What you'll learn:
- Overview of Requirements Discovery for Business Analysts and Product Owners
- Watch a behind-the-scenes Preparation Deep Dive: a real Monday-to-Friday week preparing as Lead BA
- Access a free Document Library of reusable discovery checklists, agendas, decks, and transition materials
- Understand the stages of a Requirements Discovery and the Business Analyst's role in each of these stages: Preparation, Execution, Analysis & Transition
- Know roles on your Discovery Team: Consulting Lead, Business Analyst, Solution Architect, Project Manager
- Learn what deliverables Business Analysts need to prepare as a result of the Discovery
- How to create and maintain the Agenda for Discovery workshops and interviews
- What are the different types of Discovery meetings: Show-and-tell, Workshops, Interviews
- Typical Mistakes that need to be avoided at your Discovery engagement
Welcome to "Requirements Discovery for Business Analysts - 2026" - the online course on the fundamental principles of conducting successful IT requirements discovery sessions for your digital projects!
BA requirements elicitation and discovery are critical processes in any software development project. However, conducting requirements gathering effectively requires a deep dive into the client's subject matter and the specifics of their business. This ensures that every project software requirement is understood, estimated, captured, and communicated clearly to the project delivery team. This is where the requirements discovery phase comes in, and this course is here to help you master it!
In recent years, and especially in custom software development, it became an industry standard to start digital initiatives with that deep dive. Industry professionals call it the Requirements Discovery phase of the project, or simply Discovery.
Nearly 5,000 students have already joined this course on Udemy, and new students continue to enroll every month. I call the full learning path three-in-one for a reason. There are three distinct parts to it.
1. Discovery Crash Course
This section covers what you need to know to conduct a successful Discovery engagement. You will learn how to prepare and execute a discovery engagement, analyze the outcomes, and transition the results to the delivery team. We will discuss assembling a discovery team, highlighting the business analyst's role in the team, developing a discovery agenda, scheduling meetings, and navigating conflicts. By the end of this part, you will have a solid understanding of different types of IT discovery meetings, such as show-and-tell, interviews, and workshops. You will also learn what outcomes are expected as a result of the discovery, such as the product requirements agile backlog, UX wireframes, user stories, and more. Additionally, you will gain insights into best practices for running knowledge transfer and transitioning artifacts to the IT delivery team - including specifics of online and offline discovery workshops.
2. Preparation Deep Dive
The second section is a deep dive into the preparation for successful discovery. I can't stress enough that the preparation is the key. Here we immerse ourselves in a real-world project and prepare for a discovery day by day, within one work week, from Monday to Friday.
Our client in this course is a manufacturer and seller of musical instruments located in the United States. This company is expanding its business and looking to implement new features and capabilities, such as international shipping and financing. Their current website and e-commerce infrastructure cannot support such growth, so they reached out to us and invited our development team for onsite discovery workshops.
In this part, we only have 5 business days to get properly prepared for this visit. As your instructor, I'll act as the Lead Business Analyst, and during one business week, I will:
Collect the initial pre-sales information
Assemble the discovery team
Create a space for team collaboration
Utilize standard questionnaires and feature lists
Create a discovery agenda for onsite workshops
Assemble slides for the kickoff presentation
As I'll be doing all of this from Monday to Friday, I will engage in team meetings, write emails and instant messages, and work on individual work products, such as the discovery agenda. At every step, I will explain what I'm doing and show you all, so that you can gain valuable insights into the decisions I make and how they all come together. I'll teach what I do and explain why, so that you may apply this in your work.
3. Document Library
The third part is the documentation library - so you not only have the crash course and the deep dive into the preparation, but you also get access to the actual templates and sample documents. Access a comprehensive library of document templates and examples that you can use in your real-life scenarios for preparing, executing, and completing requirements discovery for your digital projects - including:
Discovery Checklist (PDF)
Kick-off Deck (MS PowerPoint)
Discovery Agenda - 3 days and 5 days (MS Excel)
Discovery Session - Generic Deck (MS PowerPoint)
Transition Meeting deck (MS PowerPoint)
Product Backlog sample (MS Excel)
Use Jira for Product Backlog (Video)
So you don't need to start from scratch when you're starting your requirements Discovery. Download these documents, apply them, and adjust them to your specific situation and the project.
By enrolling in this course, you will learn:
How to prepare, execute, and wrap up IT discovery engagements
Different types of discovery meetings: show-and-tell, interviews, workshops
How to create discovery agendas and prepare for project meetings
What artifacts should be created as a result of discovery: product backlog, UX wireframes, agile user stories for sprint 1
How to prepare for discovery day by day, within one work week, from Monday to Friday
How to put together the kickoff presentation and the discovery agenda in a real project example
How to run knowledge transfer and transition artifacts to the IT delivery team
Specifics of online/offline discovery workshops
A discovery checklist and a library of templates to help you stay organized
This course is designed for IT Business Analysts, Product Owners, Project Managers, Solution Architects, and other project leaders involved in planning or executing software development and consulting projects.
By taking this course, you'll gain the knowledge and skills required for successful Requirements Discovery. Let's dive right in!
