Martin Training Associates

C.O.R.E. Skills in IT Requirements

IT Requirements Workshop Overview

Capturing the user’s requirements is the foundation for any project, particularly IT projects. Learn a simple, step-by-step method for defining business, user and technical requirements that engages both the user and the team in the requirements gathering process. This three-day, highly interactive workshop is focused on skill building and so participants leave with skills as well as knowledge that they can immediately apply to their next project.

The methodology taught is based on Karl Wieger’s requirements engineering approach as outlined in his book, Software Requirements, published by Microsoft Press. Participants receive a copy of his book as a reference guide.

Participants spend a large percentage of the classroom time in skill building exercises that are case study driven. They practice each step of the easy to follow method in order to be prepared to practice the process when they leave the course. Lecture and group discussion enhance and ground the learning.

Target Workshop Audience

This seminar will be useful to business analysts, software developers, managers, user representatives, process improvement leaders, and anyone else engaged in gathering, documenting, analyzing, or managing customer requirements for software applications.

Length of Workshop

3 Days

The major learning objectives for the PM workshop include:

  • Work with the sponsor to start the project off in the right direction
  • Become a better project leader
  • Lead a team through a collaborative planning process
  • Maintain team member accountability during project execution

Benefits

The workshop will help you to:

  • Craft realistic and well-defined requirements agreements between development organizations and customers.
  • Structure diverse requirements information into well-organized documents.
  • Avoid ambiguous and incomplete requirements.
  • Align system functionality with user goals and organizational business objectives.
  • Build a collaborative relationship between analysts and customers.
  • Identify user classes and representatives of them to provide input during requirements development.
  • Facilitate clear communication by representing requirements in a variety of textual and visual ways.
  • Make appropriate business decisions to incorporate proposed requirements changes into a project.
  • Track project status by monitoring requirements status.
  • Avoid requirements-related miscommunications and errors that lead to expensive rework and customer dissatisfaction.

Learning Objectives PDUs

The workshop emphasizes many practical techniques, including:

  • Learn to capture the voice of the customer
  • The application of use cases for defining user needs and system functions
  • The development of the context diagram
  • A simple model for prioritizing requirements
  • An overview of modeling tools
  • Techniques for involving the customer in the requirements process
  • Writing quality technical requirements
  • Use of peer reviews to find requirements errors
  • Use of a requirements traceability matrix
  • Change control and more

Detailed Agenda

DAY ONE

  • Introduction
  • Requirements Overview
  • Requirements Development
  • Business Requirements
  • Voice of Customer

DAY TWO

  • User Requirements (Part 1)
  • User Requirements (Part 2)
  • Technical Requirements - Models

DAY THREE

  • Requirements Development (continued)
  • Technical Requirements - Writing
  • Verifying Requirements
  • Requirements Management
  • Requirements Close Out

PDU's

21 Units (3 day workshop)

Prerequisites

None

Materials Provided

Workshop notebook, Software Requirements Book