Establishing and maintaining a BA Center of Excellence (BACOE)

Course Code: 1905

$1495

Overview
Schedule classes
What you'll learn
Outline
Prerequisites
Who should attend

Overview

As organizations continue to improve their project delivery processes, they are also focusing on improving requirements engineering activities and adding more business analysts. As a result, BACOEs are emerging as a vital strategic asset to implement and manage best practices within the organization to elicit, analyze, validate and document requirements. The course covers how participants can effectively build and manage the BACOEs to decrease the overall risk of projects ending up over-budget, behind schedule or poor quality, while preparing the organization for higher level of requirements engineering maturity.

Schedule Classes

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Course Delivery

This course is available in the following formats:

Live Classroom
Duration: 2 days

Live Virtual Classroom
Duration: 2 days

What You'll learn

Save time and money on your projects while improving quality and customer satisfaction.
How an effective Business Analyst Center of Excellence impacts the bottom line of an organization
Look at an industry leading, best-practice Business Analyst Center of Excellence and receive numerous creative tips and tricks for implementing one
Market and sell the benefits of the Business Analyst Center of Excellence and Requirements Engineering within your organization
Create Business Analyst ‘All-Stars’ who are highly motivated to consistently deliver success on projects at all times
Identify the different roles and skill sets needed to effectively create and sustain an effective BACOE
Identify training needs for each Business Analyst so they stay in tune with industry best practices and continuously improve their skill set
Effectively manage organizational change
Effectively manage stakeholder expectations
Establish mechanisms for ongoing process improvement, and how to build lessons learned into the BACOE

Outline

Part I: Business Analyst Center of Excellence (BACOE) – What is it?

Module 1: Business and technology alignment

Enterprise planning
Program planning
Business relationship management

Module 2: Structure

People
Process
Templates
Checklists

Module 3: Process improvement

Mentoring
Training
Support
Ongoing process improvement

Module 4: Quality assurance

Quality inspections
Quality controls

Module 5: BACOE vs. PMO

Similarities
Differences
Interdependencies

Part II: Benefits of a Business Analyst Center of Excellence (BACOE)

Module 6: Consistency in requirements engineering

Process
Templates
Checklists

Module 7: Repeatable process

Efficient process
Effective process
Ongoing process improvement

Module 8: Improved performance

Of the business analyst
Of the project manager
Of the project team
Of the business
Of the organization

Module 9: Save time, reduce costs, improve quality

More realistic schedule estimates
More realistic cost estimates
Higher level of quality
Improved stakeholder satisfaction
Improved morale
Higher quality workforce
More projects completed annually
Projects aligned with corporate goals and strategies

Module 10: Sell the value of business analysis to your organization

Why requirements engineering is critical to project success
Why a great business analyst could be your new best friend
Why a project should progress only when the most critical requirements are clearly understood

Part III: Establishing a Business Analyst Center of Excellence (BACOE)

Module 11: Roles

BACOE management
Senior business analyst
Business analyst
Process analyst
Documentation specialist

Module 12: Requirements development processes

Requirements elicitation
Requirements analysis
Requirements specification creation
Requirements validation

Module 13: Requirements management processes

Requirements change management
Requirements traceability
Requirements tracking

Module 14: Create common techniques

Requirements Traceability Matrix
Requirements Change Request Form
Requirements Responsibility chart (RACI)
Requirements gathering tools

Module 15: Create checklists

What is required
What is recommended

Module 16: Create standards

Requirements gathering strategy
- High level
- Mid level
- Detail
Use of KRAC
Use of SMART
Traceability
Requirement types
Other standards

Module 17: Create communication strategy

Identify who needs what information
Identify when information is needed
Identify appropriate formats

Module 18: Create coaching (mentoring) strategy

Identify coaching candidates
Identify coaching requirements
- Communication skills and styles
- Problem solving skills
- Facilitation skills
- Questioning skills
- Documentation skills
- Working with people
- Managing stakeholder expectation
  
  The right way to say no
  
  Working with difficult customers
- Requirement tools
- Requirement processes