Business Analysis

Prerequisites:
A comprehensive introductory business analysis course such as Principles of Business Analysis

This course is intended for business analysts and related professionals such as Project Managers, QA Managers, Project Customers, Technical Leads, Systems Engineers or anyone with a substantive role in the success of projects.

Topics covered include:

• Describe the responsibilities of the Business Analyst ( BA) and the major deliverables in the business systems requirements analysis process
• Prepare an elicitation plan tailored to the project environment and the development life cycle
• Analyze requirements using key modeling techniques
• Recognize and compose clear requirements statements
• Create high-level models employing use cases to confirm project scope (1st iteration, to confirm user needs (2nd iteration) and to specify user requirements (3rd iteration)
• Examine the value of both documenting requirements to aid project stakeholders in structuring requirements for use, and validating requirements to determine when a project can proceed to design

Using the structure of the business analysis process model, this course will introduce you to some of the most important techniques that, as a Business Analyst, you’ll need to know. In fact, it’s the perfect introduction to business analysis, covering areas such as strategy analysis, investigation techniques, requirements engineering and much, much more. The knowledge you’ll gain will set you on the road to achieving your Practitioner level BCS BA qualifications.

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below, each member of our Foundation in Business Analysis training team bring their substantial practical knowledge of business analysis to this programme.

You’ll be given a comprehensive Foundation in Business Analysis course manual, containing additional information and guidance on further reading.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Junior business analysts or anyone interested in becoming a business analyst and who needs an understanding of the tools and techniques of business analysis. Foundation in Business Analysis is also a Specialist Foundation module on the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Day 1

• What is business analysis?
• Competencies of a Business Analyst
• Strategy analysis
• The business analysis process model
• Investigation techniques

Day 2

• Investigation techniques
• Stakeholder analysis and management
• Modelling business systems
• Modelling business processes
• Defining the solution
• Making a business and financial case

Day 3

• Making a business and financial case
• Establishing the requirements
• Documenting the managing requirements
• Modelling requirements

Day 4

• Delivering the requirements
• Delivering the business solution
• Exam

This course prepares participants for the BCS Systems Modelling Techniques examination, which is held on the final day of the course. The examination is open-book and tests the participant’s application of systems modelling techniques on business scenarios.

Day 1
Introduction
Systems modelling
Use case diagrams
Exercise
Use case description
Exercise

Day 2
Revision
Structured Use Case models
Exercises
Activity diagrams
Exercises
Class diagrams part 1
Exercises
Homework
Day 3
Review of the Homework. Revision
Class diagrams part 2
Exercises
State machine diagrams
Exercises
Homework

Day 4
Review of the Homework. Revision
Interaction diagrams – Sequence diagrams
Exercises
Communication diagrams
Checking requirements and providing solutions
Course summary

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

Requirements Engineering is an essential business analysis skill. Being able to pinpoint your consumers’ expectations for a newly introduced or modified existing product is key to the success of the completed solution.

Based around a Requirements Engineering framework, this course will teach you a range of techniques for elicitation, analysis, documentation and managing requirements. All with the help of a detailed case study that allows you to practice applying the techniques you learn. Some of the key areas we’ll look at include requirements categorisation, prioritisation and documentation, traceability and management of changes to requirements, and use case modelling and stories.

This course is also approved as consistent with the IIBA BABoK version 3.0.

Out expert training consultants bring their substantial experience of business analysis projects and application of the Requirements Engineering techniques to the programme.

Business Analysts, business change specialists, systems analysts and anyone who is involved in gathering, analysing, documenting and managing requirements. Requirements Engineering is also a Core module on the BCS (ISEB) International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Agenda

Day 1

• Rationale for requirements engineering
• Roles and responsibilities of stakeholders
• Requirements Planning and Management
• Interviewing theory and practice

Day 2

• Facilitated workshops
• Supplementary elicitation techniques
• Documenting requirements
• Requirements Analysis: Modelling the requirements

Day 3

• Requirements Analysis: Modelling the data
• Requirements analysis: Categorisation & Organisation
• Requirements analysis: Necessity & feasibility checking
• Requirements analysis: Prioritising requirements
• Requirements analysis: Requirements negotiation
• Requirements analysis: Requirements testability

Day 4

• Scenario analysis & prototyping
• Requirements management
• Requirements validation
• Delivering the requirements
• Characteristics of a good requirement recap

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

Aimed at business analysts, project and business managers, and business change specialists, AssistKD’s Business Architecture course enables delegates to gain a greater understanding of the key concepts and techniques involved in the subject.

