Course Overview

Learn the techniques required for testing and validating requirements.

Quality is the major business differentiator in IT. Studies such as the Chaos Report show that the most common cause of low quality is having poor, or poorly understood, requirements. Other common causes are poor design, code, and installation. While prevention of defects is the best cure, identifying and fixing defects as early as possible is key, and some of the responsibility for doing that falls on the business analyst (BA). This course, therefore, concentrates on the validation techniques for:

  • Requirements
  • The system at the business level (functional and usability testing)
  • Acceptance
  • Business purpose (stakeholder satisfaction with the production product)

In this course you will learn the importance of achieving quality and your role in doing so. You will learn which project and product factors affect the two components of risk (likelihood and impact), and you’ll learn to apply those to various real-life validation situations using a case study and practicing testing decision-making. You will learn techniques for:

  • Validating requirements or any text-based product (such as procedures or plans)
  • Testing functional and manual requirements
  • Assessing and testing usability

You will learn to plan functional and usability testing at the business level and the essential elements to document that planning. You’ll examine your role in Acceptance, including Acceptance of an outsourced product, and you’ll determine how to assess stakeholder satisfaction with the product in production.

Since there is never time, even theoretically, to validate all details of a product, an important concept is using risk assessment to determine the appropriate thoroughness of validation at every stage. Exercises in risk assessment and all the major validation techniques are an integral part of this course.

While the involvement of BAs in testing varies widely across companies, this course assumes maximum involvement at the business level (excluding nonfunctional testing except for usability). Each student can tailor the content to suit a specific company’s policies.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

Course Objectives

  • Position the activities of the BA in the complete verification and validation process
  • Use testing terminology in a standardized way
  • Use risk to drive the validation effort and therefore use project money wisely
  • Make decisions on what not to test for defects
    • Plan appropriate (risk-based) techniques to find defects in the BRD, that is, validate the BRD
    • Plan appropriate (risk-based) functional testing techniques at the BA level to find defects
    • Plan appropriate (risk based) glass box testing techniques for processes to find defects
  • Check and test usability
  • Choose appropriate (customer-selected) tests for acceptance, that is, compliance to requirements
  • Manage test data and information
  • Manage requirements problems and test failures
  • Document the plans (activities, resources, risks)
  • Gain acceptance, install the product, and validate to business needs

Course Content

1. Testing and the BA

  • Good Testing and Checking
  • Project Team Verification and Validation Process
  • Types of Testing
  • Ways to Verify and Validate

2. High-Level BA Validation

  • Your Budget and Risk Management
  • Estimating the Risks of Defects in the System
  • Developing a High-Level Validation Strategy and Budget

3. Finding Defects in the BRD

  • Characteristics of a Good BRD
  • Techniques of Finding Defects in a BRD
  • Choosing the Appropriate Technique

4. Planning Testing

  • Structured Testing
  • Mid-Level Test Strategy
  • Test Cases

5. BA-Level Functional Testing in the Automated System

  • Black Box Testing
  • Black Box Testing Techniques
  • Automated Low-Level Test Strategy

6. BA Validation of Processes

  • Validating Processes
  • Glass Box Testing Techniques
  • Process Low-Level Test Strategy

7. Usability Validation

  • The Importance of Usability
  • Usability Validation by the BA
  • Getting Users Involved in Validation
  • Usability Testing

8. Documenting the Test Plan

  • Capturing the BA Test Plan
  • Formal BA Test Plan

9. Acceptance, Installation, and Validation to Business Needs

  • Acceptance
  • Installing the System
  • Validating to the Business Needs
  • Completing the Project

Course Overview

This 4-day Business Analysis: Requirements Development, Documentation and Management training course is part of the certification process to obtain the Certification of Capability in Business Analysis (CCBA) certificate from The International Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA).

Develop effective requirements that meet business and stakeholder objectives. Numerous studies have concluded that failure to effectively develop and document project requirements is directly related to project failure.By following the logical methodology for the requirements process presented in this course, you’ll learn to develop and write effective requirements, including business objectives as well as business, stakeholder, and solution requirements. By working through the requirements process using various elicitation techniques, you’ll discover the importance of and types of requirements, best practices for writing requirements, steps for sign-off, and management of the requirements baseline.

