Foundation of Business Analysis

Transform your career with our Foundation of Business Analysis course designed for business analysts seeking to enhance their skills in requirements management and strategy analysis for successful project delivery.

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Essential Skills Gained

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Understand the core responsibilities and techniques of business analysis.

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Develop skills in stakeholder and strategy analysis for effective requirements management.

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Explore and utilize various models to define and communicate project scope.

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Gain hands-on experience with business analysis tools and best practices.

Format

  • Instructor-led
  • 4 days with lectures and hands-on labs.

Audience

  • Beginner Business Analysts
  • Intermediate Business Analysts
  • Project Managers
  • Anyone involved in requirements management

Description

Why do more than 50% of projects fail to meet their original objectives? Why do we continue to see the number of troubled and canceled projects on the rise?  According to PMI’s 2014 Pulse of the Profession® In-Depth Report, 47% of failed projects fail to meet goals due to poor requirements management [1].  With a strong correlation between poor requirements practices, failed projects, and wasted dollars; organizations can no longer afford to accept mediocre business analysis skills from those fulfilling the business analysis role. This course provides students a clear understanding and total immersion into all of the facets of the business analyst role, including a thorough walkthrough of the various domain/knowledge areas that comprise the business analysis profession. Students are provided an opportunity to try their hand at several business analysis techniques for eliciting, analyzing, and modeling requirements. The business analysis work performed in strategy analysis and solution evaluation, which is most often the least familiar to business analysts, is thoroughly presented and explored. Students completing this course will be well equipped with new skills and knowledge that can be immediately applied on current and future projects.

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Upcoming Course Dates

August 4-7, 2025

9:00 AM - 4:30 PM

Virtual: Online - US/Eastern

Enroll

$2795

October 20-23, 2025

7:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Virtual: Online - America/Los_Angeles

Enroll

$2795

Course Outline

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Day 1

Section 1: Introduction to Business Analysis

  1. What is Business Analysis?

  2. Benefiting from business analysis

  3. Business analysis and project success

  4. Challenges of business analysis

  5. Discussions: Who performs business analysis functions?, Exploring solutions options, Your biggest challenges on past projects

