ISEB Certificate in Requirements Engineering

Course Overview

This course provides delegates with a thorough grounding in requirements capture, analysis and documentation. A range of elicitation techniques including workshops, interviews, scenarios, observation and document analysis are studied within a framework for Requirements Engineering. During the course, delegates will be encouraged to apply these techniques in the context of a typical assignment. Delegates will then go on to model these requirements using Context and Use Case diagrams while documenting them in a Requirements Catalogue.

This course is delivered by trainers who bring their substantial experience of practical engineering project to the programme. The case study supporting the course is based on a genuine consultancy assignment. A comprehensive manual, containing detailed information about business analysis techniques and providing references for further reading is provided as part of the course.

Skills Gained

Delegates will learn to:

• Recognise the role of requirements analysis in systems development
• Understand the Requirements Engineering approach
• Describe the technical and interpersonal skills required of an analyst
• Apply a range of requirements elicitation techniques, such as workshops, interviews, scenarios, observation, document analysis, prototyping and questionnaires
• Interpret a model of the system data
• Model requirements using Context and Use Case Diagrams
• Document requirements in a Requirements Catalogue
• Analyse, prioritise and validate requirements
• Understand the principles and techniques required for effective requirements management

Examinations

Leads to exam:

• ISEB Certificate in Requirements Engineering

The course prepares participants to sit the one-hour, open book, examination leading to the certificate in Requirements Engineering - offered by the Information Systems Examinations Board (ISEB). This certificate is a core module for the ISEB diploma in Business Analysis.

Course Outline

The role of the analyst

• The role and competencies of an analyst
• Developing analyst competencies

The requirements engineering process

• The importance of requirements engineering
• A framework for requirements engineering
• Requirements engineering in the systems development lifecycle
• Characteristics of requirements engineering

Actors and viewpoints

• Stakeholders in systems development projects
• Roles and responsibilities in the requirements engineering process

Project initiation

• The importance of the project initiation stage
• The project initiation document

Facilitated workshops

• The use of workshops to elicit, analyse and negotiate requirements
• Structure of a facilitated workshop
• Workshop roles
• Facilitation skills
• Stimulating creative thinking

Other requirements elicitation techniques

• Observation and ethnographic studies
• Activity sampling
• Document and data source analysis
• Questionnaires
• Choosing the appropriate technique/s

Fact-finding Interviewing

• Structure of a fact-finding interview
• Questioning techniques
• Documenting interviews

Documenting requirements

• Functional and non-functional requirements
• Technical and general requirements
• The requirements catalogue
• Interpreting class diagrams
• Scoping systems and documenting requirements with use cases

Analysing requirements

• Examining the requirements catalogue
• Prioritising requirements (MoSCoW)
• Checking for ambiguity and lack of clarity
• Testability of requirements.

Scenarios and prototyping

• The use of scenarios to explore requirements
• Use case descriptions as a method of documenting scenarios
• The use of prototyping to explore requirements
• Types of prototyping (throwaway, evolutionary etc.)
• The dangers and difficulties of prototyping; managing prototyping exercises

Requirements management

• Change and version control of requirements
• Requirements traceability
• The use of CASE tools in requirements engineering

Options

• Developing and presenting business and technical options

Validating requirements

• Validation techniques
• Quality control in requirements engineering