Course Description
Well-written requirements are crucial to systems of all kinds: you are unlikely
to get what you want unless you ask for it. This class explains and demonstrates
exactly what requirements are for, and how to write them. It also has a companion
topic of recognizing the various facets of communication and how to use your own
communication style to enhance your communication in gathering requirements.
This course earns 14 PDUs.
Target Student:
This course is designed for project managers, business analysts, and anyone who
wants to increase their success in gathering, documenting and requirements writing
skills.
Delivery Method:
Instructor led, group-paced, classroom-delivery learning model with structured hands-on
activities.
Course Objective:
- How to write simple, clear requirements -- so you get what you want
- How to organize requirements as scenarios -- so everyone understands what you want
- How to review requirements -- so you ask for the right things
Course Content
Lesson 1: Introduction
Topic 1.1: Why do requirements matter?
Topic 1.2: Who are requirements for?
Topic 1.3: Different names for requirements
Topic 1.4: Different types of specification
Topic 1.5: The challenge of writing better requirements
Topic 1.6: The requirements writing process
Lesson 2: Identifying the stakeholders
Topic 2.1: Different types of stakeholders
Topic 2.2: Your house extension: a simple case?
Topic 2.3: A practical approach to identifying stakeholders
Lesson 3: Gathering requirements from stakeholders
Topic 3.1: Possible techniques
Topic 3.2: Interviews
Topic 3.3: Workshops
Topic 3.4: Experiencing life as a user
Topic 3.5: Observing users at work
Topic 3.6: Acting out what needs to happen
Topic 3.4: Prototypes
Lesson 4: Other sources of requirements
Topic 4.1: Possible sources
Topic 4.2: Getting requirements for mass market products
Topic 4.3: User requirements in sub projects
Lesson 5: Structuring the requirements
Topic 5.1: You need structure as well as text
Topic 5.2: Breaking down the problem into steps
Topic 5.3: Organizing requirements into scenarios
Topic 5.4: Examples of goal decomposition
Topic 5.5: Handling exception
Topic 5.6: Examples and exercises in requirement structure
Lesson 6: Requirements in context
Topic 6.1: The user requirements documents
Topic 6.2: Organizing the constraints
Topic 6.3: Defining scope
Topic 6.4: Requirement attributes
Topic 6.5: Keeping track of the requirements
Lesson 7: Requirements writing
Topic 7.1: Quality, not perfection
Topic 7.2: Sketch, then improve
Topic 7.3: Anatomy of a good requirement
Topic 7.4: Guidelines for good requirements
Topic 7.5: Don’t write like this
Lesson 8: Checking and reviewing
Topic 8.1: Checking the document structure with users
Topic 8.2: Checking the requirements
Topic 8.3: Reviewing
Topic 8.4: Success-the reviewed document
