Business Analysis/Requirements Training & Coaching

On time and on budget only gets you, well, on time and on budget. It doesn't necessarily get your business the necessary end results. For that, you need to incorporate great business analysis skills into the project mix. Our workshops help you develop the skills to sift wants from needs, clearly document requirements that lead to better solutions, and analyze the business environment for problems and opportunities.

For questions or more information, email or call us at 515.988.3938.

What Sets Cygnet Apart?

A great classroom experience only takes you so far. Click on our Taking Flight and Coaching & Immersion Programs for more information about how we help participants move from classroom to culture.

Taking Flight

At Cygnet Leadership Solutions, we want to ensure that you obtain the best return on your training investment possible. Therefore, we encourage participants to explicitly state how they will change their behaviors as a result of their workshop experience.

Flight Plans

After each workshop, each participant will complete and file a Flight Plan documenting the key concepts that the participant found valuable and applicable to his / her professional goals, along with specific actions that he / she commits to performing in the workplace to leverage the classroom experience. The Flight Plans even have deadlines so that you know when to expect changes in behaviors!

The classroom facilitator can either encourage each participant to share the Flight Plan with his / her management, or we can formalize the Flight Plan by collecting a copy and forwarding it to the appropriate management contact. It's up to you.

Master Flight Plan

At Cygnet Leadership Solutions, we can "train up" just about anybody. But it takes management's support to ensure that workshop participants carry out their Flight Plans back on the job. Therefore, some of our clients have found it beneficial to meet with us for a few hours after a workshop or a program to gain insight into what their participants learned, and how they can support the use of new skills in the workplace.

This post-session is an optimal time to work as a management team in understanding your own roles in helping your project managers and business analysts succeed. You will craft a Master Flight Plan that you can follow to get the short and long-term results you need.

Coaching and Immersion Programs

Although classroom learning is an effective means of conveying new concepts, tools, and even ways of thinking, actually applying concepts in a real-world environment can paralyze even the best of the best. Therefore, Cygnet Leadership Solutions offer a Coaching and Immersion Program approach.

Select a project management or business analysis program and customize it with one-on-one or small group coaching. Participants will be responsible for "homework" after each workshop to ensure they are applying their newly learned skills back in the workplace. A coach with proven experience in the discipline will meet with each participant on a regular basis between workshops to guide and assist the participant in applying the new skills and supply supplemental information and reviews as necessary.

Our clients find that this approach improves their ROI from the workshops and hastens positive change in their organizations. Ask us about a standard Coaching and Immersion Program schedule that we can then customize to your specific needs.

Workshops

Practical Business Analysis
3 days
Learn the business analysis process as prescribed by the International Institute of Business Analysis but in practical and applicable ways. Participants work through the business analysis processes from project start to project end and practice their role as a business analyst on a case study project. Learn how the business analyst can use tools to determine project scope, elicit and refine requirements from various sources, classify requirements for documentation and requirements management, and transfer requirements to the solution domain for product build.

This workshop is included in the Business Analysis Program.
Eliciting and Writing Usable Requirements
2 days
Requirements might be ambiguous, but the product we produce from them will be very specific. And it could be specifically what we did not want! In this workshop, participants learn to elicit requirements from stakeholders by asking the "good" questions, extract requirements from interview responses, remove ambiguity from the elicited requirements, and classify and trace requirements.
A Project Management Focus on Requirements
2 days
A project must be on time and on schedule to be a success; but, it also must deliver an end result that matters to the business. Requirements are the key to the "correct" end result. This workshop is intended for project managers who must define high-level requirements and work with a business analyst to define detailed requirements and for those project managers who manage smaller projects and are also expected to define the requirements.

Participants define requirements from a business perspective and a scoping perspective and learn to engage their stakeholders in the requirements conversation. Participants gain insight into detailed requirements and the business analysis process that delivers "good" requirements.

This workshop is included in the Level I Project Management Program.
CBAP/CCBA Exam Prep Express
4 days
Prepare for the CBAP/CCBA Exam as it is administered by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). Complete the application, practice hundreds of test questions, and learn test-taking strategies. A dynamic CBAP-certified instructor uses a variety of techniques to ensure that participants remember exam concepts and remain engaged and motivated. Provides the 35 hours of classroom hours IIBA requires to sit for the exam.

Business Analysis Program

We recommend that clients develop business analysis skills within their organizations by using a program approach.

The Business Analysis Program introduces formal business analysis processes, tools, and techniques to individuals who develop requirements and lends consistency to requirements development throughout your organization. The Business Analysis Program consists of the following workshops in consecutive order:

  • Practical Business Analysis (3 days)
  • Effective Meeting Facilitation (2 days)

    Effective Meeting Facilitation

    Who hasn't attended an unproductive meeting? More importantly, who is running these things? Answer: All of Us!

    Meetings are important tools to deliver results, but can turn into the biggest resource suckers in our lives. Participants apply meeting basics from developing realistic agendas, inviting the "right" participants, neutralizing debilitating attendee behaviors, and creating timely minutes. Beyond that, participants actively use new and refined meeting leadership and facilitation tools and techniques and craft their own "Facilitation Toolbox." We cover face-to-face and virtual meetings concepts.

    This workshop is included in the Level II Project Management Program and the Business Analysis Program and comes from Leadership & Change.

  • Eliciting and Writing Usable Requirements (2 days)

Ideally, the program is delivered over 6 to 8 weeks, enabling participants to practice the concepts from each workshop prior to learning additional skills.