BA00 - Business Analysis Boot Camp

An intensive course covering all aspects of the Business Analyst role - from requirements gathering to testing. All major techniques - both Structured & Object-Oriented (OO) - are addressed in this course.

Course Outline

An intensive course covering all aspects of the Business Analyst role – from requirements gathering to testing. All major techniques – both Structured and Object-Oriented (OO) – are addressed in this course. Each trainee receives a hard copy of all course material as well as a Job Aids booklet, containing useful templates, examples, guidelines and glossary for use back on the job.

Trainees facilitate requirements-gathering sessions and document the results over the course of a case-study project with an emphasis on the textual aspects of the documentation. Trainees learn state-of-the-art practices for gathering and documenting requirements based on the use case approach. The course covers what the facilitator needs to accomplish in each requirements-gathering session (goals, agenda, who to invite, artifacts, etc.) as the project progresses - starting from business use-case sessions that focus on the business context through to those that focus on user-IT interactions. Trainees also learn advanced techniques (extension, generalized and inclusion use cases) that result in requirements documentation that is easy to revise when business rules change.

The course follows today’s most widely accepted method of requirements capture – the popular ‘use case’ approach. The clear style and organization of use cases makes them well-suited as a source of test cases and for communicating with both business stakeholders and developers. In addition, use cases are a central aspect of iterative development methodologies such as IBM’s RUP and Microsoft’s MSF.

(Note: The course may be delivered with the use of the popular modeling tool, IBM Rational ROSE, when requested by the client.)
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 their job effectively, the result is incomplete or incorrect requirements - leading causes of spiralling 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 and by guaranteeing results through structured testing and quality assurance.

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.

Scenario-based training: One integrated case study is used throughout the course to provide a consistent context for learning.

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.
• IT Business Analysts
• Project Leaders
• Facilitators who will be leading requirements gathering sessions
• Business Users who will be explaining business requirements to software developers
• Systems Analysts expanding their role into the business realm.

Class Format The course content is presented through:

• An integrated case study based on a real-life system
• Lectures
• One-on-one assistance during the workshop portion of the course
• Working in small interview teams, trainees facilitate requirements-gathering sessions and document resulting requirements for an end-to-end case study, learning what types of interviews, questions and techniques are appropriate for each phase of the IT project.
• The approach is presented in an easy-to-follow step-by-step plan.
• Each step is introduced and demonstrated by the instructor. Trainees follow by actively facilitating and participating in requirements-gathering sessions

Objectives Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Improve the quality of interviews with users using techniques that guide you through the process, showing you what questions to ask and when.
• Conduct group (JAD) sessions for capturing and verifying requirements, using state-of-the-art interviewing techniques – including use cases and Object Oriented Analysis.
• Write a comprehensive and unambiguous Business Requirements Document, communicating the needs of the business to users and to the technical team.
• Use UML 2 – the current industry OO standard - in preparing business requirements and diagrams.
• Create requirements documentation that can be used as the basis for customized development, maintenance of existing systems and/or as selection criteria for off-the-shelf software.
• Gather business requirements using traditional Structured Analysis and Object-Oriented Analysis (OOA).
• Describe complex business logic and ensure completeness of testing using Decision Tables.
• Understand basic concepts of iterative development.
• Specify business processes with use cases.
• Assure quality through structured verification and validation techniques and use-case scenario testing.
• Facilitate requirements gathering sessions (with Business and System Use Cases).
• Examine the impact of the project on the enterprise through business use-case analysis.
• Create detailed textual requirements with the Use Case Description Template.
• Decrease software bugs and omissions introduced in the analysis phase of your project – by employing powerful use case techniques that reduce redundancies and inconsistencies in the documentation.
• Communicate effectively with the development team.
• Model high-level requirements with use case diagrams.
• Understand how use cases are used in the context of iterative development
• Link other relevant material to use cases – such as business entities, non-functional requirements and activity diagrams.