The course focuses on the business rather than the technology side of the subject and covers a range of techniques and frameworks as well the relationship with other architectures and disciplines. Other topics you’ll explore include value chain analysis, understanding business culture and information management.

You’ll be given a comprehensive Business Architecture course manual, containing additional information and guidance on further reading.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Exam

BCS Professional Certificate in Business Architecture Exam
Written exam, closed book.

Business analysts, project managers, business managers, and business change specialists – and anyone who requires a thorough understanding of business architecture frameworks.

Day 1

• Introduction
• The context for business architecture
• Business architecture frameworks
• Motivation view of business architecture

Day 2

• Capability View of Business Architecture
• Value/Process View of Business Architecture

Day 3

• Information view of business architecture
• People view of business architecture

Day 4

• Information view of business architecture
• Course summary

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

AssistKD’s Integrating Off-the-Shelf Software Solutions course is aimed at solutions architects, solution developers and business analysts wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the off-the-shelf approach to procuring and delivering solutions to meet business needs. The course provides an auditable approach to software package evaluation and selection using weighted matrices using appropriate modelling techniques from the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Integration of a chosen off-the-shelf solution is critical to the success of the COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) approach. Integration is considered from both a business and technical perspective: integration with business strategy and existing business processes and integration with existing software applications and data. Key areas of the course include:

Framework for COTS selection

• Roles and responsibilities of stakeholders
• Understanding the requirements for an off-the-shelf solution
• Integration of a COTS solution with business strategy and IT strategy
• The procurement process
• The IT architectural requirements (application, component and data integration)
• ETL (Extract Transform and Load) tools
• Deploying the solution
• Evaluating and comparing competing packages

A comprehensive course manual is provided and the course can be tailored to reflect the emphasis required by the customer.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Solution architects, developers, system analysts, business analysts, project managers – and anyone who is involved in any aspect of software solutions.

Introduction

Advantages and disadvantages of the software package (COTS – Commercial Off-The-Shelf) approach

Risks of the software package approach

Strategic issues: relationship of COTS to business and IT strategy, relationship of COTS to business processes

Tailoring of COTS solutions

Legal issues / requirements

A framework for software package selection

The ELECT framework and principles

Initiating the project

Packages and prototyping

ELECT matrices

Imperatives

Defining and agreeing weights: the Delphi technique

Published package requirements

Roles & responsibilities in package selection & integration

Project roles

Architect roles

Service delivery and management roles

Functional and non-functional requirements

Defining functional requirements

Fact-finding techniques

The Requirements Catalogue

Prioritising requirements

Function scoping: use case diagram (UML)

Defining use cases

Significant input and output requirements

Class models (UML) in package evaluation

Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERD)

Types of non-functional requirements

Functional and non-functional requirements matrices

Product, supplier and implementation requirements

Technical and product design requirements

Supplier stability, citizenship and overall responsiveness requirements

Initial implementation requirements

Operability requirements

Infrastructure requirements

Integration protocol issues

Cost and time requirements

Evaluating and comparing software packages & suppliers

Request for information (RFI) versus request for proposal (RFP) versus request for quotation (RFQ)

Structure of RFP

The two-stage evaluation process

Initial evaluation of RFP suppliers and shortlisting

Evaluating shortlisted packages

Scoring system for supplier & product match

Identifying potential suppliers (vendors)

Supplier information questionnaires

Investigating vendors

Use case descriptions as a basis for scripted demos

Class diagrams as a basis for evaluating data requirements fit

Modelling the software package

Evaluating and documenting the evaluation: functional fit, non-functional fit, product requirements fit and implementation requirements fit

Reviewing the suppliers

Summarising the requirements fit

Procuring a COTS solution

Stages in procurement

Finalising the requirements

Contract considerations & reviewing supply contracts

Maintenance and support contracts

Component & system integration

Integration considerations

Application integration

The application integration strategy

Application integration patterns

Component integration issues

Modelling component dependencies

Modelling component and sub-system interfaces

Modelling the target deployment environment

Data integration

Data migration and conversion

Modelling data storage structures

The data dissemination diagram

Modelling high-level data flows

Data transformation & the canonical data model

ETL tools

Integration and other types of testing

Deployment & service management

Changeover strategies

Training and documentation

The deployment plan

Technical issues

The service transition plan

Final considerations

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

BPMN 2.0 is increasingly being used in organisations who struggle to get value from modelling with generic business process syntax and tools.

As well as introducing the underlying purposes and goals of business process modelling, this workshop focusses on the subset of the latest BPMN standard’s syntax that supports practical, proven techniques in a manner that helps business analysts and stakeholders to model specific, unambiguous processes.

