Description
How to Write Effective Requirements for IT Solutions: An Exercise-Based eWorkbook for Defining IT Solutions Your Business REALLY Needs
The term “Business Requirement†(often used interchangeably with “User Requirement†or “Stakeholder Requirement) designates those requirements that the business community has the right and authority to express. Poorly expressed Business and Stakeholder Requirements can lead to budget overages, missed delivery dates, and software solutions that do not meet the business need.
The primary objective of this eWorkbook is to help the business community communicate with the information technology department more effectively. The techniques presented in this eWorkbook will help anyone who is responsible for defining the requirements for an IT project. Regardless of your title or role, if you are involved in defining requirements, this eWorkbook is for you. We offer definitions, real-life examples, and online exercises to clarify the various types of requirements at the level of detail that those who will deliver the solution need.
Specifically, this eWorkbook will give you techniques to:
•Find missing requirements by analyzing the business and IT components of a proposed solution
•Reduce the number of invalid assumptions by using a question file
•Translate business needs into well-formed business requirement statements
•Write business requirements that express WHAT the solution should deliver
•Confirm that your requirements are in scope for your project
•Defend the need for expressing requirements that all affected target audiences understand
•Isolate and address ambiguous words and phrases in requirements
•Use our Peer Perception technique to find words and phrases that can lead to misunderstandings
•Improve your requirements with revision, definition, and clarification techniques
•Use corporate and industry standard terms to improve communication
•Define ambiguous terms and expand acronyms in a glossary to avoid miscommunication
•Reduce the ambiguity of a statement by adding context
•Utilize standard readability indices to reduce the potential for misunderstandings on your projects
•Decompose requirement statements to identify Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
•Give those responsible for designing, building, and/or buying the solution the kind of information they need to make the decisions that are right for the business
•Identify Informational, Performance, and Constraining Requirements from a list of Functional Requirements
•Document and manage Business, Stakeholder, Functional and Non-Functional Requirements in XL
•Capture Business Rules and External Constraints that mandate limits to the delivered solution
•Develop measurable Solution Requirements that facilitate End-User Acceptance Testing
This eWorkbook combines the content of 3 separately sold video courses. You can read detailed course overviews using the provided links
Part I How to Write Better Requirements in Plain English
http://businessanalysisexperts.com/video-course-writing-better-requirements
Part II Requirements Analysis Destroys Ambiguity
http://businessanalysisexperts.com/video-course-requirements-analysis-destroys-ambiguity
Part III Exposing Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
http://businessanalysisexperts.com/video-course-exposing-functional-and-non-functional-requirements
About the Authors
Angela and Tom Hathaway (previously Requirements Solutions Group, LLC and Hathaway & Associates, Inc.) founded BA-EXPERTS in 2011. For over 30 years, Angela and Tom have trained, consulted, mentored, and coached thousands of business analysts around the world for organizations from small businesses to Fortune 100. They have authored numerous training courses and publications. Working as a team, they strive to expand the base of skilled business analysis practitioners around the world by sharing their experience in their online and onsite training seminars, self-paced online courses, blogs, books, and public presentations.