Content

• Brainstorming
• JAD (Joint Application Design)
• Business data modeling
• Entity Relationship Diagrams
• Use Case diagrams
• Work Flow Analysis
• Activity Diagrams
• Data Flow Diagrams
• Decision Tables
• Structured Testing principles and methods
• Structured Walkthroughs
• Black Box requirements-based testing including boundary value analysis
• Systems testing (Regression, volume, stress, usability, performance tests)
• Mapping Business Analysis tools to project development phases for:
• Waterfall methodologies
• Iterative methodologies
• Object-Oriented (OO) tools for the Business Analyst, using UML 2
• Use cases, Class diagrams  
• Introduction to Use Cases

    - History of Use Cases
    - Use cases and the Business Requirements Document
    - Link to other technologies:
         > OO, Iterative development

• Criteria for selecting projects
• Facilitating Requirements –Gathering Sessions with Use Cases

    - Rules for conducting use case workshop sessions
    - Preparation
    - Who should attend
    - Roles
    - Defining the Deliverables: When to best introduce and create:
          > Stakeholder Interest Table
          > Use Case Packages
          > Role Maps
          > Use Case Diagrams
          > Use Case Text

• Analyzing the impact on the Enterprise with business use cases.
• Eliciting and documenting detailed user requirements with system use cases
• Use Case Description Template for textual documentation
• Writing guidelines
• How to number the requirements
• Defining the users of the system:
• Role Map
• Defining actors, “generalized” and “specialized” actors
• Working with stakeholders to discover and document the textual requirements:
• Triggers
• Preconditions
• Postconditions
• Basic (Normal) Flow
• Alternate and Exceptional Flows
• Organizing the documentation for maximum reuse with inclusion, extension and generalized use cases.
• Links to other documentation

    - Data dictionary
    - Entity classes and class diagrams
    - Activity Diagrams
    - Non-functional requirements
    - Avoiding common errors

• Standard solutions for common situations:

    - Customer IVR identification
    - CRUD (Create/ Read/ Update/Delete)
    - Login
    - Technology variations
    - Customer self-service
    - Geographical sub-sites within an e-commerce application

•  Job Aids containing:

    - Templates
    - Tips
    - Examples
    - Glossary of technical terms
Daily Schedule Day 1: Lesson 1: The BA Role/ Interview Techniques
Lesson 2: Gathering Requirements with Use Cases
Lesson 3: Gathering Workflow and Complex Requirements
Lesson 4: Documenting Requirements for Legacy Systems using Structured Analysis

Day 2 Lesson 5: Gathering Business Data Requirements
Lesson 6: Practical Guide to Object-Oriented Analysis for the BA
Lesson 7: The BA Role in Testing
Lesson 8: Project Management for the BA

Day 3: Lesson 1: Introduction to Use Cases
Lesson 2: The Kick-off Meeting
               Analyze stakeholders and interests; identify high and mid-level objectives
Lesson 3: Analyze Business Use Cases
Lesson 4: Structure System Use Cases

Day 4: Lesson 5: Elicit and document System Use Cases/ Context and Basic Flow
Lesson 6: Elicit and document Alternate and Exception Flows
Lesson 7: Document inclusion, extension and generalized use cases
Lesson 8: Link use cases to other project artifacts (documentation and models

Additional Details

Pre-Requisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Certificates offered

Duration - 4 days CDUs (Continuing Development Units): 28 BABOK Compliance: BABOK Release 2

Cancellation Policy

Map & Reviews

CTE Solutions
[ View Provider's Profile ]

CTE Solutions Toronto
77 Bloor St West
suite 1406
Toronto, Ontario
Canada   M5S 1M2

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This course was great, very informative, had Lionel as instructor and he was also very good.

Reviewed by Robin T. 2012

   

Instructor was eager to assist but lacked subject matter expertise. Course time management was very poor. Content provided could have been delivered effectively in a one day course.

Reviewed by Inta N. 2012

   

Good Course, good trainer. All questions addressed equally and in a timely professional manner.

Reviewed by Joe L. 2011

   

The course content was interesting; however, the instructor didn't have enough knowledge about Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 Development and wasn't able to answer questions without google search. In the future CTE needs to make sure the instructors have real on-hands experience and are highly trained in the technologies they are supposed be teaching.

Reviewed by Heliana P. 2011