Although the syntax covered allows the business to distinguish which parts of the process will be performed using IT and which will be manual, the level of BPMN used on this workshop stops short of any technical syntax required to drive process automation tools.

Theory is applied with examples and paper exercises throughout, which give participants the opportunity to try using BPMN in a practical and stimulating way.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Business analysts, project managers and solution developers who require a practical approach to business process modelling with BPMN 2.0.

Introduction to Business Process Modelling

• Developments in Business Process Change
• How we think about business process design
• What are the features of a business process?
• Process levels and performance needs (Rummler & Brache)
• Redesigning Business Processes
• Redesign patterns
• Workflow systems

BPMN 2.0 Models and notation for basic business modelling

• What is BPMN 2.0?
• BPMN notation levels and tool support
• Process and collaboration models
• BPMN notation
• Collaboration Pools, participants and processes
• Activities, tasks, sub-processes and sequence flows
• Modelling end to end processes to task level
• Instances and Token simulations
• Specific Start, end and intermediate event types
• Gateways
• Swim lanes and indicating where automation fits

Course summary

• Using BPMN 2.0 to assist with process management and improvement
• Mapping BPMN 2.0 to other common modelling techniques such as Business and System Use Cases
• Benefits of adopting BPMN tools

Key areas of the course include:

• Developments in Business Process Change
• Modelling Business Processes with BPMN 2.0 (Level 1)
• Flexible, Robust Processes with BPMN 2.0 (Introducing Level 2)
• Redesigning Business Processes

This training course on Business Analysis Practice introduces you to all the essential skills of business analysis. The emphasis throughout is on practical learning, using real-life case studies to introduce key skills including strategic analysis, stakeholder management, business activity modelling, gap analysis and making a business case.

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below, each member of our Business Analysis (BA) training team brings their professional knowledge and experience of BA projects to this training course.

You’ll be given a comprehensive Business Analysis Practice course manual, containing additional information and guidance on further reading.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Business analysts, project managers, business change managers and anyone who requires a thorough understanding of strategic business analysis. Business Analysis Practice is also a Core module for the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Day 1

• Business analysis rationale
• Strategic analysis in context
• Critical success factors and key performance indicators
• A project approach to business analysis

Day 2

• Understanding the situation/ issues
• Stakeholder analysis and management
• Business perspectives
• Analysing and modelling the business activities

Day 3

• Analysing and modelling the business activities
• Exploring the gap

Day 4

• Exploring the gap
• Making the business case

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

What you’ll learn:

• Why strategic ambitions need connected customer experiences to deliver customer satisfaction – and how to do it
• The difference between CX and UX, and why it matters to your organisation
• How to tune in to the voice of your customer
• How to create multiple touchpoints that leave a lasting impression
• How to create genuine value for your customer segments
• Actionable insights to take your customer experience from good to great

The course includes a realistic case study that allows you to practice applying the techniques covered. Key areas of the course include analysing the organisation’s view of CX, customer gains and pains, personas, touchpoints, customer journeys and organisational maturity.

The course is provided together with PMBA Ltd.

Heads of Product, Product Owners, Heads of Digital, Heads of Ecommerce, and practitioners of Digital Experience and Customer Experience including Business Analysts, operations & customer service managers, project managers, business change specialists, system design professionals and anyone who is involved in business transformation.

Day 1

• Context for Customer Experience Transformation
• Introduction to the Customer Experience Framework
• Understanding Why the Business Exist

Day 2

• Exploring Value
• Researching and ‘Listening’ to the Customer
• Gaining a Deeper Understanding of the Customer
  • Empathy, Personas and Customer Journey Maps

Day 3

• Assessing Customer Experience Maturity
• Defining Actions to Address Maturity Gaps
• Designing and Implementing a Transformed Customer Experience

Day 4

• Measuring the Customer Experience Quality
• Adjusting and Embedding Customer Experience

Key areas of the course include:
• Use case diagrams
• Use case descriptions
• Analysis class diagrams
• Interaction diagrams
• Activity diagrams
• State machines

Entity relationship modelling, analysis class modelling and normalization of data. They’re the three key approaches to analysing and modelling data, and they’re all covered on our course on Data Analysis.

You’ll also learn about approaches that reflect the business users’ needs and priorities and gain an overview of the more mechanistic approach offered by normalisation. And finally, we’ll explore the techniques used to validate data against stated requirements.

