One of the top reasons why projects fail, is that they do not deliver the product, service or result that the customer actually needed, as opposed to what they said they needed or thought they needed! Even if the project finishes on time, on budget, on specification, is it considered a success if it did not produce value for the customer?
This workshop covers fundamental things the project manager and their team need to know to avoid such major pitfalls. It teaches participants how to work with the customer to derive “what is actually needed”, in projects with varying degrees of uncertainty. Traditional methodologies are presented and practiced, for those projects with relatively little uncertainty (predictive/“waterfall” projects). Agile methodologies are presented for projects with a greater degree of uncertainty (adaptive projects). Increasingly, organizations and project teams tend to adopt hybrid methodologies to manage projects, by tailoring their approach to the specifics of the organization, the environment, the product, etc.
Whatever methodology is practiced, the goal remains the same: built the right thing, the first time!
This workshop is relevant to anyone involved in both Traditional/Predictive and Agile/Adaptive projects, as Project Managers, Business Analysts, Clients, Users, Product Owners, Team Leaders, Business Representatives, developers, or project team members. And it stands to reason: if we are to build the right thing the first time, everyone who has a stake in the project’s success must be involved in the requirements process and aware of the best practices surrounding this part of the project’s life.
Participants involved with PMI® will be awarded 16 or 24 PDUs or Contact Hours (depending on the version taught), approved by PMI and applicable towards acquiring or maintaining any PMI Professional Certification. The workshop also reinforces and complies with PMI’s® Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the International Institute’s for Business Analysts (IIBA’s®) Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK)
Upon completion of this course, each participant will be able to:
•Identify the Stakeholders involved in the creation of Business Requirements and understand their role in the requirements project
•Understand the origins of Agile and the needs it was born to fulfill.
•Select the appropriate project methodology (Waterfall, Incremental, Agile or a hybrid) depending on the project’s level of uncertainty.
•Understand the concepts of Business Case, Business Requirements and Functional Specifications (Solutions Requirements)
•Apply a framework for producing Business Requirements for new and/or improved products, services, and processes
•Understand how to apply several tools for creating Business Requirements, e.g., Elicitation Methods, Cross-functional Process Mapping, Fishbone (Ishikawa, Cause and Effect Diagrams), MuSCoW Analysis, Cost Benefit Analysis, Pareto Analysis, ROI, etc.
•Use tools to capture and analyze the “current-state” (as-is), identify potential problem and opportunity areas, identify disconnects, and perform gap-analysis to develop the business requirements of potential “end-states” (“to-be” states)
•Understand and address the impact of change on the people, and how this affects the business requirements process.
•Understand process control and the important difference between Defined and Empirical Process Control.
•Apply Agile Values and Principles to project management.
•Understand the framework of the popular Agile practices of Scrum and Kanban
•Apply Agile methodologies to gathering Business Requirements that express the real needs of the customer.
•Apply Agile methodologies to estimate the project work with accuracy, while managing risk and focusing on quality.
•Understand the principles of tracking and control in Agile projects.
Instructional methods for this 24-hour workshop are lecture, discussion, case study exercises and presentations.