
Translating business value into a solution
Problem mindset against solution mindset
Telling a symptom from a problem, which is where most requirements go wrong
Value-driven analysis, and the Problem to Goal to Constraint to Metric framework
Stakeholder mapping and influence analysis
Elicitation techniques
Asking the business the right questions
Working with conflicting requirements, and prioritising by value against effort
Business, functional and non-functional requirements
User stories: structure, examples and anti-patterns
Acceptance criteria in Given-When-Then form
Use cases, BRD, SRS, PRD, and the definition of ready
What a business process means in practice
The AS-IS and TO-BE approach, where the gap becomes your requirements
The minimum necessary BPMN
Finding bottlenecks and waste, and proposing improvements rather than diagrams
The system context diagram
Functional decomposition
User flows, data objects and business rules
Non-functional requirements and traceability
Working in Agile, Scrum and waterfall
The backlog and requirements that keep moving
Change requests and impact analysis
Managing scope, and defending requirements to both sides
What an elicitation conversation is for and what it is not for
Structured, semi-structured and unstructured formats
Competency-based and case formats, and where each fits
Preparing the profile, developing questions and building a scoring sheet
The STAR technique and behavioural questions applied to how work is done now
Competency maps, and where to find ready libraries
Active listening: clarifying questions and interpreting the answers
Reading non-verbal behaviour and creating a comfortable atmosphere
Measuring what someone described against what they demonstrated
Designing a task and evaluating the result
Avoiding bias and stereotypes when you score
Checking with other sources, and comparing what different people told you
Documenting results and observations while they are fresh
The matrix for comparing what you heard from different people
Giving feedback on what will and will not be included
Feedback to the team, and the confidentiality and legal side
How facilitation relates to decision making
The basic principles
The role of the facilitator, which is neutral by design
The single most important facilitator skill
The main stages of preparation
Formulating the goal the workshop is meant to produce
Selecting who is in the room, which decides most of the outcome
How to open the session
Keeping participants focused and managing the group
Taking notes without losing the thread
Gathering information and generating options
Choosing priorities as a group with different needs
Summing up what was actually agreed
Assigning owners so the workshop produces a list rather than notes
Evaluating the session
Force majeure and difficult participants
How a group actually arrives at a decision
Maintaining the atmosphere
Exercises that move a stuck room
Building the agenda and estimating timing
Facilitating online
Facilitating large meetings
Working with an international group
The role of a survey when you cannot interview everyone
The most common survey types
Automation tools
Benchmarks to compare against
Satisfaction, loyalty and engagement surveys
Experience surveys, which map closest to requirements work
Cross-department and process surveys
Pulse surveys and the exit conversation
Types of question and how each one biases the answer
Response options and the choice of scale
How long a questionnaire can be before quality collapses
Open questions, platforms, and a build in Google Forms
Setting the question the survey is meant to answer
Designing the questionnaire around it
Promoting it so the response rate is worth analysing
Reminders that work without irritating people
Report formats and which fits your audience
Chart types and what each one hides
The sections a report has to contain
Preparing recommendations, and analysing open-question text
What conclusions the answers actually support
Turning them into a plan with owners
Interim surveys to check whether anything moved
Who should own process description
What describing a process actually buys you
What a description consists of
Which processes are worth describing first
How processes are described around the world
Which methodology fits your situation
Using flowcharts
A simple BPMN diagram, and analysing what it reveals
Process description models
Templates worth reusing
The software available
A worked description using online tools
What the output actually is
Implementing a described process so people follow it
Evaluating whether it works
Adjusting it afterwards
Describing onboarding
Describing recruitment
Describing training and performance management
Describing offboarding
Creating the project team and choosing the processes
Preparing the concept and defending it with management
Launching, and reporting on the project
Closing it and monitoring what happens next
What critical thinking is and why requirements collapse without it
How it differs from logical and creative thinking
Its role in analysis
Objectivity, rationality and evidence-based reasoning
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Nobody can tell you what they want. They can tell you what they currently do, what annoys them about it, and what they saw somewhere else and liked.
Turning that into something a team can build is the entire job, and it is not a documentation job.
Why specifications fall apart
The requirement was written down exactly as it was said, which means it captured a proposed solution rather than the problem behind it. The acceptance criteria say "the system should be user-friendly", which cannot be tested and therefore cannot be finished. Two stakeholders wanted opposite things and both were recorded, so the conflict was postponed to delivery, where it costs ten times more. And a change request arrives, gets accepted because refusing feels obstructive, and the timeline moves by an amount nobody calculated.
What the course teaches
Thirty-four lessons organised by how requirements are actually obtained. Framing first: telling a symptom from a problem, the Problem, Goal, Constraint, Metric structure, user stories with acceptance criteria in Given-When-Then form, the BRD and SRS, and the definition of ready. Plus AS-IS and TO-BE modelling, where the gap between the two is your requirement set, and impact analysis for the change requests that arrive later.
Then elicitation in three modes, because each one surfaces different information. One to one: structured interviewing, STAR questions applied to how work is done today, active listening as a technique, and comparing what different people told you when they disagree.
Workshops, surveys and modelling
Then the group workshop: preparing it, deciding who is in the room, running it without the loudest voice winning, prioritising as a group with conflicting needs, and closing with a list and named owners rather than a set of notes.
Then in writing, at scale: survey types, question wording and how it biases the answer, scale choice, the length at which quality collapses, the report, and turning responses into a plan. Then process modelling: methodology, BPMN, tools, and running a description project from concept through defending it with management.
And finally validation. Six lessons on critical thinking, because a requirement is an assertion about the future and most of them are wrong in ways you can detect early. Strong reasoning against weak, anchoring, confirmation bias, verifying what a stakeholder told you, and deciding when the information is incomplete.
Who is teaching this
Mike, the number one HR instructor on Udemy. More than 1.6 million course enrolments, over 150,000 professionals trained, PHRi and SHRM-CP certified, HRCI representative in more than 10 countries. I built the people function of the unicorn Preply and worked at Wargaming, Alfa-Bank and iDeals. I have specified systems that were built exactly as written and turned out to solve the wrong problem, which is the most instructive way to learn this.
What is included
Lifetime access to all course materials
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
Udemy Certificate of Completion
Practical assignments and real business cases
A section with additional courses, tools and resources
One habit to start with
The next time someone gives you a requirement, ask what they do today and what happens if nothing changes. Both answers are usually more useful than the requirement itself, and neither is what they came to tell you. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.