Developing User Requirements

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Course Overview

Successful projects begin with developing clear business and user requirements.

This course provides the skills to write well-formed, testable, verifiable user requirements. You learn to enhance your requirements development processes and develop individual skills for getting the right information from your stakeholders.

Audience

This course benefits those who lead requirements teams and those on the front lines of generating requirements. Those responsible for implementing requirements for software development should take Course 218, " User Requirements for Software Development ".

Skills Gained

• Write well-formed and validated user requirements
• Organise and sequence requirements into a user requirements document
• Prepare a plan for completing a user requirements project
• Conduct efficient user requirements elicitation meetings
• Analyse requirements using a process mapping methodology
• Present requirements to stakeholders for understanding, confirmation and acceptance
• Manage changes to the user requirements

Course Outline

Foundations for Well-Formed Requirements

Guiding principles

• The requirements process: elicit, analyse, specify, validate and manage
• The top five challenges to creating well-formed requirements
• Elements of a high-quality requirements document

Key writing skills

• Principles of well-formed requirements
• Word sensitivity, syntax and active voice
• Well-formed vs. ill-formed requirements
• Editing and rewriting requirements

Applying validation skills

• Selecting the best validation methods
• Writing test cases

Organisational skills

• Organising requirements into a readable document
• Sequencing and numbering strategies
• Validation checklists
• Methods for conducting a walkthrough

Planning a Requirements Project

Interpreting existing documentation

• Requirements throughout the organisation
• Analysing business cases and project history
• Identifying stakeholders
• Determining project scope

Creating a project action plan

• Identifying and managing requirements
• Elements of an action plan
• Writing a plan for a simulated project

Eliciting Requirements from Stakeholders

Planning elicitation meetings

• Choosing the right people to interview
• Selecting the best interview methodology
• Constructing questions that deliver results
• Identifying other data sources

Facilitating elicitation meetings

• One-on-one meetings
• Group meetings
• Dysfunctional meetings
• Meetings with senior executives

Analysing Requirements with Process Maps

Process mapping methodologies

• Process mapping procedure and materials
• Creating process maps

Other analysis methodologies

• Creating outlines
• Applying alternative graphical models
• Performing gap analyses

Completing the analysis

• Prioritising requirements with creative techniques
• Completing a requirements analysis worksheet

Assembling the Requirements Document

Gathering the pieces

• Extracting requirements from a requirements analysis worksheet
• Writing test cases for requirements

Ensuring traceability

• Linking requirements to business needs and to test cases
• Creating a traceability matrix

Building the elements

• Templates for documents
• Planning document distribution
• Conducting a walkthrough for completeness

Managing Changes to Update Your Document

What you can expect

• Types of changes
• Frequency, magnitude of changes

Navigating the change process

• Conducting a change meeting
• Managing change requests
• Accepting and rejecting changes

Integrating Requirements into Your Organisation

• Choosing the right requirements management tools
• Selecting appropriate requirements standards
• Defining an ideal requirements process

Developing User Requirements / 315