Basic Techniques for Rapid Requirements Gathering and Analysis
You will learn how to prepare for the first meeting with a client, understand the differences between what the client says and what they mean, be able to work with tools for collecting requirements and figure out how to write understandable requirements.
✓ 3 levels of requirements you need to work with.
✓ Basic techniques for collecting requirements: interviews, focus groups, facilitated workshops.
✓ What kind of meetings should be held with the client depending on the goals you want to achieve?
✓ How to prepare for project planning?
✓ How to write clear requirements?
After the lesson, you will receive these templates: Requirements, Business Case, User stories, Project Brief... We also send a complete list of templates to everyone who leaves a request for a detailed course program.
How to evaluate and plan a project?
You will find out what information you need for peer review and the project schedule. You will learn how to create a realistic buffer for changes in the plan and get all the necessary templates, tools, and examples.
✓ 3 components of the project plan: activities, tasks, resources.
✓ How to evaluate a project realistically?
✓ How to schedule a project?
✓ How to plan buffer and reserve correctly?
✓ What documentation is a must-have for any project?
After the lesson, you will receive examples of Project Management Plan, WBS and Outline, Scope Management Plan, Estimation.
Planning: main phases, tools, work with resources
During the lesson, we will break down your project and discuss how to fit the available resources into it, what tasks you can and should involve subcontractors in, and what performance you should expect from them. You will find out which steps and milestones will help you control the process and adjust work based on risks.
✓ How to manage project communications: types, processes, plan.
✓ Learning to analyze resources: Capacity, Velocity, Load Factor.
✓ How to achieve the desired result from subcontractors.
✓ What is the principle of dividing the project into stages?
✓ How to analyze risks and work with them?
✓ Quality of your future workflow. How to ensure it?
✓ Planning tools: what and how to use?
After the class, you will receive templates of the Communication Management Plan, Gantt charts, Construction Phase Plan, and others.
How to work with risks in IT projects and products?
You will find out what types of risks exist on the projects, what risks can and should be planned, and where it is worth having a buffer in case something goes wrong (and it always does). Let's look at how to plan a project where the unexpected happens and learn how to avoid chaos with new inputs.
✓ The main approaches to risk categorization on a project: when to use which one?
✓ Proactive and reactive risk strategies.
✓ How to create a risk-based budget.
✓ When do risks hide opportunities for a company and how to recognize them?
✓ 4 steps to help you plan and control risks.
✓ How to make a risk matrix.
✓ Learning to assess risks in practice.
After the lesson, you will receive these templates: Risk log solution, Agile Project Risk Register, Risk Management Plan, and others.
How to calculate the budget for an outsourcing company to get profit?
You will understand in which cases a project manager can be responsible for the project budget, what direct and indirect costs an outsourcing company has, how to evaluate a project in terms of budget for the client, team, and management to win.
✓ What levels of access to the budget does the PM have depending on the company.
✓ How to take risks into account when planning a budget for a project.
✓ How to choose the type of project evaluation.
✓ Where do you lose your money?
✓ What does a typical budget structure consist of?
After the lesson, you will receive these templates: Outsource calculator, Cash withdrawal calculator, Salary calculator, and others.
Budget - how to manage project finances?
You will learn how to calculate the budget and figure out how to control it during the execution stage and when to adjust. You will find out what to do with a project when the budget changes, and how you affect the company's profit. Together with a speaker, we will go through the main documents that a PM works with.
✓ Key financial indicators of the project: what affects marginality?
✓ 4 main billing models for projects.
✓ How do PMs work with project finances and margins?
✓ Practice: we analyze all the necessary documents for PM using examples.
In the lesson, you will use templates to analyze the budget calculation and revision, you will find out how to calculate and influence the margin of the project.
Budget - what to do in product startups? (video of the lecture)
You will learn what affects a startup’s budget the most, when it makes sense to start writing code, how to prioritize improvements. You will also find out what financial indicators can be useful before you have found a Product-market fit and how to become an interesting company for investors.
✓ Consider risks: Murphy's laws in product development.
✓ What to do when you have already stepped on a rake?
✓ Roadmap and its relation to the budget.
✓ What should cash flow look like if you need investments?
✓ What are the investors looking for?
How to work with a project in distributed teams
Together with the speaker, you will analyze your current workflow and understand what rules help to control the work in distributed teams. You will learn how to create and maintain a corporate culture, and also enlist practices that have proven their effectiveness within the specifics of the last 2 years.
✓ Pros and cons for a manager.
✓ Work with documentation in a distributed team.
✓ What risks will you face when working remotely.
✓ What a healthy team setup looks like.
✓ Culture in remote teams.
After the lecture, you will find out how to set up a productive workflow for large and small distributed teams.
Presales: development, sales, and business solutions (pre-recorded lecture)
You will find out about all the benefits that a PM gets by working for Presale. We will analyze the main artifacts at this stage, find out what percentage of successful Presales is considered normal, together with the speaker we will go through all the stages of the process and tell you what is expected from a PM at each of them.
✓ How does the presale process work in an outsourcing company and what is the role of a PM in it?
✓ How to select and coordinate the Presales team?
✓ Analysis of the request proposal and understanding the customer's needs.
✓ How to choose the contract type and customer service models?
✓ Why is the Discovery phase needed and how to sell it?
✓ How to write a successful Proposal?
✓ Proposal presentation to a customer and the next steps.
Requirements management organization for a large product using JIRA and Confluence (pre-recorded lecture)
During the lecture, you and the speaker will analyze the case of 20 teams, also, you will work together on requirements. The speaker will help you to find out how to organize a transparent requirements workflow in JIRA and Confluence that you can control and not be afraid to miss something important.
✓ JIRA and Confluence from Tickets+Wiki.
✓ We define the main features in JIRA.
✓ Let's talk about JIRA and Confluence integration.
✓ Learn how to use Confluence for the specification of requirements.
✓ Find out the main risks of using plugins in JIRA and what Vendor Lock is.
RACI model and correct distribution of roles and tasks in the project organization (pre-recorded lecture)
You will be able to evaluate your team and understand what stages of development have blurred areas of responsibility. Also, you will find out how the RACI model helps save you time on communication while engaging the rest of the team and encouraging communication.
✓ Responsibility as a team growth factor.
✓ Matrices analysis and how to improve them.
✓ Practical cases on the distribution of responsibilities in the project implementation.
✓ Versions of the RACI matrix.
✓ How, when, and which one to use.
Visualization techniques for PMs
You will discover the benefits of requirements visualization not only for BA and Product Managers but also for PMs. Together with the speaker, you will analyze 7 visualization techniques that can help you clearly and intelligibly convey goals, plans, and requirements to the client and the team.
✓ Macro visualization: VP, The Past, Present, Future Map.
✓ How to explain the whole system to stakeholders: MindMaps and Spider Maps, Swimlanes, CJM, Emotion Mapping.
✓ How to show to a team expected system behavior: Flowcharts.
✓ Tools to help you visualize requirements.
After the class, you will find out how to apply requirements visualization techniques to your projects and products.