business Analysis Handbook, on which this course is based, is a PMI-recommended study book for PMI-BA certification.
- Trainees gain real hands-on experience using the tools during live interviews to discover requirements: We believe that BA tool are most effective when used upfront to structure effective interviews – rather than after the interview for documentation only. So we’ve designed our workshops so that trainees get practical experience facilitating requirements workshops while using the tools.
- Integrated learning: We use one integrated, case study, based on real systems, throughout the workshops so that trainees can learn trough experience how all the tools connect.
- Experience: Our course is written and delivered by professionals with extensive practical experience in business analysis.
Audience:
- Entry-level IT Business Analysts and their managers
- Self-taught IT Business Analysts requiring a course that fills in the gaps and puts all the pieces together
- Systems Analysts and programmers interested in expanding their role into the business area.
Prerequisites: none
Class Format:
The course content is presented through an integrated case study based on a real-life system, lectures and hands-on group workshops. Each tool/technique in the BA skill-set is introduced by the instructor, focusing on the benefits of the tool and the context in which it is used with specific guidelines for its effective use in engaging stakeholders and documenting the resulting requirements.
Objectives:
For the new BA:
- Gain hands-on experience in using essential business analysis tools in a realistic context, working with stakeholders in teams on an integrated case-study project
- Create requirements documentation that can be used as the basis for selection criteria for off-the-shelf software and IT services, customized 3rd party development and in-house development
- Articulate well-defined Problem Statements and be able to develop these into business and system requirements
- Learn when to most effectively use each technique and analysis modelFor the experienced BA:
- Upgrade your tool usage to the latest standards and best practices (UML 2.x, BABOK 3)
- Understand how all of the essential BA tools fit together over the course of a project in the performance of the BA role
Detailed objectives
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Understand the BA function, the different types of requirements and the process for developing high-level business goals into solution requirements
- Create well-defined Problem Statement
- Conduct effective requirements-workshop sessions with stakeholders for capturing and verifying requirements.
- Learn how and when to ask the right questions during requirements elicitation events.
- Create quality requirements documentation for an in-house or procured (external vendor) solution that is comprehensive, unambiguous and promotes consistency and reuse.
- Know when to use each technique and model
- Elicit and document user requirements with use cases.
- Understand the differences and similarities between use cases and user stories – and how both may be used to complement each other.
- Model business process workflow using activity diagrams with swim lanes.
- Be able to transition from the business context to IT solution requirements by examining workflow and using best-practice techniques for mapping process steps to system use cases.
- Capture detailed user requirements in system use-case specifications.
- Capture and document complex behavioral business rules using decision tables.
- Analyze the data dependencies between requirements using Structured Analysis Data Flow Diagram (DFD) models.
- Use Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) and UML Class Diagrams during interviews as effective tools for discovering definitional business rules before development or procurement – so that they aren’t missed until they become expensive to implement.
- Support QA by reviewing and ensuring the quality of the test strategy, test scenarios and test data using Structured Testing and Structured Walkthroughs and by knowing how to use BA artifacts as input to test design.
- Understand how Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and boundary-value analysis impact the BA role.
- Understand the relationship between the BA and PM roles and how the BA supports the PM in managing and tracing requirements.
- Understand the implications of agile on the BA function.
Course Outline
Day 1:
- Lesson 1: The BA Function and Requirements Elicitation
- Lesson 2: Analyzing High-Level Business Process Impact with Business Use CasesLunch
- Lesson 3: Business Process Modeling
- Lesson 4: Identifying Mid-Level User Requirements using the System Use-Case Model
Day 2
- Lesson 5: Refining the Requirements
- A: Analyzing Detailed User Requirements with System Use-Case Specifications
- B: Analyzing Behavioral Business Rules with Decision Tables
- Lesson 6: Documenting Process Requirements using Structured Analysis (DFDs)Lunch
- Lesson 7: Analyzing Definitional Business Rules Using Data Models and UML Class Diagrams
- Lesson 8: BA Relationship to QA and PM Roles
Customization:
The course can be customized for in-house delivery through the development of a client-specific case study. Workshops for the customized case study are developed by Noble prior to the engagement, in consultation with the client. The case study takes the form of a set of workshop problems and exercises in eliciting and documenting requirements and models in a team setting. Sample solutions are also developed beforehand as a guide and example of completed requirements artifacts for the project.
BABOK 3 Alignment:
This course addresses the following BABOK 3 knowledge areas and tasks:
Lesson
BABOK 3 Knowledge Areas
1: The BA Function and Requirements Elicitation
•Business Analysis Key Concepts (Chapt. 2) [20%]
•Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring [30%]
•Elicitation and Collaboration [20%]
•Strategy Analysis [Problem Statement, Plan Stakeholder Engagement [30%]
2: Analyzing High-level Business Process Impact with Business Use Cases
•Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD) [70%]
•Solution Evaluation (Gap Analysis) [15%]
•Strategy Analysis (Define Future State) [15%]
3: Business Process Modeling
•Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD) [90%]
•Solution Evaluation [10%]
4: Discovering and Modeling User Tasks with System Use Cases
•Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD [100%]
5: Refining the Requirements (Use Case Specifications, Behavioral Business Rules)
•Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD) [50%]
•Elicitation and Collaboration [25%]
•Solution Evaluation [25%]
6: Analyzing and Modeling Business Processes using Structured Analysis (DFDs)
•Requirements Analysis and Design Definition (RADD) [80%]
•Requirements Life Cycle Management (Maintain Requirements)[20%]
7: Analyzing Definitional Business Rules using Data Models (ERDs) and UML Class Diagrams
•Elicitation and Collaboration [80%]
•Requirements Life Cycle Management (Maintain Requirements)[20%]
8: BA Relationship to the QA and PM Roles
•Requirements Life Cycle Management (Maintain Requirements) [50%]
•Solution Evaluation [25%]
•Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring [15%]
•Strategy Analysis [15%]