Course Introduction

Successful projects are highly dependent on well-defined and well-understood requirements by all stakeholders and a key measure of project success is stakeholder satisfaction. This includes business / project requirements, process and product requirements and specifications. Investment of time in requirements processes have proven to be key contributors to delivering projects on time and on budget that meet or exceed business requirements. It seems that many organizations attempt to deal with requirements by using different approaches in discovering and defining them and requirements activities as employed in many organizations today are unstructured, ineffective, or simply performed incorrectly.

This Oxford Management Centre Managing Business Requirements Using a Project Framework online training course focuses on requirements processes that contribute to project success. Participants will learn and practice defining the real problem, assessing the impact on the project and business, and identifying and managing stakeholders’ expectations, all in the context of strategic project leadership. The key to this online training course is the belief that most requirements can be documented in textual sentences. This is a traditional view of requirements definition and management that, for most projects, is exactly what is necessary to be successful.

Objectives

• Understand the foundational context of requirements in strategic leadership
• Discover how to properly initiate a project to set the requirements process
• Effectively identify and manage stakeholders
• Gather accurate requirements early in the project
• Manage conflicting requirements from stakeholders
• Understand the difference between requirements and expectations
• Identify how a scope statement should identify requirements
• Develop communications skill to assist in communication of requirements
• Identify project stakeholders and discover and define their real problems
• Realize and uncover real requirements using various methods and tools
• Analyse, verify and validate project requirements
• Refine, manage, and control changes to requirements

Training Methodology

This online training course will utilize a variety of proven online learning techniques to ensure maximum understanding, comprehension, retention of the information presented. The training course is conducted Online via an Advanced Virtual Learning Platform in the comfort of any location of your choice.

Organisational Impact

• Develop foundational context of requirements in strategic leadership
• Identify methods to manage conflicting stakeholder requirements
• Develop a consistent method to identify requirements in a scope statement
• Understand the role of project stakeholders in project success
• Build and maintain effective and efficient project procedures and processes
• Integrate project management functions into the overall mission of the organization
• Develop skills for project leaders which will raise their capability, skill, and morale

Personal Impact

• Improve performance by learning productive, effective, and efficient project skills
• Learn to develop effective project plans in defining and managing requirements
• Demonstrate proficiency to develop project plans and make good decisions
• Understand the value of discovering stakeholder expectations and needs
• Adds personal value and competency for an organizational manager
• Increases the opportunity for complete project success

Who Should Attend?

This Managing Business Requirements Using a Project Framework online training course is designed for anyone who is an acting or aspiring project professional in any sector of industry and/or business, including the service industry. This Oxford Management Centre online training course is appropriate for those who have some project work experience or those who desire to learn project skills to be able to better manage their work of requirements. Persons who are members of current teams, business planners, technical professionals, project management professionals and engineers moving into project leadership and executives responsible for managing projects would find this online training course valuable.

Course Outline

DAY 1

Project Skills for a Requirements World

• Identification of project leadership skills
• Challenges project managers face in changing organizations
• Conditions in dealing with requirements that require leadership
• The role of project team leadership in dynamic organizations
• Understanding the role of strategic management in defining requirements

DAY 2

Project Leadership in Defining and Managing Requirements

• The role that organization type plays in dealing with requirements
• Developing a culture of organizational excellence
• Learning skills and techniques of managing project stakeholders
• Developing a matrix to manage stakeholder requirements
• Understanding the importance of a focus on stakeholders
• Initiating a project using requirements as a focus for stakeholders

DAY 3

Collecting Project Requirements

• The role of scope in defining and managing requirements
• Using the stakeholder register to manage requirements
• Project tools for collecting requirements
• Using various requirements discovery techniques and tools
• Making decisions on what requirements to include in the scope
• Documenting project requirements so all stakeholders have a “buy-in”
• Creating a project scope statement

DAY 4

Managing Project Requirements

• Defining project and business requirements using a WBS
• Implementing a requirement change management process that manages stakeholders
• Managing changes in the refining requirements phase
• Learning how to visualize a WBS so stakeholders accept requirements
• Communicating the requirements to stakeholders via WBS
• Formalizing the scope statement and scope change document
• Identifying and assessing risks for requirements

DAY 5

Using Good Skills in Stakeholder Communications

• Importance of project leadership in communication
• Interpersonal communication is between people
• Understanding of how interpersonal communication preferences differ
• Developing an active listening communication style
• Communication information distribution and presentation in project teams