Business Analysis

An intensive practical course covering all aspects of the Business Analyst role – from requirements gathering to testing. The emphasis of the course is on learning practical tools and techniques that can immediately be put to use. All major techniques – both Structured and Object-Oriented (OO) – are addressed. Each trainee receives a hard copy of all course material as well as a Job Aids booklet, containing useful templates, examples, guidelines and glossary for use back on the job.

An intensive course covering all aspects of the Business Analyst role – from requirements gathering to testing. All major techniques – both Structured and Object-Oriented (OO) – are addressed in this course. Each trainee receives a hard copy of all course material as well as a Job Aids booklet, containing useful templates, examples, guidelines and glossary for use back on the job. Trainees facilitate requirements-gathering sessions and document the results over the course of a case-study project with an emphasis on the textual aspects of the documentation. Trainees learn state-of-the-art practices for gathering and documenting requirements based on the use case approach. The course covers what the facilitator needs to accomplish in each requirements-gathering session (goals, agenda, who to invite, artifacts, etc.) as the project progresses – starting from business use-case sessions that focus on the business context through to those that focus on user-IT interactions. Trainees also learn advanced techniques (extension, generalized and inclusion use cases) that result in requirements documentation that is easy to revise when business rules change. The course follows today’s most widely accepted method of requirements capture – the popular ‘use case’ approach. The clear style and organization of use cases makes them well-suited as [...]

Everything the BA, backed up by the IT Project Manager, needs to know to work within a project managed with RUP (Rational Unified Process) iterative development and use-case technology, with comparisons to other approaches to project management.  (The non-vendor-specific form of the methodology, UP (Unified Process) is used in the course.)  As a BA working on an iterative IT project, you’ll learn what activities to perform and what artifacts to produce at each iteration of each phase of a project. Working in small groups, trainees step through a case study learning when and how to perform BA activities, create deliverables and assist the Project Manager at various phases of the RUP life cycle.

This course is geared to new and existing BAs who plan to qualify and prepare for the IIBA’s CBAPTM (Certified BA Professional) exam and transition from Junior BA to Senior Business Analyst Professional. You will lean the preparatory steps required for qualification to sit the CBAPTM exam, review BABOK Knowledge Areas and create your own actionable, personalized BA professional development plan. And you’ll learn what additional responsibilities and skills will be expected of you in your role as Senior BA Professional. For those taking the 2-day version of the course, Day 2 provides an overview of all BABOK 2 Techniques.

This course addresses the Senior BA’s role in supporting strategic goals and objectives by leveraging the Business Architecture. Based on concepts from the IIBA® Enterprise Analysis Knowledge Area (KA), the course covers typical deliverables for Strategic Analysis, why strategic analysis work is done, and how it ties to project work. You will learn how to apply Business Analysis skills to Strategic Enterprise Analysis activities, understand the basic views of Business Architecture, apply Strategic Analysis to the planning of roadmaps and create a business case to fund the roadmap of work.

The IIBA®-endorsed course enables the trainee to perform the activities that an advanced BA is responsible for over the systems development life cycle (SDLC) and to be conversant with all of the methodologies, concepts and terminology expected of the BA, as described in the BABOK 2. The course provides an in-depth coverage of all of the BABOK 2 Knowledge Areas and provides extensive preparation for the CBAP® exam, including practice exams to test trainees’ knowledge level both before and after the training. Unlike other CBAP® preparation courses, however, the objective of this course is not merely to pass the CBAP® exam – but to improve the trainees’ performance in the BA role. It is a practical guide for the BA that puts the BABOK 2 into action, clarifying precisely when and how in the project lifecycle to apply each of the six BABOK 2 knowledge areas, as well as BABOK 2 tools and techniques. This course incorporates current best practices in IT Service Management and software development, such as agile, iterative development, ITIL, Six Sigma, and RUP and provides the salient characteristics of these approaches and their relationship to BA practice.

Everything the BA needs to know to support the project manager on an iterative incremental project, with an emphasis on risk management over the course of the lifecycle. As you step through an iteratively-managed case study, you’ll learn what activities to perform and what artifacts to produce at each iteration of each phase in order to effectively manage risk and the requirements as the project progresses. The course uses a non-product-specific, agile iterative lifecycle that incorporates use cases. Specific methodologies and frameworks are also discussed, including MSF, RUP, Scrum and Extreme Programming as well as traditional, waterfall approaches.

Learn how QA responsibilities are distributed between the BA and QA professional over the project lifecycle. As you follow a project from initiation through to deployment and operations, you’ll learn and experience how BA and QA artifacts and activities fit together over the SDLC as you apply the V-Model. (The V-Model is widely used model outlining the relationship between product development and QA activities.) You’ll develop techniques to improve requirements-writing skills to create testable requirements, and acquire hands-on experience using essential V&V (Verification and Validation) techniques. The course includes use-case scenario testing, creation of the QA Plan, functional and non-functional (system) testing, QA metrics, Acceptance Testing, Decision Tables and Structured Walkthroughs, and incorporates BABOK 2, Six Sigma and Structured Testing guidelines.

This is a hands-on practical workshop for the BA in business process modeling using workflow models and state-machine diagrams (Harel statecharts) to describe the sequencing of events within a process. Trainees step through a complex real-life case study, learning not only how to draw the diagrams but how and when to effectively use the techniques during a projects’ life cycle. Trainees learn how to use business process diagrams to model existing and to-be processes, to define workflow for business use cases, to supplement the documentation of system use cases and to define lifecycle rules for business objects. The course covers the most popular standards for business process modeling: UML 2 – a wide-spectrum standard that covers the complete IT project lifecycle – and BPMN – a standard specifically created for business process modeling that is gaining widespread popularity. Trainees will learn to employ UML activity diagrams and BPMN Business Process Diagrams (BPD) to model workflow as well as UML-state machine diagrams to analyze the lifecycle of key business objects. As a supplement, IDEF workflow conventions developed by the military are also included in the printed course material and may be optionally included in class-time instruction.

This 2-day interactive workshop provides the methodology and skills required to facilitate well-formed client requirements sessions.