Systems Analysis & Systems Engineering
Capturing System Requirements
Overview
This course prepares the student to properly identify, define and confirm the customer’s true requirements when they are needed – prior to the design and development of the system. The key to every project’s success, accurately captured requirements are not only essential for meeting stakeholders’ expectations, but also to avoid costly delays, added cost for rework, and poor customer relations.
Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:
- Detect early errors in analysis, design, and development (when it costs the least to correct)
- Define solutions that meet stakeholder needs
- Use modeling techniques to document and confirm functional requirements
- Create an effective change management process
- Develop and use a framework for the requirements development process
- Employ validation and verification methods to ensure correctness
- Minimize scope creep
- Contribute to the development of best practices in requirements management for an organization
- Identify key challenges to the requirements development process
- Write clear and concise requirements
- Develop a requirements traceability matrix and a requirements specification document
Who Should Take This Course
AUDIENCE
- Project Managers
- Systems/Business Analysts
- Systems Engineers
- QA/Testing Specialists
- Technical Leads and Programmers
Course Outline
- What is a requirement?
- Needs versus wants
- Functional versus non-functional
- Categories of information
- Function
- Form
- Criteria
- Constraint
- Classes of requirements
- Business
- User
- Technical
- How the requirements process fits into the product/application development lifecycle
- Why it’s important to establish requirements early
- The importance of getting requirements right
- Challenges to creating quality requirements
- Sources of Requirements
- Characteristics of high-quality requirements
- IEEE criteria
- Traceability
- Change management –the key to minimizing scope creep
THE REQUIREMENTS PROCESS
- Elicitation – Who’s got them; how to get them
- Stakeholder analysis
- Identifying internal and external stakeholders
- Conducting stakeholder analysis
- Forming stakeholder classes
- Understanding Personas
- Fact gathering methods: pros, cons, when to use
- Interviewing
- Observation
- Questionnaires
- Research: Studying policies and procedures, results of other studies
- Collaboration methods (JAD, JRP, etc.
- Interviewing
- Definition — contrasting interviews with other face-to-face data gathering methods
- The Interview framework – purpose and substance
- Introduction
- Body
- Summary
- Planning the Interview – using the 5 W’s
- Preparation
- The art of questioning
- Devising questions to accomplish the interview objectives
- Effectively using probes
- Techniques to control the Interview
- Documenting the Interview
- Verifying Information using the follow-up memo (email)
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ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
- Building the Users’ Model
- Developing output mockups or prototypes
- Identifying requirements
- The information model
- Sequence
- Exceptions
- Layout
- Process Modeling
- Data flow diagrams
- Evolution: Resolving Communication Problems
- Uses in the system development method
- External entities-establishing boundaries and interfaces
- Identifying events and triggers
- Constructing context, overview, and detail data flow diagrams
- Identifying appropriate detail level
- Storyboarding
- Capturing and Refining Use Cases
- Creating use cases
- Identifying stakeholders and actors
- Naming and scoping use cases
- Extending use cases
- Verifying use cases with stakeholders
- Capturing Data Requirements
- Developing the conceptual model
- Relational concepts
- Entities
- Attributes
- Associations
- Graphic representation
- Entity-relationship diagrams
- Maintaining the glossary/Use of the data dictionary
- Developing the conceptual model
- Determining business rules
- The need for specification tools and methods
- User needs vs. technical needs
- An examination of methods
- Process mapping methods
- Transaction Table
- Controls Table
- CRUD Matrix
- Swim-lane Diagrams
- Documenting non-functional requirements using a Requirements Template
- Creating the User Requirements Document (URD)
- Principles of well-formed requirements
- Word sensitivity, syntax and active voice
- Well-formed vs. ill-formed requirements
- Editing and rewriting requirements
- Organizing requirements into a readable document
VALIDATING REQUIREMENTS
- Achieving well-formed requirements through validation
- Reviewing requirements with walkthroughs
- Verifying requirements with inspections
- Selecting the best validation methods
- Writing test cases
- Defining specific test objectives
- Black box techniques
- Assembling the test cases into test specifications
- Ensuring traceability
- Linking requirements to business needs and to test cases
- Creating a traceability matrix
MANAGEMENT
- Creating the plan
- Creating the task list
- The work breakdown structure
- Creating task estimates
- Matching resources to tasks
- Assigning activities
- Obtaining commitments for outside resources
- Using a network diagram to denote task relationships and dependencies
- Using a GANTT (bar) Chart to show schedule
- Executing the plan – what to do as things happen
- Change management procedure – the key to minimizing scope creep
FAQs
Is there a discount available for current students?
UMBC students and alumni, as well as students who have previously taken a public training course with UMBC Training Centers are eligible for a 10% discount, capped at $250. Please provide a copy of your UMBC student ID or an unofficial transcript or the name of the UMBC Training Centers course you have completed. Asynchronous courses are excluded from this offer.
What is the cancellation and refund policy?
Student will receive a refund of paid registration fees only if UMBC Training Centers receives a notice of cancellation at least 10 business days prior to the class start date for classes or the exam date for exams.