Audience
This course is designed for business and systems analysts, business users, team leaders and project managers.
Prerequisites
Those attending should have some basic knowledge of information systems development and information technology.
Duration
5 days. Lecture-based with examples and a case study.
This course is available on site only. Please call for details.
Course Objectives
It is generally recognised that incorrect requirements account for up to 60% of errors in software products. However, capturing, analysing and documenting business or system requirements well is not easy and a process for doing so, tailored to your organisation, goes a long way to helping.
This course takes delegates through the essentials of requirements elicitation, specification, documentation and traceability so that the complete requirements process is understood. In addition, vital, industry-standard techniques are included to ensure that all stakeholders, not just analysts, are able to participate fully in confirming the right requirements have been identified and used in the development process.
The requirements process and techniques covered are applicable to any development process from waterfall to agile. A healthy attitude to documentation is a feature of the course meaning that only essential information is documented.
At the end of the course, delegates will be able to:
- Adapt a generic approach to suit their organisational requirements.
- Identify relevant techniques to be used in the requirements process and where they are best used in the system development life cycle and in particular projects.
- Elicit requirements using appropriate fact-finding methods and techniques.
- Organise, prioritise and specify business and system requirements.
- Build data, process and use case models in support of requirements specifications.
- Understand how to ensure that traceability of requirements is carried through a complete project from end to end.
Course Content
The Requirements Process
Definition of a requirement.
Where do requirements come from?
Development life cycles.
Projects and planning.
Steps in the requirements process.
Requirements engineering.
Requirements management.
Requirements Elicitation
Planning for elicitation.
Brainstorming.
Document Analysis.
Interviews.
Observation.
Prototyping, tools for prototyping.
Facilitated Workshops.
Questionnaires.
Requirements Analysis
Prioritisation.
Organising requirements, functional decomposition, categories of requirements.
Requirements specification.
Requirements modelling techniques (use case, data and process modelling).
Assumptions and constraints.
Verification.
Validation.
Documenting requirements.
Use Case Diagrams
Use cases and requirements.
Actors and use cases.
Documenting use cases.
Include and extend relationships.
Developing use case diagrams.
Context diagrams and scope.
Modelling Data
Modelling required data.
Data model notation.
Entities, attributes and keys.
Relationships and cardinality.
Optional attributes.
Mutually exclusive relationships.
Developing a ‘to-be’ data model, business rules.
Modelling Processes
Modelling processes.
Activity diagrams.
Initial and final nodes.
Activities and flows.
Forks and joins.
Parallel activities.
Conditions, decisions and merges.
Swimlanes.
Representing time.
Developing a ‘to-be’ process model.
Requirements Traceability
Dependencies and inter-relationships.
Requirements coverage.
Traceability matrix.
Case Study
A realistic case study runs throughout the course, giving delegates the chance to put theory into practice.
In addition a number of templates for requirements specification documents are available as part of the course material.