Business Analysis Courses

Business Analysis Fundamentals
Solving the Business Problem
This course teaches participants the overall process of business analysis and where it fits in the bigger picture of project life cycle and the business context. The course is interactive and combines discussion, active workshops, and demonstrations of techniques.

Facilitation Skills for Business Analysts
Communication and Problem Solving
Business analysts are continuously involved in communications with stakeholders and developers as they create the solution to business problems. They participate in information gathering sessions including interviewing, joint requirements definition, and Joint Application Design (JAD) workshops which are used to streamline information gathering and get immediate validation from user representatives. The business analyst is also involved with negotiating the solution with the stakeholders, upper-level management and the developers, mediating among the groups when disagreements take place, and influencing the results of decisions during the solution cycle. This 3-day course or 18-hour live eLearning teaches the methods needed to organize and run information gathering events. It combines the basics of graphic decision making and modeling with facilitation, communication, and meeting management skills

Writing and Managing Requirements Documents
Creating the Acceptable, Approvable Requirements Document
Business analysts are communicators who bridge the gap between people with business needs and knowledge and the people who will provide solutions. The communication process requires producing and managing documents that progressively elaborate requirements and constraints across the project life cycle. This program will enhance the skill set needed for writing and managing the complex readership that business analysts interact with on a day-to-day basis.

Business Process Modeling
Diagramming the Business Problem and Solution
A process model is a description of a process in terms of its steps or actions, the data flowing between them and the people, machines, systems, and organizations involved. Modeling is a critical business analysis skill. It uses graphical and text communications techniques to describe the actions, objects, and relationships acted upon in the process and the steps that act upon them. This 3-day course or18-hour live eLearning teaches the technique of process modeling and ties together the core methods of process mapping, Use Case, and data modeling to enable BA’s to fully describe business processes in levels of detail from multiple perspectives.

Effecting Business Process Improvement
The Proactive Business Analyst
Business analysts facilitate the solution of business problems. The solutions are put into practice as changes to the way people perform in their organizations and the tools they use. The BA is a change agent who must understand the basic principles of quality management. This course covers the key role that BAs play in organizational change management.

Developing the Business Case
Defining the Business Problem and Solution Scope
Business analysts must be able to create business case documents that highlight project benefits, costs, and risks. These become parts of proposals, feasibility studies, and other decision support documents. This course teaches the purpose, structure, and content of a business case. It presents the basic techniques for determining financial ROI, non-tangible benefits, and the probability of meeting expectations.

Assuring Quality through Acceptance Testing
Solving the Business Problem
It is the business analyst’s job to define the business problem to be solved by IT. It is also the business analyst’s responsibility to confirm that the resulting solution developed by IT does, in fact, solve the defined problem. This is done first through testing, especially acceptance testing, and then through monitoring of the installed solution in the user community. The business analyst is not only concerned with the testing itself, but also with the management and monitoring of the users doing the acceptance testing, and recording, analyzing, and evaluating the results.