Effective Facilitation for Business Analysts (BA85)

In this highly interactive two-day course, you'll gain the skills to be an effective facilitator - one who can help stakeholders define their needs and form quantifiable requirements.

Course Outline

Acquire the facilitation skills necessary to effectively manage requirements meetings and workshops. Business analysts have the responsibility to gather, analyze, and validate business and technical requirements for their projects, thus they need facilitation skills to manage requirements meetings and workshops.

In this highly interactive two-day course, you'll gain the skills to be an effective facilitator - one who can help stakeholders define their needs and form quantifiable requirements. You'll learn tested techniques for meeting planning and preparation, brainstorming, analysis, and decision-making. You will have the opportunity to practice these techniques in a safe environment with a trained facilitator who will give you relevant, timely feedback. Advanced topics will also be covered, including virtual facilitation, conflict  cause analysis. You will leave class with the confidence to facilitate a meeting from the planning stages, motivating group participation, building consensus, maintaining session focus, and evaluating results for lessons learned.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

What You'll Learn

•   The role of facilitation in business analysis
•   Plan a facilitated meeting
•   Create an agenda and risk analysis
•   Use the appropriate facilitation techniques in a meeting
•   Plan for and facilitate in a virtual meeting environment
•   Use advanced brainstorming, analysis, and decision-making techniques
•   Manage conflict in a facilitated meeting

Who Needs to Attend

• Systems Analysts
• Business Analysts
• Requirements Analysts
• Developers
• Software Engineers
• IT Project Managers
• Project Managers
• Project Analysts
• Project Leaders
• Senior Project Managers
• Team Leaders
• Program Managers
• Testers
• QA specialists

Course Outline

1. Facilitation Basics

•   What Facilitation Is
•   The Role of the Facilitator
•   To Facilitate or Not to Facilitate?
•   Benefits of Facilitation
•   Facilitation in Business Analysis

2. Planning a Facilitated Meeting

•   Why Planning is Critical
•   Defining the Purpose
•   The Facilitated Meeting Planning Worksheet

•   Key Characteristics of Participants
•   Meeting Risks and Responses

3. Facilitation Techniques

•   Building an Agenda
•   Techniques for Facilitated Meetings
  • Brainstorming
  • Gap Analysis
  • T-Charts (or Force Field Analysis)
  • Model Types
  • Impact/Effort Grid
  • Multi-Voting

4. Conducting a Meeting

•   Facilitation Actions
•   Facilitation Behaviors

5. Virtual Meetings

•   Challenge of Teleconferences and Web-Conferences
•   Meeting with Dispersed Participants
•   Best Practices for Virtual Meetings

6. More Techniques for Facilitation

•   Brainwriting (Anonymous Brainstorming)
•   Root Cause Analysis
•   Criteria-Based Grid
•   How Various Models Can be Used with Groups

7. Managing Conflict

•   Understanding Conflict
•   Good vs. Bad Conflict
•   Resolving Conflict between Participants
•   Resolving Conflict between Participant and Facilitator

Exercises:

•   Complete a Facilitation Meeting Plan
•   Create Meeting Agenda
•   Practice Facilitating Multiple Meetings
•   Practice Root Cause Analysis
•   Complete a Criteria-Based Grid

Additional Details

Pre-Requisites

Business Analysis Essentials (BA10)

Certificates offered

- 14 PMI PDUs - 2.1 CEUs - 14 IIBA CDUs

Cancellation Policy

We require 16 calendar days notice to reschedule or cancel any registration. Failure to provide the required notification will result in 100% charge of the course. If a student does not attend a scheduled course without prior notification it will result in full forfeiture of the funds and no reschedule will be allowed. Within the required notification period, only student substitutions will be permitted.

Reschedules are permitted at anytime with 16 or more calendar days notice. Enrollments must be rescheduled within six months of the cancel date or funds on account will be forfeited.

Map & Reviews

Global Knowledge
[ View Provider's Profile ]

Global Knowledge Kitchener
50 Queen Street North
Suite 860
Kitchener, Ontario
Canada   N2H 6P4

Reviews

 

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Here are some reviews of the training vendor.

   

- do we get a certifiacate for completing the courseÉ - although the instructor did give us excercises to do I would have liked a few more - almost like a test, so that I made sure I retained and understood what was taught. I`m a learn to do by doing person and like the instrutor lead courses so I can have someone there to explain in my terms how things work. I`ll have to really use the online excercises to make sure Ì am confident when I need to do something in Excel.

Reviewed by Delores P. 2012

   

Should be time allocated for questions and answer

Reviewed by Vinod P. 2012

   

The instructor was excellent as was the hands-on learning approach. The only thing I took issue with was the fact that there were a lot of bilingual persons taking the course and they tended to ask questions in French, during this English class. The instructor was trying very hard to explain everything in both languages, but I felt that these students should have requested a French-speaking classroom setting if they wanted to speak French.

Reviewed by Sheila D. 2012

   

Very professional. Facility clean and comfortable.

Reviewed by Christine P. 2012

   

For the cost of this course, a hard copy of the course handout should be provided as the classes follows the handout word for word.

Reviewed by Caroline P. 2012

   

The facilities at Global Knowledge were great. The Instructor was very knowlegable and made it easy to learn the material. It was a very good experience:)

Reviewed by Tonia L. 2012

   

Note: We had 2 different trainers during this 3 day course. Course: Terminology should reflect North America and be consistent with our business lingo.

Reviewed by Harman M. 2012

   

Found the course very informative. I had little exposure to Sharepoint and learned a number of things I didn't know. Plan to take the next level of training

Reviewed by Michael R. 2011

   

A charged mannul would be provided for students to make notes whereever they think instructions are important as reminders

Reviewed by jinxiu z. 2011

   

The course is so expensive to be payed by oneself. In almost all the others participants their companies pay the fee.

Reviewed by Ricardo T. 2011

   

No course books were provided for us to take.

Reviewed by Hala M. 2011

   

Course was very detailed but more time would be helpful during workshops. An additional day would help lessen the course load.

Reviewed by Roydon F. 2011

   

should have discuss some case studies,,overall A+

Reviewed by Syed A. 2011

   

Our instructor was very knowlegable and he provided excellent real life stories.

Reviewed by Stephen W. 2011

   

The course was very relevant. I was able to apply the knowledge I aquired in the course to my job on the very next day. The only complaint I have is with the temperature of the room. It was freezing! Students has to wear a jacket or sweater. We were told the temp gage was shared with another classroom that was quite warm so they had turned the temp very low causing our room to be very uncomfortable.

Reviewed by Yasmine I. 2011

   

Given the cost of the course, the hardcopy of the manual should have been provided. It would have been useful to make notes alongside the material as we went along.

Reviewed by Jeff P. 2011

   

I am very disappointed with the handouts. I was told I could go online and download a copy of the manual, the problem is that I would like the printed copy of the manual. I chatted online with one of your technitian who was unable to help me. Then I was told someone would contact me by phone to help me. That never happened. When taking a training course, a person EXPECTS to leave the course with ALL the material.

Reviewed by Betty M. 2011

   

Great course provider, keep it on your roaster

Reviewed by Catherine G. 2011

   

Course content and labs were very good, everything worked as expected.

Reviewed by Francisco C. 2011

   

I really enjoyed this course and was surpised how ell everything was run...enjoyed the instructer very much (Par) and would like to take an other course with him. I wish we could have taken the work book home with us though!!!

Reviewed by gail h. 2010