Business Analysis with BPMN

Audience

The course is designed to help business analysts, systems analysts, requirements engineers, process analysts, product managers, enterprise analysts, business architects and includes those who also perform related disciplines such as project management, software development and quality assurance.

Prerequisites

There are no formal pre-requisites, but a basic understanding of information systems development processes would be helpful.

Duration

5 days. Hands on.

Course Objectives

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) defines business analysis as the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organisation, and to recommend solutions that enable the organisation to achieve its goals. This course uses the IIBA Body of Knowledge as a structure for enabling attendees to understand the tasks and techniques predominantly used in business analysis. 
The course covers industry standard modelling techniques such as use cases and entity-relationship diagrams and includes the latest process modelling technique Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), a standard specifically aimed at business analysts. All the tasks and techniques are placed in a framework which enhances attendees’ understanding of what to do, when to do it and how to do it. 
At the end of the course attendees will be able to: 

• Identify business needs and plan an approach for analysis work. 
• Elicit requirements using appropriate fact-finding methods and techniques. 
• Define business needs in detail, scope potential solutions and produce a simple business case. 
• Organise, prioritise and specify business and system requirements. 
• Build data, process and use case models in support of requirements specifications. 
• Adequately communicate requirements to stakeholders and obtain necessary approvals.

Course Content

Introduction to Business Analysis
Scope of business analysis
Types of requirement
Business analysis knowledge areas
Development life cycles
Projects and planning

Business Analysis Planning
Establishing a business need
Plan and change-driven approaches
Identifying stakeholders
Planning business analysis activities

Requirements Elicitation
Planning for elicitation
Brainstorming
Document Analysis
Interviews
Observation
Prototyping, tools for prototyping
Facilitated Workshops
Questionnaires

Enterprise Analysis
Defining the business need
Root cause analysis
Assessing capability gaps
SWOT analysis
Determining the solution approach and scope
Business case

Requirements Analysis
Prioritisation
Organising requirements, functional decomposition, categories of requirements
Requirements specification
Requirements modelling techniques (use case, data and process modelling)
Assumptions and constraints
Verification and validation
Documenting requirements

Use Case Analysis
Use cases and requirements
Actors and use cases
Documenting use cases
Include and extend relationships
Developing use case diagrams

Process Modelling
BPMN
Business process diagrams
Flow objects and connecting objects
Pools, lanes and artifacts
Private and public business processes
Collaborations

BPMN - Events
Types of start, intermediate and end event
Catching and throwing events
Interrupting and non-interrupting events
Event sub-processes
Correct and incorrect usage of events

BPMN - Gateways
Exclusive gateways based on data and events
Inclusive gateways
Complex gateways
Parallel gateways
Synchronisation
Parallel gateways based on events

BPMN - Flows
Sequence and message flows
Conditional and default sequence flows
Data objects and collections
Data inputs and outputs
Data stores and data associations
Exception flows

BPMN - Activities
Types of task
Task markers – loop, multi-instance, compensation
Sub-process markers - loop, multi-instance, compensation, ad-hoc
Call activities and re-usable sub-processes

Modelling Data
Uses of data modelling
Data model notation
Entities, attributes and keys
Relationships and cardinality
Optional attributes
Mutually exclusive relationships
Developing a ‘to-be’ data model, business rules
Cross-referencing data and processes

Requirements Management and Communication
Documenting requirements
Requirements traceability
Communicating requirements
Approving requirements