Agile Requirements in Depth

We offer private training, at your location or virtually, and an OnDemand course catalog.

Get in touch

About Agile Requirements in Depth

Duration: 1.5 – 3 day course
Resources: Workbook, Online Companion Course

Agile development shifts traditional requirements work to a “just in time” approach. How does this affect good requirements practices? This class explains Agile approaches to traditional requirements sources including MRDs, PRDs, feature lists, and user scenarios.

It dives into techniques for developing requirements on Agile projects, including the Agile Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), using story mapping to define the scope of the project, writing user stories, sizing stories (agile estimation), and developing acceptance criteria for user stories. Concepts are illustrated through extensive use of hands-on labs.

What Are We Trying to Build?

  • It all starts with the Product Vision
  • Characteristics of good Product Visions

Software Requirements: What and Why

  • What is a requirement?
  • The Product Vision as the top-level requirement
  • Three purposes of requirements
  • Using requirements to manage risk
  • Product versus project requirements
  • Potentiallly useful requirements artifacts
  • Working software as the ultimate requirements specification

Initial requirements gathering

  • Envisioning the high level requirements
  • What can I do with it: high-level user stories and story mapping
  • How it works: business rules and the domain model
  • How it looks: low-fidelity UI models and workflows

Just-in-time Requirements Elaboration

  • No requirement before its time: the concept of the last responsible moment
  • Requirements elaboration during iteration planning

Requirements Change Management & Requirements Validation

  • Acceptance criteria
  • The Definition of Done and why it matters

You will learn:

  • Software Requirements: What and Why
  • Initial Requirements Gathering
  • Just-in-Time Requirements Elaboration
  • Requirements Change Management
  • Requirements Validation

Developers, Technical Leads, Designers, Architects

“Excellent material and presentation. The formal presentation of the principles and techniques provides me with quite a number of takeaways to go back to the office. We have much to learn as we look to improve our execution both with the Software Division and the rest of the company.”

Christopher Scharver, Mechdyne Corporation

“The entire seminar was valuable because it introduced topics I’ve never seen or used in the workplace.”

Sheena McDonald, USAF

“Great course! Better understanding of the WHY in Agile and requirements so that we can refine our processes and not blindly follow how you’re “supposed” to do Agile.”

Shay Lowell, PACCAR

“Learning about how to think differently and achieve better results. Nice job, Earl.”

Andy Summers, Disney

“What I found most valuable was the outside, unbiased lessons on how scrum should be used. Previous trainings were always tailored or taught from a PACCARized version.”

Joshua Matthews, PACCAR

“Perfect level for group. Lots of practical discussion for our work. Learning multiple techniques based on your org for developing requirements.”

Sarah Cooper, GE

“Time well spent. Day 2 really got our specific feedback covered.”

Adam Perry, ON24