Course Objectives

  • Types of requirements including business, stakeholder, functional, non-functional, and transition requirements
  • Elicitation techniques including their advantages and disadvantages for the various requirements stakeholders
  • Analysis and modeling of requirements
  • Types of requirement documents
  • Best practices for requirements writing
  • How to avoid requirements writing pitfalls
  • Steps for requirements verification, validation, and sign-off
  • Requirements management processes including data management, tracing, and change management

Course Content

1. Requirements Issues and Impacts

  • Issues from Poor Requirements Processes
  • CBAP Review
  • Requirements Definition
  • Requirements Problems Class Exercise/Brainstorm

2. Foundations of Requirements

  • Types of Requirements
  • Business vs. Technical Communications
  • Requirements Approaches
  • Product and Project Life Cycles
  • Role of Business Analyst (IIBA View)
  • The Requirements Process

3. Defining the Product Scope

  • Enterprise Analysis Overview
  • What Scope Is
  • The Business Case
  • Use Cases to Describe Current Environment and Proposed Scope

4. Requirements Communication Planning

  • The Requirements Communications Plan
  • Requirements Conflicts
  • The Requirements Package

5. Requirements Planning: The Requirements Charter

  • The Requirements Charter
  • The Requirements Team

6. Requirements Planning: Sources

  • Stakeholder Types
  • Identifying Stakeholders
  • Analyzing Stakeholders for Requirements

7. Requirements Elicitation

  • Techniques
  • Creating an Elicitation Archive
  • Elicitation Plan

8. Requirements Analysis

  • Functional Requirements
  • Non-Functional Requirements
  • Constraints
  • Modeling Techniques
    • UML Techniques
    • Data Modeling

9. Requirements Sign-Off

  • The Requirements Baseline
  • Review Meetings
  • The Sign-Off Process

10. Writing the Requirements Document

  • Technical Writing Practices
  • Good Requirements Writing Practices
  • Requirements Writing Pitfalls and Mistakes
  • Requirements Document Enhancements
  • Writing Functional and Non-Functional Requirements
  • Writing Assumptions and Constraints
  • Organizing the Requirements Document

11. Requirements Management

  • Managing Throughout the Product Life Cycle
  • Components of Requirements Management
  • The Change Process
  • Traceability
  • Requirements/Configuration Management Systems
  • Requirements Attributes – Brainstorm

12. Other Topics

  • Requirements Process Close
  • Project Life Cycles
  • Agile Development Considerations

Course Overview

This 2-day BCS Practitioner Certificate in Modelling Business Processes training covers the range of concepts, approaches and techniques that are applicable to the Practitioner Certificate in Modelling Business Processes. It is relevant to anyone requiring an understanding of Modelling Business Processes and focuses on the investigation, modelling, analysis and improvement of business processes.

Course Objectives

You’ll study how to investigate, model, analyse and improve business processes. The certificate includes:

  • The context for business processing modelling
  • The organisational model for processes
  • How to model business processes
  • How to document tasks
  • Evaluating and improving business processes

Course Content

1. The Context for Business Processing Modelling 15%
1. Candidates will be able to:
1.1 Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose and benefits of business process
modelling.
1.2 Identify the three levels of the business process hierarchy; organisation, process and
task level.
1.3 Explain the importance of the process view versus the functional view of an
organisation.
1.4 Describe the use of the POPIT model in assessing the impact of a new process
design.
1.5 Discuss the use of pilot, phased, direct changeover and parallel running to implement
business change.


2. The Organisational Context for Business Processes 20%
Candidates will be able to:
2.1 Understand the construction of an organisational level model of business process for
a given business scenario.
2.2 Understand how to construct an organisational model for a given scenario (Paul et al,
Business Analysis, 3rd Edition).
2.3 Apply knowledge to distinguish between the external and internal elements of an
organisational model.
2.4 Explain how the processes on the organisational model support the delivery of the
value proposition.


