Tricks of the Trade® for Defining and Managing Requirements: A Six Step Process

Recently Updated with MORE Content and Templates!

One of the measures of project success is customer (stakeholder) satisfaction. But how do you accurately measure and manage requirements that seem so intangible, especially when the success of the whole project depends on it? This core course is ideal for project managers, functional business analysts, senior managers, team members, sales people, consultants and customers who need to be able to improve their skills in defining and managing requirements throughout the project life cycle.

This unique 1-day course combines the requirements-related processes from the PMBOK® (Project Management Book of Knowledge) and the BABOK® (Business Analysis Book of Knowledge) into an easy, six-step process. In addition to Tricks of the Trade® for eliciting requirements, this course also offers over a dozen templates designed for obtaining BETTER requirements—as well as techniques for gaining cooperation from managers, customers and all stakeholders throughout the requirements process.

The key to this extremely valuable course is the belief that most requirements can be documented in textual sentences. This is a traditional view of requirements definition and management that, for most projects, is exactly what is necessary to be successful.

This course is offered in both public and onsite versions. If interested in hosting an onsite course, please click here to read more about our onsite courses and complete a request form.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this 1-Day course, attendees will be able to:

• Understand the foundational concepts of defining and managing requirements
• Utilize tricks and tips to elicit better requirements
• Gather accurate requirements early in the project
• Determine the metrics needed for requirements planning and management
• Manage conflicting requirements
• Understand the difference between requirements and expectations
• Effectively identify and manage stakeholders
• Distinguish between Product Scope and Project Scope requirements
• Find more time to perform requirements planning by using templates

In addition, all students will share their ideas and lessons learned with other students, and create a customized Action Plan to assist them in implementing their ideas on current projects.

Course Outline

Based on Tricks of the Trade® gathered over the last decade, this course will help you greatly improve your ability to work with internal and external stakeholders to determine their requirements and manage their expectations over the life of the project. The course outline is as follows:

• Introduction of Fundamental Concepts
• The Six Steps
  1. Determine Scope
  2. Identify Stakeholders
  3. Elicit Requirements
     • Tricks for Requirements Planning
     • Tricks to Elicit Requirements
  4. Analyze and Document Requirements
  5. Manage Requirements
  6. Project Closure
• Wrap Up and Action Plan

This is a hands-on course designed to allow participants to improve expertise by participating in exercises, and by using the dozen templates provided in the course workbook. Therefore, the course centers on gaining and applying skills during the course. Participants will also have an opportunity to share their knowledge on this topic with other project managers, and will take home at LEAST 20 new ideas.