This business analyst training course will give you hands-on experience with proven techniques for discovering, understanding, and documenting the business environment; understanding and depicting project scope; identifying, documenting, and confirming business objectives; modeling current and desired business processes; and communicating all of these expertly to colleagues, sponsors, and business customers. Lively lectures combined with insightful demonstrations and realistic practice exercises provide you with the competence and confidence to improve project outcomes through better project scope and business requirements definition. You'll gain a thorough understanding of common analysis pitfalls and challenges, practical approaches for discovering and writing project requirements, and strategies for applying the systems development life cycle methodology throughout the project.
Business customer, user or partner
Business Analyst
Business Systems Analyst
Systems Analyst
Project Manager
Systems Architect or Designer
Systems or Application Developer
QA Professional
Systems Tester
Leader of Systems projects or teams
Anyone wanting to enhance his/her business analysis skills
Course Cost doesn't include courseware cost. This course is subject to a minimum enrollment to run. If the minimum enrollment is not met this course may run as a virtual live instructor led course and/or would run as a boot-style class 2 Days. For more information, please email: learn@vtec.org or call 207-775-0244.
The three most important communication skills for business analysis
The biggest challenges Business Analysts confront
Eliciting information
Clarifying information
Communication and miscommunication
Validating information
Practice Session: Working in small groups, you and your peers will practice choosing appropriate techniques to solicit information from stakeholders at various levels in an organization,
Following a fun demonstration of how miscommunication occurs, you'll enhance your ability to connect with stakeholders and foster effective communication by clarifying stakeholders' contributions and
Practice Session: Guided by your instructor, you will work with a team to analyze the symptoms of a problem, define it, and determine root causes.
You'll practice team problem-solving techniques and determine, based on your team's performance, ways to further enhance your communication and team collaboration skills.
Understanding interaction skills and why Business Analysts need them
Facilitation and negotiation with stakeholders
Leadership and influencing
Teamwork, Practice Session:
Following review and discussion of interaction skills and their application to business analysis functions, you and your team will play a fun learning game that allows you to demonstrate
reinforce, and earn prizes for your knowledge of these vital skills.
The business domain: what it is and what's relevant to business analysis
The IT domain: what it is and what's relevant to business analysis
The systems development lifecycle and the focus on IT and business domains
Practice Session: Working with your team, you'll quickly test and improve your understanding of how the business and IT domains integrate in the Business Analyst role and how they fit with the systems
The role of the Business Analyst in enterprise assessment
Describing the business environment
Describing the requirements scope
Assessing feasibility
Practice Session: Your instructor will introduce a hypothetical but realistic case project company, and you and your team will put your analysis skills to the test as you conduct a guided assessment.
You'll define and document the business environment, clearly describe the scope of the business, and perform a straightforward identification of business opportunities.
Finally, you'll assess the feasibility of a set of projects and present recommendations on the project(s) of greatest value to the business.
Practice Session: After reviewing a project request for an identified business opportunity, you'll work with peers and your instructor to determine and document the project scope with context diagram
You'll then review a current state model of one key business process, and, based on identified functional requirements, you will then work with your team to develop a model for a possible new process
Practice Session: Working with a set of identified functional requirements, you and your peers will analyze them against a set of criteria for effective requirements.
You'll practice clarifying and rewriting requirements to improve their specificity and accuracy.
Determining the appropriate requirements presentation format
Creating the requirements package
Presenting the requirements
Conducting a formal requirements review
Obtaining consensus and signoff of requirements
Practice Session: Working with a requirements from our case project, you and your peers will determine which communication approaches will best meet the needs of various stakeholders.
You'll practice categorizing and organizing requirements for maximum value, and you'll explore how to develop and present clear, concise requirements documentation appropriate for your projects.
Practice Session: Working with your small group, you will identify ways to assess the validity of a solution and to determine whether the solution meets the stakeholders' needs.