3. Modelling the Business Processes 30%
Candidates will be able to:
3.1 Understand the construction of a business process model for a given business
scenario, using the following elements:
3.1.1 Actors.
3.1.2 Swim lanes.
3.1.3 Tasks.
3.1.4 Decision points with guard conditions.
3.1.5 Start and end points.
3.1.6 Process flows.
3.1.7 Forks and joins.
3.2 Explain why using a standard notation set is important.
3.3 Apply knowledge to distinguish between the terms process, task and step; describe
how they relate to each other.
3.4 Demonstrate that a task typically involves one person (actor) at one place at one time
(OPOPOT), and that it is represented as a single ‘box’ on a process model.
3.5 Based on a given business scenario, identify external, internal and time-based
business events.
3.6 Explain the difference between internal performance measures and customer
expectations of performance.


4. Documenting Tasks 15%
Candidates will be able to:
4.1 Understand how to construct a task description for a given business scenario, which
includes the following elements:
4.1.1 The name of the task.
4.1.2 The actor (or role) carrying out the task.
4.1.3 The trigger or business event that initiates the task.
4.1.4 Any inputs to the task.
4.1.5 The outputs expected from the task.
4.1.6 The costs associated with the task.
4.1.7 The measures that are applicable to the task.
4.1.8 The standards that constrain the task.
4.1.9 A detailed breakdown of the steps within the task.
4.1.10 The business rules that are to be followed in performing the task.
4.2 Demonstrate an ability to document the steps and business rules within a task, using
UML activity diagram notation, or structured English.


5. Improving Business Processes 20%
Candidates will be able to:
5.1 Apply the following approaches to improving business processes: task automation;
removal of gaps and disconnects; process re-engineering.
5.2 Show understanding of the need to challenge business rules and assumptions when
improving business processes.
5.3 Identify the areas of a business process that may contribute to unsatisfactory
performance from a given scenario.
5.4 Explain the use of business scenarios in identifying combinations of conditions that
the improved business process will need to handle.
5.5 Conduct a gap analysis on a given ‘to be’ business process model, in order to identify
the functional requirements for the IT system support for that business process.

Course Overview

The complexity of IT projects continues to increase. At the conclusion of projects, it is assumed that quality solutions will be delivered within the set time and costs. Business Analysis has a major impact on successful projects. A good understanding of the role of a Business Analyst in the organisation and his/her contribution to the project are of great importance. The tools and techniques used, as well as the deliverables provided by the Business Analyst are essential to meet the project objectives.

Project managers have generally attended formal training courses on PRINCE2, PMI®, IPMA, etc. However, most project managers have never attended training on Business Analysis, while this subject is becoming increasingly important. This course builds a bridge between the Project Management profession and Business Analysis.

Course Objectives

  • Understand the scope of a Business Analysis role and how it complement Project Management
  • Apply numerous world-class Business Analysis techniques in work environment immediately
  • Learn how to better communicate with all project stakeholders using best practice business analysis tools and techniques
  • Appreciate the similarities and differences between Business Analyst and Project Manager roles
  • Plan projects to include requirements analysis and understand requirements engineering
  • Conduct and support requirements elicitation activities and requirements validation that will support the business need
  • Look beyond the delivery of the project to pre- and post-project activities

Course Content

Session 1: Introduction to Business Analysis

  • Project Management vs Business Analysis
  • Importance of Effective Business Analysis
  • Role of the BA
  • Standardization and Adaptability

Session 2: Requirements Planning

  • Role of the BA in Requirements Planning
  • Vision and Scope Document
  • Types of Requirements
  • Stakeholders
  • Business Analysis Plan

Session 3: Requirements Elicitation

  • Role of the BA in Requirements Elicitation
  • Investigative approach
  • Iterative approach
  • Elicitation Techniques

Session 4: Requirements Analysis

  • Need for Analysis
  • Using Analysis to get Stakeholder Feedback
  • Value of Modelling Techniques in Analysis
  • Modelling Techniques
  • Types of Requirements
  • Business Rules Analysis
  • Prioritizing Requirements

Session 5: Requirements Documentation

  • Formal and Informal Documentation and the, Leve of Detail Required
  • Writing for Usability and Comprehension
  • Common Requirements Document Defects
  • Components of a Formal Requirements Document
  • Requirements Verification and Validation
  • Requirements Sign-Off

