Write Effective User Stories and Lean Requirements
47% of IT projects fail due to poor requirements! Is your project at risk?Train your Business Analysts, Product Owners, Requirements Engineers, and anyone involved with IT requirements in Lean Business Analysis techniques.
Business Agility is Key to Winning in Today’s Marketplace
Optimize your requirements process by getting the:
RIGHT requirements from the
RIGHT people at the
RIGHT level of detail
at each stage of your IT development process.
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Give your business-side and technical teams the analysis skills to identify and communicate IT solutions that give your organization the agility to take on anything.
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Eliminate Waste in Your Requirements Process
… research shows that 80% of features and functions have low to no value. Drucker also said, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Lean requirements focus on value to the end customer. Any project that does not deliver that value is challenged at best, a failure at worst.
Applying lean principles to the discovery and analysis of User Stories and Business Requirements allows you to focus on product features that you need NOW.
Learn how to use lean principles to discover and analyze features and user stories to make sure that your Agile Team is not running on empty.
Effective Requirements Analysis Improves Lean / Agile Software Development
Modern software development approaches such as Agile, Lean, or Continuous Delivery do not change the need for good business analysis. However, they affect the WHO, the WHEN, and the HOW of defining what the business community needs and wants.
Concepts such as Features, Epics, User Stories, Acceptance Criteria, Scenarios, and Examples replace conventional business and solution requirement statements. They significantly reduce the miscommunication that has haunted IT projects for decades.
ATDD, BDD, and/or SBE define tests as the ultimate requirements and mandate the creation of acceptance test scenarios before development starts.
Request a course or training program
tailored to support the specific needs of your company’s software development process whether your organization adopts Agile (e.g. Scrum), Lean (e.g. Kanban), DevOps, Continuous Delivery, or traditional software development (e.g. Waterfall) philosophies.
Featured Courses
We deliver classroom training at your site and online. Building skills your people need to fulfill your missions is our passion. Each course comes with extensive exercises, case studies, and debriefs by our cadre of experienced, certified business analysis instructors.
Getting and Writing IT Requirements in a Lean and Agile World
Apply Lean Principles to Optimize Your Requirements Discovery Process and Streamline Support for Agile IT Development Teams
How to Write / Manage User Stories to Communicate Business Needs
Capture, Clarify, and Confirm User Stories, Acceptance Criteria, Scenarios, and Examples that Communicate Business Needs to Agile Teams
Requirements Elicitation – Getting User Requirements for IT Projects
Learn Effective Communication Techniques to Get More Complete and Correct IT Requirements, User Stories, and Examples
Writing and Working with Lean Use Cases
Supercharge Collaboration by Leveraging the Power of Use Cases to Enhance Communication in Lean and Agile Software Development Environments
Business Process Modeling and Analysis
Minimize Missing Business Requirements by Creating, Analyzing, and Presenting Data Flow, Activity, and Swim-lane Diagrams that Reveal Hidden Functional Requirements
Who Needs Lean Business Analysis Training?
The short answer: anyone who interacts with the business community to identify what IT can do for them. Specifically, folks with job titles like:
- Product Owner
- Business Analyst
- Project Manager
- System Analyst
- Requirements Engineer
- Subject Matter Experts
- …
If you are involved with figuring out how IT could improve someone’s job, you are doing Requirements Analysis.
Some organizations call that Business Analysis. Others call it Requirements Gathering or Requirements Definition. Still others call it Requirements Engineering. Whatever you call it, it is a critical activity for successful projects and you need people who can do it well.
These folks need a solid set of business analysis techniques to identify business needs and express them so that software developers can understand them.
The most common tools of communication between business and IT are features, requirement statements, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and scenarios.
Requirements Training Pays for Itself
Poor Quality Software Cost Trillions in 2018
Poor quality software cost 2.84 Trillion dollars in the US alone in 2018 according to the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ).
According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), poor requirements are still the number one cause of poor software quality.
People loudly voicing their dissatisfaction with an app or website on Social Media channels does irreparable damage to a company’s reputation and bottom line.
Standard or Tailored Training to Fit Your Needs
BA-EXPERTS delivers classroom training at your site and online. Our experienced and certified business analysis instructors use real-life examples, extensive exercises, case studies, and debriefs to optimize the training experience and skill retention. We also tailor our courses to fit your team’s specific needs at no additional cost.
Using our tailored training process, a group of 17 participants improved their skills as measured pre- to post-training by as much as 46% with an average improvement of 20%.
Trusted and Used by Fortune 500 Companies
“…, having completed the massive 2-month business analysis training marathon for 120 participants, each attending 5 days. I’m grateful that everything went well, and that Dan was able to deliver all classes… [the participants] talked about the well-structured, well-thought-through training contents. We find that your course was not one of those mass products quickly put together, but it was like an old tree grown with authenticity and experience. For those keen to learn, there was a lot to discover. They returned to their jobs with courage to try new techniques, and daring to ask questions where needed.”
“… This business analysis training was extremely helpful. It tied in excellently with what I’ve acquired so far from the IIBA® and the BABOK®. Although I wouldn’t consider myself a dedicated Business Analyst or even particularly advanced in my experience, the course was still well suited for my understanding. It was a pleasant surprise for me that this business analysis training provided me with useful tools and information in problem areas for me that I did not realize were either the cause or effect of my requirements management difficulties. I’m definitely looking forward to applying some of these concepts as well as looking forward to my next course.”
Current and past customers include TIAA-CREF, Cathay Pacific, Emirates Airlines, Federal Reserve, Berkley Technology Solutions, Florida Blue, Manitoba Telecom Services, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Best Western International, many government agencies, and a myriad of organizations spanning all sizes and industries.
35 Years of Experience
BA-EXPERTS has trained, consulted, mentored and coached thousands of business analysts around the world for organizations from medium-sized businesses to Fortune 100 companies.
The Principals
The principals, Tom and Angela Hathaway have saved their customers around the world millions and can help your organization improve its business analysis practices. As the authors of several best-selling books and self-paced training courses, they know how to transfer business analysis skills and lean requirements engineering how-to.
High Praise from Our Students
Your C-Suite Wants More Features Faster
With lean business analysis techniques you can deliver!
A lean requirements process has two critical success factors
Align your requirements with your business goals
The major purpose of any effective requirements definition process is to ensure that delivered software works and aligns with your current business goals and objectives. Lean business analysis aligns your IT projects with the changing business environment. Lean requirements reduce waste in all downstream activities.
Define your requirements at the right level of detail for each step in your software development process
- Not enough detail can lead developers to use their creativity to add unneeded features or create features that may not fulfill business needs.
- Too many details cause wasted requirements definition efforts as business needs change.
Turbo-charge your requirements discovery!
with Facilitated Lean Requirements Workshops
It ain’t over when it’s over
FREE BA Techniques Video Library
A reference library to make sure you can look up something that was taught in class but slipped your mind.
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