What this book covers

Chapter 1, Identifying Requirements, discusses the role of a business analyst and different types of software requirements. You will learn how to explore common sources to look for things that help spot and identify business requirements.

Chapter 2, Elicitation and Document Requirements, discusses various methods to draw out the business needs and wants from various sources. This enables you to extract sufficient information to understand users’ expressed and unexpressed business needs and formalize and document them as detailed requirements.

Chapter 3, Prioritizing Requirements, covers the process and techniques of requirement prioritization, helping you understand the dependencies between various requirements and prioritize dependencies in the right order without creating gaps in the requirements flow.

Chapter 4, Process Flows – “As-is” versus “To-be”, helps you understand the importance of business process flows. We will discuss how to develop and understand current and future process flows. We will see how we can identify any gaps that can be addressed and opportunities to automate the functionality.

Chapter 5, Business Requirements Document, reviews different types of requirements and the level of detail to be captured for each of these types of requirements for better understanding by all team members. We will discuss and understand the importance of documenting key attributes of a business requirement document.

Chapter 6, Solution Design and Functional Document, covers different ways to identify functional and non-functional requirements using process flows. We will cover aspects that can make the designed solution flexible, maintainable, and scalable. We will also cover transitional requirements and the critical part they play in making your projects successful.

Chapter 7, Demonstrate Functionality Using Prototypes, covers ways to demonstrate functionality by translating functional specifications into a visual working model using different techniques and tools. You will learn ways to help team members see a visual of the requirement and provide an opportunity to ideate, collaborate, and obtain feedback iteratively.

Chapter 8, Exploring Conference Room Pilots, discusses ways to collaborate and showcase prototypes to a wider audience. We will see how conference room pilots can help us progress from individual requirements to proposed design solutions in the right direction. We will also discuss how various team members can benefit and add value to other project phases.

Chapter 9, Technical and Quality Testing, reviews and shows how testing helps us with exploring the system to verify, validate, and confirm that the system functionality developed works as intended. We will explore and see what tools, traits, and skills make effective testing. We will explore various testing approaches, testing phases, and testing types.

Chapter 10, Requirements Traceability Matrix, helps you understand the importance of the relationships between requirements and various project artifacts and how they help us establish traceability. We will explore how this helps us in identifying and in bridging any elusive gaps. We will also see how to link requirements to project deliverables, ensuring that we have complete test coverage.

Chapter 11, User Acceptance Testing, shows how user acceptance plays a crucial role in a successful Go-Live. We will discuss how to work with business users and help them test real-life business scenarios and get feedback on usability. We will also discuss how to plan and execute user acceptance testing in a structured way that can reduce post-production issues and save the organization’s time and resources.

Chapter 12, Communication and Knowledge Management, discusses aspects of communication and knowledge management, especially focused on end users. We will explore various options to make sure we provide timely and appropriate communication. You will learn how to tailor knowledge management artifacts related to the usage of the functions of the new systems.

Chapter 13, End User Training, discusses the important role end user training plays in the successful adoption of the system functionality by end users. We will see how to train and prepare users so that they can understand the core system functionality, integrations, and business process flows.

Chapter 14, Post-Go-Live Support / User Forums, covers details on why post-go-live support is so critical for users to adjust to the system’s new functionality. We will learn to plan and facilitate user forums with end users that help establish continued collaboration. We will see what makes you a trusted advisor to your users and help continuously improve the system and its usage.