Session 6: Requirements Management and Communication

  • Throughout the Project and to Decommission
  • Change Management
  • Define a baseline
  • Define a change management process
  • Identify the Change Authority
  • Traceability and Its Uses
  • Requirements Attributes
  • Requirements Communication

Session 7: Solution Validation and Acceptance

  • Testing and Non-Testing Methods
  • Purposes of Validation
  • Find defects
  • Prove compliance to requirements
  • Test Cases and Test Suites
  • Challenges in Testing
  • Structured Testing
  • Role of the BA in Solution Validation: the V Model
  • Solution Acceptance and Project Close-Out

Course Overview

Product Ownership Analysis (POA) is a researched and studied discipline with a set of practices, processes, and procedures to create successful outcomes. This IIBA’s Product Ownership Analysis Certification Program recognizes the integration of Business Analysis and Product Ownership with an Agile mindset to maximizing value. It provides the opportunity to acquire essential POA concepts needed to navigate the challenges associated with creating successful products.

More and more a product owner moves from the “voice of the customer” towards “voice of the business” and therefore should perform the role of the business analyst before, during and after the product development and product implementation. The product owner as

  •  the “voice of the business” is building the business case and then ensuring that the solution stays aligned with the product roadmap and business goals. Performs benefit management. Ultimately the product owner wants to make sure the solution provides value to the organization and the customer and stays in line with the vision for the product.
  •  the “voice of the customer”, is typically assigned to the project team and works with the team on every aspect of development of requirements, designing the solution and the features of the solution, testing the solution.

A successful product owner requires

  • a vision of the whole project and analytical skills to help with reflection on the progress being made,
  • backlog prioritisation skills,
  • the skills of eliciting, analysing, and communicating findings; prioritising outcomes, analysing the needs of the stakeholder, creating business cases, designing a solution, defining features and user stories,  facilitating the work of the team and seeking feedback from the consumer,
  • benefit management skills to create a realistic business case and update the business case at the end of each plant release
  • facilitating skills for a conversation about what is being done and what should be done differently using the findings provided,
  • defining acceptance tests strategies and acceptance criteria
  • change management skills to successfully implement the solution in the organisation

Course Objectives

In this unique workshop each participant learns the various business analysis skills needed by a product owner to successfully perform “the view of the business” activities before, during and after the product development

Course Content

“The voice of the business”

  • Why does a product owner needs business analysis skills
  • The business analysis approach in an Agile development environment           
  • Business analysis skills needed
  • Type of Requirements

Business Strategy analysis & management

  • Mission, vision, strategy
  • Finding, analysing and documenting improvement initiatives
  • Portfolio Management
  • Kaizen

Benefit Management

  • Business case development
  • Managing benefits during the project and product life cycle

 Needs analysis

  • Root Cause analysis
  • Impact analysis
  • Updating your business case
  • Presenting your findings

Solution design

  • Capturing solution design options
  • Perform feasibility study
  • Solution proposal
  • Identify and write Epics
  • Identify and write Features
  • Identify and write User Stories
  • Update the business case

Solution development

  • Select the right approach

Tools and techniques to elicite product requirements

  • developing prototypes
  • product evaluation techniques
  • developing functional design
  • process modelling
  • use case modelling
  • data modelling

Validating the solution to be implemented

  • Creating and execution User test ‘test scenario’s
  • Developing user test ‘test cases’
  • Acceptance testing

Course Overview

In this training you’ll learn the vocabulary standards and business analysis practices through the use of the IIBA A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide). You’ll understand the business analyst’s role and responsibilities in a successful project. In this introductory course, you’ll delve into the role and responsibilities of the business analyst (BA)- the communication link between all business areas and a critical player in project success. Learn techniques for ensuring project success every step of the way-from identifying and analyzing potential projects to making sure that the final project product meets the requirements you identified. Through hands-on exercises, you’ll learn to define the scope of work and master requirements-gathering techniques that will work for a variety of projects and audiences. You’ll consider the unique needs of customers, stakeholders, and the IT department as you work toward building, documenting, communicating, and managing requirements.

