Effective Facilitation for Business Analysts

Course Overview

New & Exclusive - Acquire the facilitation skills necessary to effectively manage requirements meetings and workshops.

Business analysts have the responsibility to gather, analyze, and validate business and technical requirements for their projects, thus they need facilitation skills to manage requirements meetings and workshops.

In this highly interactive two-day course, you'll gain the skills to be an effective facilitator - one who can help stakeholders define their needs and form quantifiable requirements. You'll learn tested techniques for meeting planning and preparation, brainstorming, analysis, and decision-making. You will have the opportunity to practice these techniques in a safe environment with a trained facilitator who will give you relevant, timely feedback. Advanced topics will also be covered, including virtual facilitation, conflict management, and root cause analysis. You will leave class with the confidence to facilitate a meeting from the planning stages, motivating group participation, building consensus, maintaining session focus, and evaluating results for lessons learned.

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.

Target Audience

• Systems analysts, business analysts, requirements analysts, developers, software engineers, IT project managers, project managers, project analysts, project leaders, senior project managers, team leaders, program managers, testers, and QA specialists.

Course Objectives

• The role of facilitation in business analysis
• Plan a facilitated meeting
• Create an agenda and risk analysis
• Use the appropriate facilitation techniques in a meeting
• Plan for and facilitate in a virtual meeting environment
• Use advanced brainstorming, analysis, and decision-making techniques
• Manage conflict in a facilitated meeting

Course Content

1. Facilitation Basics

• What Facilitation Is
• The Role of the Facilitator
• To Facilitate or Not to Facilitate?
• Benefits of Facilitation
• Facilitation in Business Analysis

2. Planning a Facilitated Meeting

• Why Planning is Critical
• Defining the Purpose
• The Facilitated Meeting Planning Worksheet
  • Key Characteristics of Participants
  • Meeting Risks and Responses

3. Facilitation Techniques

• Building an Agenda
• Techniques for Facilitated Meetings
  • Brainstorming
  • Gap Analysis
  • T-Charts (or Force Field Analysis)
  • Model Types
  • Impact/Effort Grid
  • Multi-Voting

4. Conducting a Meeting

• Facilitation Actions
• Facilitation Behaviors

5. Virtual Meetings

• Challenge of Teleconferences and Web-Conferences
• Meeting with Dispersed Participants
• Best Practices for Virtual Meetings

6. More Techniques for Facilitation

• Brainwriting (Anonymous Brainstorming)
• Root Cause Analysis
• Criteria-Based Grid
• How Various Models Can be Used with Groups

7. Managing Conflict

• Understanding Conflict
• Good vs. Bad Conflict
• Resolving Conflict between Participants
• Resolving Conflict between Participant and Facilitator

Exercises:

• Complete a Facilitation Meeting Plan
• Create Meeting Agenda
• Practice Facilitating Multiple Meetings
• Practice Root Cause Analysis
• Complete a Criteria-Based Grid

Course Prerequisites

• Business Analysis Essentials (GK2919)

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