U of M Business Analyst Programs

Business Analysis Certificate

Successful projects begin with clearly defined requirements that trace to specific business needs.  Increasingly, organizations rely on the Business Analyst to make this happen.  The Business Analyst serves as the liaison between non-IT employees who have a business problem to solve and the IT team who provides the technical solution.  The Business Analyst must be tech-savvy, must be able to build consensus, and must be a great communicator as these two sides of the company often speak very different languages.

The College of Continuing Education is offering a series of three courses for new or experienced business analysts.  Students who complete all three will be awarded a 30-hour non-credit Certificate of Business Analysis.

This offering is available only to University of Minnesota staff, and will be held at the Continuing Education and Conference Center on the St. Paul campus.

Business Analysis Course Content

Introduction to Business Analysis- 1 Day

Overview:

This course offers an introduction to Business Analysis with an emphasis on the use of effective requirements development and requirements management as a means of developing solutions to complex business problems. Topics to be introduced during this one day seminar include problem definition; requirements collection; analysis and synthesis; methods, techniques, and tools; procedures; and requirements engineering paradigms.

Managing Business Requirements – 2 days

Overview:

This course picks up where the Introduction to Business Analysis left off. An engineering approach to requirements development and management is presented which encompasses all of the activities and deliverables associated with defining comprehensive, solution-based requirements. Some of the specific topics introduced during this two day course include the requirements process; problem analysis; problem description; documentation and validation; the language used to express requirements; types of requirements; process maps; use cases; workflow; design criteria.

Data and Process Modeling – 2 days

Overview:

This course picks up where Managing Business Requirements left off. From Use Cases, we move into more complex data models in order to show the informational needs of a product by illustrating the logical structure of data independent of the related data design or data storage mechanism. The process of elaborating, refining, and organizing all components of the requirements into succinct, yet meaningful documentation is the last major linear task undertaken by a Business Analyst on a large-scale project. In the conclusion of this class, we tie up loose ends and make use of the discovery, analysis, modeling, and presentation undertaken to characterize a large-scale IT development project. Some of the specific topics introduced during this two day course include the data modeling; entities, relationships, and attributes; text and graphical representation of data models; cardinality relationships; optionality relationships; class / object models; data dictionary; state diagrams; business rules; best practices; requirements specification; validation; testing; policies and procedures.

Business Analysis Certificate Courses

30 contact hours / 3.0 CEUs