Description

Course Overview

Agile software development changes how teams work with requirements. Business analysts, product owners, and project stakeholders collaborate to identify, analyze, refine, and manage requirements through iterative and incremental delivery.

This three-day course explores techniques for product discovery, eliciting user stories, elaborating requirements, and slicing complex requirements into manageable increments. Through practical exercises, participants use lightweight documentation and modelling techniques to build shared understanding, prioritize work, and prepare requirements for delivery.

Prerequisites & Target Audience

Participants should understand the basics of agile and business analysis.

This course is ideal for individuals responsible for writing or refining user stories, as well as those joining an agile squad. It is relevant to business analysts, product owners, project stakeholders, and team members who contribute to requirements development and backlog refinement.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply progressive elaboration, from business requirements to detailed user requirements.
• Write and prioritize user stories with clear acceptance criteria.
• Slice complex requirements into manageable increments that deliver value.
• Explain and define a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
• Evaluate backlog, user story, and requirements readiness.
• Use lightweight modelling techniques to discover and clarify requirements.
• Identify and incorporate non-functional requirements.
• Apply story mapping, process modelling, personas, a Definition of Ready, and story-slicing patterns.

Day 1: Eliciting Agile Requirements

Explore how requirements are discovered and developed collaboratively in an agile environment.

• Agile planning overview and its relationship to requirements.
• Roles of business analysts, product owners, and stakeholders.
• Progressive elaboration in iterative and incremental delivery.
• Lightweight documentation to support shared understanding.
• Epics, themes, and user stories.
• Applying elicitation techniques, including interviews and facilitated workshops.
• Using personas to understand users and their needs.
• Introducing story mapping to organize user activities and requirements.

Practical application: Identify business needs and stakeholders for a case study, develop personas, and create an initial story map with epics and draft user stories.

Day 2: Requirements Elaboration

Develop high-level requirements into clear, manageable user stories that support incremental delivery.

• Understanding and defining a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
• Using mind maps to explore and organize requirements.
• Creating user stories that communicate user needs and business value.
• Writing clear, testable acceptance criteria.
• Identifying business rules, assumptions, and gaps.
• Applying story-slicing patterns to complex requirements.
• Refining stories through collaborative discussion.
• Using a Definition of Ready to assess story readiness.

Practical application: Define an MVP for the case study, elaborate selected requirements, slice larger stories, and develop acceptance criteria.

Day 3: The Product Backlog and Requirements Readiness

Organize, prioritize, and refine requirements to support ongoing delivery.

• Managing and refining the product backlog.
• Prioritizing user stories based on value, risk, and dependencies.
• Identifying and incorporating non-functional requirements.
• Using structured events to support requirements clarification and refinement.
• Applying the Three Amigos approach to bring together business, development, and testing perspectives.
• Using lightweight visual models, including use cases, process models, and state diagrams.
• Evaluating backlog quality, story readiness, and supporting requirements.
• Adapting requirements as feedback and priorities evolve.

Practical application: Prioritize the case study backlog, conduct a Three Amigos session, and use visual models to clarify requirements. Complete a final readiness review of selected stories.

Learning Approach

Instructor-led discussions, collaborative exercises, and a progressive case study allow participants to apply techniques throughout all three days. Examples and activities can be customized to reflect the organization’s business context and ways of working.