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)

You cannot underestimate the importance of testing. To ensure project success, planning and executing the testing process must begin as soon as the vision and scope for the solution takes shape. As the requirements for the solution are elicited, the business analyst and the test team develop and refine a master test plan. This plan incorporates test strategies to identify any defects in the requirements, solution or corresponding documentation.

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 practice 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 enough 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 non-functional testing except for usability).

In this hands-on workshop, you?ll develop a master test plan. You will also perform exercises designed to help you establish a risk-based and comprehensive master test strategy for a testing effort. These activities help the business analyst ensure that all requirements trace back to the business need.

By attending this course, you?ll develop the competencies required to create test cases and scenarios and to ensure proper test coverage according to the risk level. You will also learn about the different levels and types of testing commonly used in solution development today.

At the completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Recognize the role of the business analyst (BA) in the testing process
• Validate the business requirements document (BRD) and analysis models
• 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
• Verify that the solution conforms to the requirements
• Communicate the importance of a testing methodology
• Determine what to test and trace those requirements throughout the solution development life cycle (SDLC)
• Develop and execute a test plan
• Understand various testing techniques

This course is designed for business analysts, project managers, and developers who need a better understanding of the requirements testing, verification and validations processes. It is of great use to business analysts who have some testing experience and want a more formal understanding of the testing process to become more efficient as well as create standardization across a group, department, or organization.

Business analysts who don?t know anything about testing and want to learn how to perform it.

You should have acquired a background in gathering and documenting user requirements and use case modeling.

Instructor-led, group-paced, classroom-delivery learning model with structured hands-on activities and case studies.