Business analysts, project managers and solution developers who require a practical approach to analysing and modelling data. Data Analysis is also an Analytical Skills module on the BCS (ISEB) Advanced Diploma in Business Analysis.

Agenda

Day 1

• Data analysis for business analysts
• Principles of data analysis concepts
• Entity relationship diagrams
• Types of relationships
• Documenting entities, attributes, relationships and domains
• Super-types & sub-types
• Exercises

Day 2

• Normalisation of data
• Normalisation approach and procedure
• Dependency, candidate keys, simple keys, composite / compound / hierarchic keys and foreign key
• Applying the TNF
• Rationalising relations procedure
• Building TNF model procedure
• Building the final data model
• Exercises
• Analysis class modelling
• Objects & classes
• Class notation: attributes and operations
• Associations & multiplicity; optionality & cardinality in class diagrams

Day 3

• Simplification of class diagrams
• Many-to-many relationships & association classes
• Naming associations
• Generalisation & layers of inheritance
• Analysis class diagrams – clarification of business rules & requirements
• Exercises
• Validating Data Models
• Purpose of validation
• Checking models against requirements
• CRUD matrix
• Validating output and data update requirements – access/navigation paths
• Data Navigation Diagrams
• Exercises

Content

Key areas of the course include:

• Introduction to Data Analysis
• Entity relationship modelling
• Normalisation
• Class Modelling
• Validating Data Models

The Agile way of working is becoming ever more popular in modern business. It’s a smart way to work, and so it makes sense for you, the business analyst, to get to grips with how you can contribute to the success of Agile development projects.

This course will help you do just that. Based on a true-to-life case study, you’ll use your existing business analysis knowledge and techniques and practise applying the Agile approach within a business analysis scenario. You’ll come away with a real understanding of how business analysis is applied within the context of the Agile philosophy.

You’ll not only explore the philosophy behind Agile, but the methods and techniques used within business and the principles that guide this way of working. You’ll also consider holistic and lean thinking, and how they can benefit your business.

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below, each member of our Agile Business Analysis training team bring their substantial experience of working as business analysts on Agile projects

Business analysts and anyone who needs a thorough practical knowledge of the role business analysis can play in the success of Agile development projects. Agile Business Analysis is also a Analytical Skills module on the BCS (ISEB) Advanced Diploma in Business Analysis.

Agenda

Day 1

• Data analysis for business analysts
• Principles of data analysis concepts
• Entity relationship diagrams
• Types of relationships
• Documenting entities, attributes, relationships and domains
• Super-types & sub-types
• Exercises

Day 2

• Normalisation of data
• Normalisation approach and procedure
• Dependency, candidate keys, simple keys, composite / compound / hierarchic keys and foreign key
• Applying the TNF
• Rationalising relations procedure
• Building TNF model procedure
• Building the final data model
• Exercises
• Analysis class modelling
• Objects & classes
• Class notation: attributes and operations
• Associations & multiplicity; optionality & cardinality in class diagrams

Day 3

• Simplification of class diagrams
• Many-to-many relationships & association classes
• Naming associations
• Generalisation & layers of inheritance
• Analysis class diagrams – clarification of business rules & requirements
• Exercises
• Validating Data Models
• Purpose of validation
• Checking models against requirements
• CRUD matrix
• Validating output and data update requirements – access/navigation paths
• Data Navigation Diagrams
• Exercises

The Agile Philosophy

• The history of Agile and Agile Software Development
• The Agile Manifesto
• Agile components (principles, methods & techniques)
• Agile in the business context
• Lean Business Analysis Service, system and Lean thinking)

Agile Principles

• Collaborative working
• Self-organizing teams
• Continuous Improvement
• Iterative development/Incremental delivery
• Plan for, and build in change

Agile Methods

• History of Agile Methods
• Linear (defined) Vs Agile (empirical) methods
• Evolution of Agile methods
• Agile methods – DSDM, UP, SCRUM, XP, Lean Software
• BA role in Agile

Understanding Stakeholders

• Stakeholder groups
• Understanding the customer
• Agile BA role in stakeholder engagement and management

Agile Modelling

• Purpose and principles behind Agile Modelling
• The hierarchy of models (business view to system component)
• Prioritization using MoSCoW
• Decomposing and organizing business goals

Agile Techniques

• User stories and roles
• Managing requirements with the solution backlog
• Estimating story points
• Managing the iterations (Planning, aligning, traceability, velocity)

Agile BA Planning

• BA role in agile projects
• Storyboarding/scenarios/prototyping
• Creating a kanban board

Scaling Agile

• Constraining factors
• The system of interest