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Establishing and maintaining a BA Center of Excellence (BACOE)

Live Classroom
Duration: 2 days
Live Virtual Classroom
Duration: 2 days
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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.

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

Curriculum

  • Enterprise planning
  • Program planning
  • Business relationship management

  • People
  • Process
  • Templates
  • Checklists

  • Mentoring
  • Training
  • Support
  • Ongoing process improvement

  • Quality inspections
  • Quality controls

  • Similarities
  • Differences
  • Interdependencies

  • Process
  • Templates
  • Checklists

  • Efficient process
  • Effective process
  • Ongoing process improvement

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

  • 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

  • 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

  • BACOE management
  • Senior business analyst
  • Business analyst
  • Process analyst
  • Documentation specialist

  • Requirements elicitation
  • Requirements analysis
  • Requirements specification creation
  • Requirements validation

  • Requirements change management
  • Requirements traceability
  • Requirements tracking

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

  • What is required
  • What is recommended

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

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

  • 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

  • Identifying training requirements
  • Identify goals of training
  • Identify source of training
  • Create training schedule

Identify methods for ongoing process improvement

  • Determine metrics for Return on Investment (ROI)
    • Time
    • Cost
    • Quality
  • Establish benchmarks
  • Determine measurement strategy
  • Determine timeline to measure ROI

  • Consider operational calendar
  • Consider holiday schedules

  • Identify leadership team
  • Map available skill sets to required roles
  • Create or update job description
  • Create organization structure Identify training requirements
  • Complete training

  • Identify affected areas
  • Schedule appropriate communication mechanisms
  • Distribute information and answer questions

  • Understand the impact to organization
  • Establishing ‘change agents’
  • Manage stakeholder expectations
  • Open communication

  • Ongoing lessons learned
  • Becoming the ‘emotionless business analyst’
  • Create business analyst ‘all stars’

  • Issues
  • Questions
  • Root cause analysis

  • Workgroups
  • Rollout changes

  • Planning for requirements risk management
  • Identifying requirements risks
  • Establishing requirements risk probability and impact
  • Creating risk response plans

  • Confirm standards
  • Develop quality checklists
  • Determine frequency of quality checks

  • Validate processes
  • Validate templates
  • Validate checklists

  • Gather metrics
  • Compare to benchmarks
  • Report on progress

  • Summarize importance concepts
  • Next steps for you
  • Contact us
  • Evaluation
  • Thank you
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Who should attend

The course is highly recommended for –

  • Executives
  • Directors and managers
  • Program managers
  • Project managers
  • Business analysts
  • Senior business analysts
  • Process analysts
  • Team leaders, business users or customers
  • Business liaisons
  • Business relationships managers
  • Product managers/owners
  • System analysts
  • Test analysts
  • Functional analysts
  • Business system analysts
  • Quality assurance professionals

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

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