Detailing Business Data Requirements

Overview | Intended Audience & Prerequisites | Outline | Public Class Schedule

Overview:

Understanding and documenting business data requirements is a critical component in defining complete requirements. Every process uses data and almost all business rules are enforced by data. Missing a critical piece of data or incorrectly defining a data element contributes to the majority of maintenance problems and results in systems that do not reflect the business needs. This course teaches students an in-depth approach to identify and define all necessary data components using both textual templates and an entity relationship diagram.

Students will be given data templates with a suggested documentation structure for defining Business Data Requirements. In addition students will be shown how to document data using an entity relationship diagram to produce a logical data model in combination with the supporting detailed templates.

The course provides business analysts the knowledge to:

• Identify core data requirements beginning with project initiation.
• Identify excellent data requirements at the appropriate level of detail.
• Detail the data requirements (using a suggested documentation structure and templates in Microsoft Word format or using an entity relationship diagram).
• Identify and detail attributive, associative and subtype and supertype entities.
• Detail complex data related business rules.
• Discriminate between business data (logical data) and database design (physical data).
• Assist with the transition of business data to database design.
• Utilize easy normalization techniques (without all the mathematical theory).
• Validate data requirements with activity (process or use case) requirements.

Even if your organization has a data administrator or data warehouse team who is responsible for documenting and managing the organization's information needs, every project uses a subset of that enterprise information in its own unique way. Business analysts must understand the importance of data in all of their projects and include data requirements in their business requirements documentation. Failing to document which data elements need to be used in a calculation, or displayed on a report, leaves the developer the responsibility of choosing the correct pieces of business data from hundreds if not thousands of available fields. These missing requirements often lead to expensive and lengthy project delays during the testing phase.

"... the data sees the big picture, while the various people and machines and organizations that work on the data see only a portion of what happens. As you go about doing a Structured Analysis, you will find yourself more and more frequently attaching yourself to the data and following it through the operation. I think of this as "interviewing the data."' It is usually more productive than any other single interview."

This class is a part of the B2T Training Business Analyst Certification Program. For more information on the program, please see our Certification page.

Onsite Pricing:
We offer discount pricing for onsite groups. Please contact us to discuss your specific course requirements, group size, and available training dates.

IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge™:

B2T Training Course Alignment:

Detailing Business Data Requirements

Detailing Business Data Requirements: Self-guided study available for purchase.