Course Objectives

What You’ll Learn

  • Role and importance of the BA
  • Vocabulary standards and business analysis practices through the use of the IIBA A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide)
  • Plan BA requirements activities
  • Elicit requirements from stakeholders, with an emphasis on interviews
  • Analyze stated requirements, with an overview of modeling techniques
  • Document requirements for different types of projects
  • Verify and validate requirements
  • Elements of requirements management and communication and the BA’s role in them
  • Elements of solution verification and validation and possible BA roles
  • Enterprise analysis: choosing appropriate projects
  • Necessary competencies and best practices of BAs
  • Waterfall, incremental, and agile lifecycles and how they change BA practices

Course Content

1. Introduction to Business Analysis

  • Importance of Effective Business Analysis
  • Role of the BA
  • Standardization and Adaptability

2. Requirements Planning

  • Role of the BA in Requirements Planning
  • Vision and Scope Document
  • Types of Requirements
  • Stakeholders
  • Business Analysis Plan

3. Requirements Elicitation

  • Role of the BA in Requirements Elicitation
    • Investigative approach
    • Iterative approach
  • Techniques
    • Interviews
    • Focus groups
    • Requirements workshop: Requirements meeting
    • Requirements workshop: JAD session
    • Brainstorming
    • Observation
    • Survey
    • Prototype
    • Document analysis
    • Business rules analysis
    • Reverse engineering
    • Product trials

4. Requirements Analysis

  • Need for Analysis
  • Using Analysis to get Stakeholder Feedback and Verify and Validate Developing Requirements
  • Value of Modeling Techniques in Analysis
  • Modeling Techniques
    • Organizational model
    • Location model
    • Process/flow models
    • Use case models
    • Data models
    • State model
  • Types of Requirements
  • Business Rules Analysis
  • Prioritizing Requirements
  • Verifying and Validating Requirements

5. Requirements Documentation

  • Formal and Informal Documentation and the, Level of Detail Required
  • Writing for Usability and Comprehension
  • Common Requirements Document Defects
  • Components of a Formal Requirements Document
  • Requirements Verification and Validation
  • Requirements Sign-Off

6. Requirements Management and Communication

  • Throughout the Project and to Decommission
  • Change Management
    • Define a baseline
    • Define a change management process
    • Identify the Change Authority
  • Traceability and Its Uses
  • Requirements Attributes
  • Requirements Communication

7. Solution Validation and Acceptance

  • Testing and Non-Testing Methods
  • Purposes of Validation
    • Find defects
    • Prove compliance to requirements
  • Test Cases and Test Suites
  • Challenges in Testing
  • Structured Testing
  • Role of the BA in Solution Validation: the V Model
  • Solution Acceptance and Project Close-Out

8. Enterprise Analysis

  • Definition and Causes
  • Role of the BA on the Enterprise Analysis Team
  • Steps in Enterprise Analysis
    • Define the business need
      • Techniques for root cause analysis
    • Assess capability gaps
      • SWOT analysis
    • Determine the solution approach
    • Define the solution scope
    • Define the business case
      • Contents of business case
      • Who does what?: the BA’s limited role in developing a business case

9. Competencies, Best Practices, and Life Cycle Models

  • Competency Proficiency
  • BA Necessary Competencies
    • Analytical thinking and problem solving
    • Behavioral characteristics
    • Business knowledge
    • Communication skills
    • Interaction skills
    • Software application knowledge
  • Best Practices
    • Use iterative analysis
    • Focus on process improvement
    • Apply progressive elaboration
    • Check as you go
    • Use the investigative approach
    • Adopt traceability
    • Formalize business analysis through standardization
    • Improve communication through modeling
  • Life Cycle Models
    • Waterfall
    • Incremental
    • Agile
    • Effects on business analysis

10. BA Fundamentals

  • Communication Skills
  • Leadership Skills
  • Problem-Solving Skills
  • Business Knowledge
  • IT Knowledge

11. Case Studies

12. Exercises

Course Overview

This 4-day Big Data Scientist course is a continuation of the Big Data Fundamentals (BDF) course and consists of 4 modules. After each module the participant can take the corresponding exam. If all exams are passed, the participant will be Certified Big Data Scientist. The course is scheduled in 4 blocks of 1 day, spread over approximately 4 weeks.

The modules are part of the Big Data Science Certified Professional (BDSCP) curriculum of Arcitura Education. The Big Data Science Certified Professional (BDSCP) program from Arcitura is dedicated to excellence in the fields of Big Data science, analysis, analytics, business intelligence, and technology architecture, as well as design, development, and governance.

