Requirements Engineering

This course is presented as Live Virtual Training. Click for more details.

[New 4th Edition Syllabus, July 2021]

Key points to further advance your Business Analysis career

• Learn how to take a best practice approach to defining business requirements
• Develop a set of practices and processes to identify requirements in order to develop and design business solutions
• Learn techniques to engage with stakeholders and draw out information to define requirements
• Attain one of the four modules you need to gain the International Diploma in Business Analysis

This intensive three-day course covers the syllabus and exam for the BCS certificate in Requirements Engineering. The certificate is concerned with one of the major areas of business analysis work, producing a well-organised and clearly-defined set of requirements.

The syllabus is structured around a five part framework for Requirements Engineering. The five elements of the framework are Requirements Elicitation, Requirements Analysis, Requirements Validation, Requirements Documentation and Requirements Management.

This course will help you develop the skills needed to work with requirements stakeholders to ensure that requirements satisfy various perspectives and that conflicts are negotiated to a position of consensus.

Part of the BCS Diploma in Business Analysis

Requirements Engineering is one of the core modules for those wanting to achieve their BCS Diploma in Business Analysis. To obtain the full Diploma candidates must also obtain the other core module of Business Analysis Practice, a Knowledge-based specialism module and a Practitioner specialism module. Candidates must also take a one hour oral exam directly with the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, following successful completion of the four modular certificates.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course

• Explain the importance of linking requirements to the Business Case
• Describe the roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders in the requirements engineering process
• Explain the use of a range of requirements elicitation techniques and the relevance of the techniques to business situations
• Analyse, prioritise and organise elicited requirements
• Document requirements
• Identify problems with requirements and explain how requirements documentation may be improved
• Create a model of the features required from a system
• Interpret a model of the data requirements for an information system
• Describe the principles of Requirements Management and explain the importance of managing requirements
• Describe the use of tools to support Requirements Engineering
• Explain the process and stakeholders involved in Requirements Validation

Who should attend

This course is recommended for people who already have some experience in gathering and documenting requirements and who need to formalise their skills. Typical attendance includes:

• Current and prospective Business Analysts looking to improve their hands-on
  requirements engineering skills.
• Business Analysts looking to accredit their skills for recognition among employers, clients and peers.
• BAs of any level looking to achieve the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis.
• Anyone seeking an understanding of what constitutes quality requirements
• Experienced Quality Assurance professionals looking to differentiate themselves by becoming QAMP certified.

This course is not recommended for people with no previous experience. If you are a new business analyst or you would like to become a business analyst we recommend our Fundamentals of Business Analysis training course, which provides more in-depth training covering the complete role of the business analyst.

Course contents

• Introduction to Requirements Engineering
  • Framework for Requirements Engineering
    • Requirements Engineering activities – Elicitation, Analysis, Validation, Documentation, Management
    • Rationale for Requirements Engineering and the problems with requirements
    • The importance of requirements planning and estimating
  • The business rationale and inputs
    • The business case
    • Terms of Reference / Project Initiation Document (PID)

• Hierarchy of requirements
  • Building the hierarchy
  • Categories of requirements within the hierarchy
    • General business requirements, including legal and business policy
    • Technical policy requirements
    • Functional requirements
    • Non-functional requirements, including performance, usability, access, security, archiving, back up and recovery, availability, robustness

• Stakeholders in the requirements process
  • Project Stakeholders
    • Project Manager
    • Business Analysis
    • Developer
  • Business Stakeholders
    • Project Sponsor
    • Subject matter expert
    • End users and managers
  • External stakeholders
    • Customers
    • Regulators
    • Suppliers  – products and services

• Requirements Elicitation
  • Knowledge types – tacit and non-tacit
  • Elicitation techniques
    • Interviews
    • Workshops
    • Observation:
      • Formal/informal
      • Shadowing
    • Focus groups
    • Prototyping
    • Scenarios
    • Document Analysis
    • Special purpose records
    • Questionnaires
  • Understanding the applicability of techniques

• Use of models in Requirements Engineering
  • The purpose of modelling requirements
    • Generating questions
    • Cross-checking for consistency and completeness
    • Defining business rules
  • Modelling the business context for the system
  • Developing a model to represent the system processing requirements
  • Interpreting a data model

• Requirements Documentation
  • Documentation styles and levels of definition
    • User stories
    • Use cases
  • Requirements Catalogue
    • Identifier
    • Name
    • Description
    • Acceptance criteria
    • Source/Owner
    • Rationale/Benefits
    • Non-functional requirements
    • Priority
    • Related requirements/documents
    • Author
    • Version control/status
    • Change history

• Requirements Analysis
  • Prioritising and packaging requirements for delivery
  • Organising requirements
  • Ensuring well-formed requirements
    • Removing overlapping requirements
    • Identifying and negotiating conflicts between requirements
    • Removing ambiguity
    • Ensuring feasibility
  • Prototyping requirements
  • Verifying requirements

• Requirements Validation
  • Agreeing the requirements document
  • Types of reviews
  • Stakeholders and their areas of concern

• Requirements Management
  • Dealing with changing requirements
  • The importance of traceability
    • Vertical traceability (to business objectives)
    • Horizontal traceability (from origin to deliver)
  • Traceability and ownership
  • Requirements Engineering support tools

Course fees

Requirements Engineering – BCS Certificate course (3 days)

• $2350 + GST

The fee includes:

• Course presentation, accredited by BCS
• Comprehensive ALC course workbook
• The BCS Requirements Engineering Certificate exam voucher
• The BCS Business Analysis Fourth Edition Textbook (ISBN 9781780175102)
  • If you have recently attended the Business Analysis Foundation course with ALC, you might already have this textbook. If so, please get in touch with ALC for instructions on how to receive a discounted price covering the cost of the Textbook. 

Pre-Requisites

There are no specific pre-requisites for entry to the examination. However candidates should possess the appropriate level of knowledge to fulfil the objectives shown above.

Examination

Live Virtual Training – At course completion participants will be provided by BCS the examination institute, an access code to the online web-proctored exam hosted by QuestionMark and accessed via a web browser. Access codes are valid for 6 months. 

Face-to-Face Training – Participants will be provided with a paper-based exam which is completed whilst at the course in the same venue of the course itself.

Examination Format and Duration

Candidates who are awarded a pass for the examination are awarded the BCS Certificate in Requirements Engineering.