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At a glance

Volere Express

Volere Express is an introduction to reliable requirements, drawing on the Volere Requirements Toolset of Suzanne and James Robertson. This one day course gives you enough tools and techniques to write accurate and unambiguous requirements.

How do we do this in just one day? By looking at what is needed to get started, eliminating the unnecessary theory and niceties, and giving you the essential core of the subject. This approach is ideal for smaller projects and smaller companies, and those who want to know something about requirements before investing in a full-blown requirements process. It is a practical entry point to the Volere requirements techniques covered in the full Mastering the Requirements Process 3-day course.

Intended For

This course is for business analysts starting their careers, and companies who want to find out more about how they should be doing requirements. Business analysts from both the IT and business sides will find material here that is helpful to their everyday work.

You would also attend if your job title is systems analyst, project manager, product manager, or have responsibilities for delivering correct and workable systems.

Prerequisites

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the components of requirements
• Define the roles and perspectives required for requirements analysis
• Define the scope of the requirements effort
• Understand how data defines the processes and the requirements
• Write functional and non-functional requirements
• Understand how the requirements activity fits into their work.

Content

1. Components of Requirements

Objective: To understand what is meant by the terms 'Business Analysis' and 'Requirements'.

• A simplified three-stage model to explain how the main activities of requirements gathering work together. The model presents Business Analysis, Discovering Atomic Requirements, and Building the Solution. The inputs and output from these activities relate to the deliverables covered in this seminar: Scope, Stakeholders, Goals, Functional Requirements, Non-Functional Requirements, Constraints
• The roles and perspectives needed for the task of requirements analysis.

2. Setting the Scope

Objective: To be able to draw a context diagram to identify the scope of the work to be studied, and thus the scope of the requirements effort.

• The Scope-Stakeholders-Goals trinity
• How to draw a context diagram
• Why you need to have one.

Workshop: Draw a context diagram for the case study. The review of this workshop will look at your diagram, offer constructive advice, and show how you can use this with your own requirements work.

The review will also present the Volere nine-point checklist.

3. Exploring the Problem

Objective: To be able to define the input and output data that is relevant to the requirements scope.

• Using the Context diagram to explore the details
• Data analysis of inputs and outputs
• Data dictionary levels and notation
• How to use data definitions to determine the functional requirements.

Workshop: Define the data content of inputs & outputs for the case study. The review will look at the definitions you and others have written. It will also look at how to define the input and output data for different participant's work.

4. Writing the Functional Requirements

Objective

• The main components of an atomic requirement: Description, Rationale, Originator
• How to write correct atomic requirements
• How to derive the functional requirements from the data content definitions of the inputs and the outputs.

Workshop: Write functional requirements for case study data definitions that were written in the previous workshop. The review looks at the requirements you have written. It will also take up the ideas of atomic detail and fit criteria.

5. Non-Functional Requirements

Objective: To understand how to derive the non-functional requirements that are appropriate for the functional requirements.

• A checklist of non-functional requirements
• Interactive demonstration and definition of the non-functional requirements for the case study
• A chalk talk and Q&A session on the non-functional requirements most likely to be used for your own work.

6. Application in your work

Objective: to connect the lessons of the course to the realities of your workplace.

• The concept of Trawling for the requirements relevant to defined scope
• A summary of trawling techniques
• The power of the “Why?” question
• A revisit to the summary process model.

Q&A and Chalk talk: how the requirements processes vary depending on who does what, and how iterative your development process is. The talk also covers how you can apply these requirements techniques in your own environment.

About Your Volere Express Instructor

Your Volere Express instructor is Andrew Kendall , a senior business analyst and certified Volere consultant with over 10 years experience of helping organisations implement Volere in Australia and Europe. Andrew's Volere project experience includes producing specifications for a Pan European Client portal and developing concepts used in financial crime and fraud management tools. He has also worked extensively on eBusiness applications within the sector and brings with him a wealth of knowledge ranging from large internet banking and insurance programmes to smaller localised projects.

In addition to Volere Express, Andrew is also available to deliver Mastering the Requirements Process in-house (on-site) throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Method Used