Course Content

Module 1: Big Data Analysis & Technology Concepts         

  • Big Data Analysis Lifecycle (from business case evaluation to data analysis and visualization)
  • A/B Testing, Correlation
  • Regression, Heat Maps
  • Time Series Analysis
  • Network Analysis
  • Spatial Data Analysis
  • Classification, Clustering
  • Outlier Detection
  • Filtering (including collaborative filtering & content-based filtering)
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Sentiment Analysis, Text Analytics
  • File Systems & Distributed File Systems, NoSQL
  • Distributed & Parallel Data Processing,
  • Processing Workloads, Clusters
  • Cloud Computing & Big Data
  • Foundational Big Data Technology Mechanisms


Module 2: Fundamentals Big Data Analysis & Science       

  • Data Science, Data Mining & Data Modeling
  • Big Data Dataset Categories
  • Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) (including numerical summaries, rules & data reduction)
  • EDA analysis types (including univariate, bivariate & multivariate)
  • Essential Statistics (including variable categories & relevant mathematics)
  • Statistics Analysis (including descriptive, inferential, correlation, covariance & hypothesis testing)
  • Data Munging & Machine Learning
  • Variables & Basic Mathematical Notations
  • Statistical Measures & Statistical Inference
  • Distributions & Data Processing Techniques
  • Data Discretization, Binning, Clustering
  • Visualization Techniques & Numerical Summaries
  • Correlation for Big Data
  • Time Series Analysis for Big Data

Module 3: Advanced Big Data Analysis & Science    

  • Statistical Models, Model Evaluation Measures (including cross-validation, bias-variance, confusion matrix & f-score)
  • Machine Learning Algorithms, Pattern Identification (including association rules & apriori algorithm)
  • Advanced Statistical Techniques (including parametric vs. non-parametric, clustering vs. non-clustering distance-based, supervised vs. semi-supervised)
  • Linear Regression & Logistic Regression for Big Data
  • Decision Trees for Big Data
  • Classification Rules for Big Data
  • K Nearest Neighbor (kNN) for Big Data
  • Naïve Bayes for Big Data
  • Association Rules for Big Data
  • K-means for Big Data
  • Text Analytics for Big Data
  • Outlier Detection for Big Data

Module 4: Big Data Analysis & Science lab

This course module covers a series of exercises and problems designed to test the participant’s ability to apply knowledge of topics covered previously in course modules 4 and 5. Completing this lab will help highlight areas that require further attention, and will further prove hands-on proficiency in Big Data analysis and science practices as they are applied and combined to solve real-world problems.

As a hands-on lab, this course incorporates a set of detailed exercises that require participants to solve various inter-related problems, with the goal of fostering a comprehensive understanding of how different data analysis techniques can be applied to solve problems in Big Data environments and used to make significant, relevant predictions that offer increased business value.

Course Overview

This 1-day Fundamental Big Data course is the first module in Arcitura Education’s Big Data Science Certified Professional (BDSCP) curriculum. This foundational course provides a high-level overview of essential Big Data topic areas. A basic understanding of Big Data from business and technology perspectives is provided, along with an overview of common benefits, challenges, and adoption issues. The course content is divided into a series of modular sections, each of which is accompanied by one or more hands-on exercises.

Course Content

Module 1: Big Data Fundamentals

  • Understanding Big Data
  • Fundamental Terminology & Concepts
  • Big Data Business & Technology Drivers
  • Traditional Enterprise Technologies Related to Big Data
  • Characteristics of Data in Big Data Environments
  • Dataset Types in Big Data Environments
  • Fundamental Analysis and Analytics
  • Machine Learning Types
  • Business Intelligence & Big Data
  • Data Visualization & Big Data
  • Big Data Adoption & Planning Considerations

Course Overview

Master a proven set of modelling techniques using UML. Topics covered on the Systems Modelling Techniques course include use case diagrams, analysis class diagrams and state machines. A Specialist Practitioner module on the internationally recognised BCS Diploma in Business Analysis.

