Defining and Managing Business Requirements
Avoid Project Failure through Successful Requirements Gathering
Successful projects are highly dependent on well-defined and well-understood requirements. This includes business requirements, product requirements and specifications. Investments in requirements processes have proven to be key contributors to delivering projects on time and on budget with the required product functions and features that meet or exceed business requirements.
Poor business analysis processes and inadequate requirements management processes have been identified as a leading cause of project failure. Organizations attempt to deal with this problem by using different approaches in defining and gathering requirements. However, requirements activities, as employed in many organizations today, are unstructured, ineffective or simply performed incorrectly.
This program focuses on a requirements management process that contributes to project success. Using a real case for a workshop exercise, you will practice requirements planning by discovering and defining the real problem, assessing the impact on the business, and identifying and managing stakeholders’ expectations. We will practice using various elicitation tools and techniques to discover requirements for deliverable solutions and methods for determining the most viable solutions. You will learn how to develop itemized deliverable lists and how to discover overlooked requirements. We will discuss requirements verification, traceability and change management. Finally, you will learn how to do a cost/benefit analysis for solutions for a business case and helpful tips about presenting the business case to executive management.
You’ll learn how to:
- Utilize requirements management processes to improve project success rates
- Use a Plan-Build-Test-Deploy requirements model
- Identify project stakeholders and discover their real problem (expectations)
- Gather requirements through interviewing using structured questionnaires
- Discover functional requirements that deliver value to business requirements
- Document requirements clearly using standard formats and use cases
- Analyze and validate requirements
- Utilize tools and techniques for requirements verification
- Involve users in testing and verifying requirements
- Implement a requirements change management process
- Use change control procedures to manage and control requirements changes
- Use a hierarchical solution selection process to build a foundation for future requirements
- Conduct financial analysis of requirements solution(s) for benefits realization
- Transfer a practical requirements management methodology back to your workplace
Note: This course may be taken as part of the Masters Certificate in Project Management. It will substitute for the “Negotiating and Contracting with Project Service Providers” course.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison, as a member of the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA), authorizes this course for 2.2 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or 22 hours, as well as 22 PDUs.
pfriede@exed.wisc.edu