Effective Business Analysis - Defining change with clarity and agility

The business world is demanding faster change, the ability to adapt and solutions that are fit for purpose. As a Business Analyst, you're counted on for your skills as a conceptual and practical thinker, a relationship builder, and a translator. You're relied upon to identify and describe the change required to address business issues. Sometimes there are problems that require a fix, opportunities that need to be realised or situations where the business simply doesn't know but is prepared to "give it a go" and experiment to gain insights to what it should do next.

In this course, you'll be introduced to a series of context aware, business-focussed approaches that you can apply to:

• Work with stakeholders to uncover the business issue that needs to be addressed
• Define the change required within its context
• Prioritise and scope the requirements based on business value and
• Specify requirements clearly to those delivering the solution

Designed and delivered by our Equinox IT team of practicing Business Analysts, this course covers how to structure your analysis activities based on the context and the issue at hand to describe requirements that fully represent the change required.

Day 1

Overview and concepts

• What is Business Analysis?
• Requirements Analysis Framework – Overview

 Discover – understanding context.

• Understanding a Business domain
• Adjusting to different types of initiative
• Stakeholders – identification, classification and engaging
• Techniques (root cause analysis, 5 whys, diverge, converge, etc)
• The Discovery canvas

 Focus topic: Elicitation –gathering information and understanding

• Purpose and context
• Selecting the right technique (interviews, workshops, research, observation, brainstorming, etc)
• Planning a session
• Running a session
• Post session activities
• Main exercise: - role play

Day 2

Define – understanding the change required

• Introduction to Capabilities
• Information and data – Concept/Domain Modelling
• Business Process – tips on modelling
• Business Rules – their relationship with other business concepts
• Scenarios – use cases 
• Change strategy map
• Change aspect map
• Defining User and other stories

 Scope – understanding priority and value

• Helping the business to assess value
• Techniques
• User Story maps

Day 3

Focus topic: Workshop Facilitation–gaining consensus

• Being self-aware
• Facilitation
• Preparation
• Group Dynamics
• Handling various situations
• Main exercise: - role play

 Deliver – packaging for delivery

• Backlog refinement
• Developing good Acceptance criteria
• Understanding various types of solution requirements and contributing elements

 Focus topic: Communication – telling the story

• A brief overview of the difference between specification and communication

The primary audience for this course is business analysts, systems analysts and enterprise analysts of all experience levels. The course will also be of value to any project team members involved in requirements definition activities.

There are no prerequisites for this course. However, some experience in Business Analysis will help.

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to;

• Analyse and understand the kind of business issue that needs to be addressed
• Engage stakeholders and analyse their business needs
• Define a change strategy
• Define the aspects of change required
• Understand various business models (e.g., business process, information, business rules)
• Define a user story and associated requirements
• Use effective techniques to elicit requirements
• Understand how to plan and facilitate a requirements workshop
• Understand scoping based on business value
• Analyse, document and review solutions and detailed requirements
• Define Acceptance criteria
• Understand how to communicate with a variety of audiences

This course aligns with the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge v3.0®.