Course Objectives

Systems modelling helps clarify the charactristics of a system and specify the requirements to be met. Learn a proven set of modelling techniques for specifying IT systems, using selected models from the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a standard for systems specification. Topics covered on the Systems Modelling Techniques course include use case diagrams, analysis class diagrams and state machines. 

When combined with our Systems Development Essentials course, this module provides you with the core tools and techniques you’ll need to become an effective systems analyst.

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below. Each member of our Systems Modelling Techniques training team brings substantial experience of systems modelling and UML to the programme.

Course Content

During this course, you will cover:

Systems modelling

  • The importance of modelling and modelling standards
  • Models of the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
  • Interaction of selected UML models

Modelling functionality

  • Use cases diagrams
  • Actors and the system boundary
  • Modelling functional scope
  • Use case descriptions – structure and contents
  • Use case descriptions – defining the main and alternative flows
  • The <<include>> and <<extend>> constructs
  • Activity diagrams – notation
  • Using activity diagrams to model use case descriptions
  • Using activity diagrams to model processing

Static data modelling

  • Objects and classes
  • Class diagrams and object diagrams
  • Representing classes – name, attributes and operations
  • Defining attributes – adornments
  • Abstraction and Encapsulation
  • Associations – structural, association and aggregation
  • Defining multiplicities
  • Generalisation and inheritance
  • Understanding polymorphism

Dynamic modelling

  • Cross-referencing models with CRUD
  • State machine diagrams modelling object lifecycles
  • Realising use cases with interaction models
  • Sequence and communication diagrams
  • Interaction fragments, including opt, alt and loop
  • How interaction models populate class operations during design

Modelling in context

  • Phases and workflows of the Unified Process
  • Models in the Unified Process
  • The bridge to design, software package selection and development

Course Overview

At the end of this course you’ll not only have a good understanding of the models and methods used in system design, but you’ll also be able to apply them confidently to a multitude of project situations.

For that reason, this course is for all the system designers and software architects, including those working on system enhancements, who want to gain some hands-on knowledge of the best practice techniques to use when designing software solutions that meet business requirements. We’ll look at how requirements specified in a set of deliverables produced by business and system analysts can be achieved using models from the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and supported by more traditional approaches, like data normalisation. On top of that, the course will cover areas such as interface between analysis and design, logical process design and system controls and security.

Presented to you by one of the expert training consultants pictured below, each member of our Systems Design Techniques training team bring their substantial experience of software development and systems design to the programme.

Course Content

Introduction

  • Objectives and constraints of design
  • The place of design in the systems development life cycle
  • Using the products of analysis to drive systems design
  • The work of the designer
  • The scope of design
  • Design methodologies
  • Architectural issues in design
  • Introduction to design patterns

User interface (UI) design

  • Objectives of UI design
  • Design of input and output interfaces
  • Dialogue types
  • Usability and style guides
  • Prototyping the interface
  • Modelling the user interface

Component-based design

  • Introduction to components & software architectures
  • Component design principles: cohesion, coupling, responsibility and reusability
  • Using analysis models (use case diagram and class diagram) to create a logical component architecture
  • Use case realisation with UML interaction diagrams
  • Defining component interfaces
  • Component engineering
  • MVC (Model, View, Controller), choreography and orchestration design patterns

Logical data design (normalisation)

  • Notation and conventions of relational data analysis (normalisation)
  • Principles of progressive normalisation through first, second and third normal forms
  • Rationalising results from normalisation of multiple data sources
  • Building the normalised (Third Normal Form) data model
  • Defining the final logical data design using Entity-Relationship Diagrams

Logical process design

  • Activity Diagrams (UML)
  • Structured English / pseudocode
  • Data Navigation Diagrams

Physical design

  • Optimising the logical design
  • Principles of physical data design
  • Principles of physical process design
  • Design and architecture
  • Packaging the design for delivery using Deployment Diagrams (UML)

System controls

  • Risk in systems development
  • Verification and validation of data
  • Object controls
  • Data controls & self-checking codes
  • Function and state controls
  • Visibility and encapsulation in object-oriented design (UML class diagrams)
  • Audit trails
  • Output controls
  • Clerical controls
  • Access controls, physical and logical security
  • Backup and recovery
  • Business continuity and disaster planning
  • Legal requirements of the designer