Agile Business Analysis: Getting and Writing Lean Requirements

Meeting the Agile, Lean, and DevOps Requirements Challenge in the AI Era

Organizations have adopted Agile, Lean, and DevOps to move faster. Most of them still struggle with the same problem they had before: getting the “what” right. Clearly. Quickly. Without generating a cascade of rework that nobody wants to explain in the retrospective.

Generative AI has made this problem more interesting. You can now produce a requirement or user story in five seconds. You can also produce one that sounds completely reasonable, gets built exactly as written, and turns out to be wrong in ways that cost real money to fix. The tools got faster. The failure patterns stayed the same.

This course addresses that directly. It teaches the fundamentals of Agile and Lean requirements work (elicitation, expression, ambiguity reduction, test scenarios, and non-functional requirements) and shows you how AI fits into that workflow as an accelerator, not a substitute for expertise.

Two skills run through the entire course. The first is context engineering: building the right information environment for your AI tools so they draw from your actual project documentation instead of producing generic output dressed up in professional formatting. The second is output validation: a systematic process for reviewing any requirement (yours, a stakeholder’s, or an AI draft) before it wastes developer time or causes the kind of production surprise nobody wants to own.

Both skills require solid BA fundamentals. That’s the sequence this course is built around. Fundamentals first. AI second. Because you cannot validate what you don’t understand, and you cannot catch weak requirements if you’ve never learned what strong ones look like.

Forty-four lectures. Nineteen exercises. Real demonstrations with real project examples. No filler.

• Product Owners
• Business Analysts
• Requirements Engineers
• Business- and Customer-side Team Members
• Agile Team Members
• Subject Matter Experts (SME)
• Project Leaders and Managers
• Systems Analysts and Designers
• AND “anyone wearing the business analysis hat”, meaning anyone responsible for defining a future IT solution

You will learn how to:

• Integrate Generative AI into elicitation, drafting, ambiguity detection, and test scenarios while maintaining the validation habits that protect quality
• Apply context engineering to configure AI tools with the right information environment, reducing hallucinations and improving output quality
• Explain the capabilities and tradeoffs of Lean, Agile, and continuous delivery for defining requirements
• Apply 10 elicitation techniques adapted for Lean/Agile teams to uncover real stakeholder needs faster
• Use ChatGPT to apply the Cynefin framework to surface uncertainty, assumptions, and complexity in requirements
• Reduce miscommunication by identifying and removing ambiguous and subjective language from requirements
• Use the 4-step output validation method to catch defective requirements before they waste developer time, regardless of source
• Break down features, stories, and functions into Given-When-Then test scenarios to support automated testing
• Identify 17 categories of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and write GWT scenarios to verify them
• Build a repeatable workflow applying these techniques on the job, from discovery through requirements, validation, and tests

Introduction to the Course

• NEW: Why AI Makes Strong Analysts Exceptional (And Everyone Else Just Faster)
• NEW: Context Engineering: The AI Skill You’ve Already Been Practicing

Requirements in a Lean and Agile World

• Agile and Lean Philosophies
• Communicating Business Needs in Lean and Agile Environments
• Using Cynefin to Prioritize and Analyze Features, User Stories, and Requirements
• Exercise: Cynefin Applied to Proposed Initiatives
• The Cynefin Framework Meets AI: Managing Complexity in Requirements Analysis
• Analysis in Lean and Agile Environments

Requirements Discovery for Agile and Lean IT Projects

• Common Elicitation Techniques and Challenges
• Tracking Progress with a Question file
• AI for Business Analysis Demo: Leveraging ChatGPT to Seed a Question File
• Exercise: What Makes a Good Requirements Elicitor?
• Tips and Tricks for Effective Conversations
• Exercise: Comparing Types of Requirements Elicitation Meetings
• Identifying and Interacting with Stakeholders
• Exercise: Stakeholder Identification 
• Stakeholder Identification with ChatGPT: Power Up Your Business Analysis with AI
• Agile Requirements: Tips for Stakeholder Interactions / User Story Conversations
• Non-Verbal Communication
• Dealing with People
• Exercise: Problem People or People Problems?
• Listening Techniques
• Exercise: Listening Techniques Applied
• Success Criteria for Effective Communication
• Business Problem Definition
• Exercise: Defining Business Problems
• Problem Analysis Uncovers Requirements and Features
• Exercise: Aristotlean Problem Symptom Reduction Applied

Writing Business and Stakeholder Features and Requirements

• User Stories Are Stakeholder Requirements
• Reducing Complexity Increases Comprehension
• Exercise: First-cut User Stories
• User Stories Deliver Business Value
• Relevance of Features, Requirements, and User Stories

Avoiding Ambiguity and Subjectivity

• Misunderstandings Kill Projects
• Causes of Requirements Ambiguity
• Exercise: Commonly Used Terms Can Be Ambiguous
• Revealing and Removing Ambiguity
• Ensuring a Common Understanding
• DEMO: AI Reveals Requirement Ambiguity with the IOW Technique
• More Ambiguity Reduction Techniques
• Exercise: Using Out-of-Box Thinking to Reduce Ambiguity
• NEW: Four Checks That Keep Defective Requirements Out of Your Sprint

Finding Test Scenarios in a LEAN, AGILE World

• Test Scenarios Are the Ultimate Requirements
• Writing Test Scenarios in Given-When-Then (GWT)
• Exercise: Expressing Scenarios in Given-When-Then Format
• Engineering AGILE Test Data
• Exercise: Engineering Test Data
• Decision Tables Identify Scenarios
• Exercise: Using Decision Tables for Test Scenario Identification
• Symptoms Are Great Test Scenarios
• From Use Cases to Test Scenarios
• Exercise: Discovering Tests Scenarios Using a Use Case
• More Test Scenario Identification Techniques
• Functional Solution Requirements Reveal Scenarios
• Exercise: Functional Decomposition
• Identify Given-When-Then (Gherkin) Scenarios from Functional Requirements
• Exercise: Informational Decomposition

Dealing with Non-Functional Requirements (NFR)

• Common Categories and Characteristics of NFR
• Discovering Non-Functional Requirements
• Recognizing Constraints
• Exercise: Testing Non-Functional Requirements (NFR)

From Showtime to Go Time!

• Bonus Lecture Where Do You Go From Here?

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