COURSE OVERVIEW

Did you know that requirement management skills are more important--statistically--than development skills to the overall success and timeliness of a software project?

Our three day seminar trains attendees to follow the iEEE SWEBOK best practice requirements process of elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation. We provide methods for identifying actors, identifying their needs, data-flow tracing, and then capturing the requirements baseline into a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document.

We cover managing requirement changes via proper change control. Finally, we review effective interviewing techniques and group collaboration strategies. Be sure your team is equipped with these skills.

BENEFITS

Learn to identify requirement sources
Learn to overcome common requirements errors
Learn various ways to write requirements
Learn elicitation goals and techniques
Learn Use Case diagramming using free UML tools
Learn to construct data-flow diagrams
Learn to prioritize project requirements
Learn to identify and qualify project risks
Learn to create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Learn how a project progresses through the PRD to HLA to SRS
Learn to create a High Level Analysis (HLA) document
Learn to create a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document
Learn to build a product roadmap
Learn the five types of software estimates
Learn to align project requirements with business goals
Learn about upstream and downstream traceability
Learn to manage scope creep via change control
Learn to conduct proper requirement approvals, and effectively manage approval noise
Learn effective interviewing techniques for in-house and off-site stakeholders and subject matter experts
Learn the value of a requirements showcase

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

Project Mangers, Developers, Database Designers, Development Managers, Development Directors, VP’s of Software Development, CTO, CIO

THE SEMINAR INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING TOPICS

Part I - A Business Case for Improving Requirement Skills

1. How critical are requirements development skills to the overall success of a software project?
2. Software project success rate trends.
3. Common challenges facing requirements management.
4. What you should know about requirements errors.
5. Ten unavoidable truths about software requirements.

Part II – Understanding Software Requirements

1. Who gathers requirements?
2. What is the role of the requirements gatherer?
3. Sources of requirements.
4. What is a requirement?
a. PMI© definition
b. iEEE© definition
5. Domain, Problem Space, Solution Space
6. What a requirement isn’t!
7. Types of requirements:
a. Governing requirements
b. Emergent requirements
c. Component requirements
8. Business Rules:
a. Sources of Business Rules
9. Parts of a requirement:
a. The Identifier
b. The Classifier
c. The Description
d. The Constraint
10. Example Requirement
11. Test-driven requirements.
12. Requirement Traceability.
13. Some common ways to write requirements:
a. Natural form
b. Formal form
c. Use cases
d. User stories
e. Planguage
14. What to do with unknown requirements.

Part III – How to structure software requirements documents

1. Survey of software project types.
2. Documentation Audiences.
3. Documentation and Trust.
4. How much time is typically spent on Requirements?
5. How to speed up the requirements process.
6. How to structure requirement documents.

Part IV - A requirements baseline development framework

1. A Process for gathering requirements:
a. Elicitation
b. Analysis
c. Specification
d. Validation
2. Requirements elicitation.
3. Requirements analysis.
a. Prioritizing requirements:
i. Risk driven prioritization
ii. Critical path prioritization
iii. Strategic prioritization
4. Requirements specification.
a. HLA, SRS, SDD, COO
5. Requirements validation.
6. Requirement “baseline” approval.
7. The approval process.

PART V – After the baseline

1. Triple constraint project dynamic.
2. Managing change: Change Control.
3. Keeping a change history log.
4. Managing schedule impact.

Part VI - Collaboration

1. Interviewing etiquette.
2. Questioning techniques.
3. Active listening.
4. Group dynamics.
5. Five dysfunctions of a team.
6. Meeting etiquette.
7. Facilitation and facilitative workshops.
8. Negotiation.
9. Handling special situations.

Part VII – Improving your skills going forward

1. Four strategies to improve your requirements management performance going forward.