Section 2: A Closer Look at the Business Analyst Role

  1. Definition of business analyst

  2. Responsibilities of a business analyst

  3. The BA/PM roles

  4. IIBA/PMI and the goals of a professional association

  5. Purpose for having a BA standard

  6. IIBA’s BABOK® Guide and PMI’s Practice Guide in Business Analysis

  7. Business analysis core concepts

  8. Business analysis perspectives

  9. IIBA and PMI certifications for business analysts

  10. Workshop: Introduction to Case Study

Section 3: Strategy Analysis and Change

  1. Define Strategy Analysis

  2. When to perform Strategy Analysis

  3. Business models

  4. Defining the business need

  5. Root cause analysis

  6. 5 Whys

  7. Fishbone diagram

  8. Defining business requirements

  9. Discussions: Who is involved in strategy analysis?

  10. Workshops: Create a Business Model, Define the Business Need, Create a Fishbone Diagram, Write Business Requirements

Section 4: Defining a Change Strategy

  1. Define change strategy

  2. Gap analysis

  3. Determining solution options

  4. Enterprise readiness

  5. Cultural fit

  6. Operational and functional analysis

  7. Impact analysis

  8. Transitioning to the future state

Section 5: Stakeholder Analysis

  1. What is a stakeholder?

  2. The importance of stakeholder analysis

  3. Stakeholder identification

  4. Stakeholder types

  5. Tips/techniques for identifying analyzing stakeholders

  6. Keeping track of stakeholders

  7. Workshop: Identify Stakeholders

Day 2

Section 6: Understanding and Defining Solution Scope

  1. Defining solution scope

  2. Techniques to use

  3. Project scope versus product scope

  4. Finding solution boundaries

  5. What is a feature?

  6. Identifying key features

  7. Discussion: Identifying Solution Scope

  8. Workshops: Draw a Context Diagram, Defining Scope with Features

Section 7: Understanding Requirements

  1. What is a requirement (IEEE and IIBA definitions)

  2. Project roles involved in requirements activities

  3. Requirements types

  4. Assumptions and constraints

  5. Business rules

  6. Decision tables and inference rules

  7. Requirements vs. business rules

  8. Requirements vs. specifications

  9. Discussions: Requirements, Business rules

  10. Workshops: Define a Business Rule, Write Requirements

Section 8: Business Process Modeling

  1. Why do we model processes?

  2. What is Business Process Management?

  3. Using a modeling notation

  4. “As Is” vs. “To Be” modeling

  5. Why use BPMN?

  6. Basic BPM notation

  7. Developing a business process model

  8. Using a facilitated session

  9. Business Process Modeling – A case study

  10. Developing a Business Process Model

  11. Workshop: Create a Business Process Model

Section 9: Preparing for Requirements Elicitation

  1. Types of elicitation techniques

  2. Interviewing – what and why?

  3. Preparing for an effective interview

  4. Selecting the right interviewees

  5. Types of questions to ask

  6. Sequencing of questions

  7. Discussion: Elicitation Techniques You Have Used

  8. Workshop: Planning for an Interview

Day 3

Section 10: Elicitation using Interviews and Workshops

  1. Conduct the Interview

  2. Establishing rapport with stakeholders

  3. Active listening and listening styles

  4. Workshops and getting the right people

  5. The role of the facilitator

  6. The brainstorming technique

  7. Decision rules and reaching consensus

  8. Avoiding Groupthink

  9. Encouraging participation

  10. Managing meetings and conflict

  11. Workshop: Conduct an Interview

Section 11: Confirming Elicitation Results

  1. Defining requirements analysis

  2. Prioritizing requirements (MoSCoW, Timeboxing, Voting, etc.)

  3. Documenting requirements

  4. Other uses for specifications and models

  5. Unified Modeling Language (UML®)

  6. Explaining user stories

  7. The traceability matrix

  8. Communicating requirements

  9. Workshop: Analyzing Requirements, Identifying User Stories, Tracing Requirements, Obtaining Approval

Section 12: Analyzing Requirements with Use Cases

  1. What is an actor?

  2. Types of actors

  3. Defining actors

  4. Locating use cases

  5. Use case diagrams

  6. Use case tips

  7. Defining and identifying scenarios

  8. Parts of a use case

  9. Defining primary, secondary actors and pre and post conditions

  10. Best practices for writing use cases

  11. Template: Use Case Specification

  12. Workshop: Drawing a Use Case Diagram, Write the Main Success Scenario

Day 4

Section 12 (cont’d): Documenting Requirements

  1. Scenarios and flows

  2. Alternate and exception flows

  3. Alternate scenario post conditions

  4. Guidelines for Alternate flows

  5. Examples of alternate and exception flows

  6. Workshop: Writing Alternate and Exception Flows

Section 13: Documenting Requirements

  1. How requirements relate to use cases

  2. Writing Non-Functional requirements

  3. User Interface Requirements

  4. Reporting requirements

  5. Data requirements

  6. Data accessibility requirements

  7. Business requirements document (BRD)

  8. BRD vs the Functional Requirements

  9. Verifying Requirements

  10. Quality attributes

  11. Purpose of the requirements package

  12. BA Deliverables across knowledge areas/domains

  13. Planning BA deliverables

  14. Workshops: Develop a User Interface, Verifying Requirements

Section 14: Managing and Communicating Business Analysis Information

  1. Business analysis communication

  2. The business analyst’s role in communication

  3. Forms of communication

  4. 7Cs of communication

  5. Symptoms of information overload

  6. Information mapping

  7. Presentation and common elements

  8. Requirements walkthroughs

  9. Conflict and issue management

  10. Conflict resolution techniques

Section 15: Evaluating the Solution

  1. Understanding solution evaluation

  2. Verification vs. validation

  3. Timing of solution evaluation

  4. Planning solution evaluation

  5. Performing solution evaluation

  6. Using existing metrics

  7. Evaluating long term performance

  8. Qualitative vs. Quantitative measures

  9. Tools and techniques used in solution evaluation

  10. Comparing expected vs. actuals

  11. When variances occur

  12. Proposing recommendations to address variances

  13. Communicating evaluation results

Section 16: Additional Information

  1. Helpful links for obtaining additional business analysis information

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