Type of Training: Remote (Online) / In-Person; Time: Evenings & Weekends

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course provides a solid foundation to find and maintain employment as a Technical Business Analyst / Product Owner in the modern business environment. Students will be able to understand how the BA fits into the bigger picture of the project, the enterprise, and why it is important to understand the needs of stakeholders, the project, and the business and technical environments. In addition the course covers a number of important subjects critical to excel in the workplace, including technological tools such as SQL databases, Business Intelligence with SQL, Power BI and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), Tableau, Visio, Microsoft Project, and advanced Excel. This training is available in-class and remotly (online). Students will receive hands-on training in the following subjects:

1. Business Analysis / Product Owner Fundamentals – students will learn to understanding the business environment; be introduced to the role of business analyst within the project life cycle and become familiar with role of a BA and with the following key parts within business analysis: Requirements, Stakeholder Analysis, Communication, Modeling Business System and Process, Requirements Gathering, Product Development and Delivery, Risk in Projects, PMLC vs. SDLC, Rational Unified Process (RUP), Unified Modeling Language (UML), Business Data Handling and Working with Microsoft Visio.

2. BA Documentation Writing Workshop – in this module students will practice creating essential Business Analysis documentation, including Business Requirement Documentation (BRD), Functional Requirement Documentation (FRD), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Graphical User Interface (GUI) etc. Students will create Workflow and Diagrams in Microsoft Visio.

3. Project Coordination – in this section students will receive good understanding of some elements of Project Management adjusted to Business Analysis, including Introduction in Project Management, Project Integration Management, Project Scope and Time Management, Project Cost, Quality, HR and Communications Management, Project Risk and Procurement Management. This should give students very clear picture of BA and PM collaboration in the projects, working with Microsoft Project.

4. Agile Methodology and Scrum – the agile methodology of software development marks a considerable departure from traditional sequential development (“waterfall”). In fact, many aspects of agile are so drastically different from waterfall that it is often helpful for individuals who are new to agile to take a small course to better understand its principles and practices. This module includes preparation for Scrum certification exams.

5. Software Quality Assurance – this section is designed to impart expertise on manual testing. It teaches the fundamentals of organizing the project and preparing the test plan and will cover Introduction to QA and SDLC, Goals of QA and Documenting Processes; Types of Testing, Web vs. Client/Server testing. After completing this part of the course, students will be able to design the test cases, execute the test scenarios and create test status reports.

6. Issue Tracking with JIRA (Atlassian) – this module includes basic concepts of JIRA (issue, project and workflow), JIRA Workspace, JIRA Dashboard, and crucial elements of work with Issues, Searching and Reporting.

7. Advanced Excel – in this module students will learn Excel advanced techniques, including Math Functions, Logical Functions, Statistical Functions, Lookup, Sort/Filter Data, Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts, Power Pivot Tables, Data Analysis Tools etc. Also, this module provides introduction to VBA scripting and using Macros. Students will review Basics of Statistics.

8. Data Visualization with Tableau – the module includes: using the Tableau interface/paradigm to create data visualizations, creating calculations, building Dashboards, advanced chart types and visualization, complex calculations to manipulate data, use statistical techniques to analyze data, implement advanced geographic mapping techniques and visualizations of non-geographic data, prep data for analysis, combine data sources using data blending.

9. SQL Databases Fundamentals – this module provides solid fundamentals of SQL databases, with emphasis on querying data. Students will learn how to filter, group and sort data, retrieve data from multiple tables using joins and unions, built-in functions to manipulate dates and strings, primary and foreign key table relationships, understand indexes for performance gains. The following topics will be covered: select queries, filtering, grouping, sorting data, combining tables with joins and union, understanding primary and foreign key relationship, views, built in system functions for querying data, conditional testing with If and Case statements, looping, inserting, updating and deleting data basics.

10. Business Intelligence Fundamentals with SQL* – in this module students will learn key components of the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack, including SSIS for ETL, SSRS for reporting and SSAS for multidimensional data analysis. SSIS provides knowledge in creating connection managers to various data sources, use and configure data flow and control flow tasks, work with container objects, create variables and parameters, deploy packages, work with the Integration Services Catalog. SSRS concentrates in configuring the tablix controls (table, matrix and list), creating data sources and data set, using subqueries, grouping rows and columns, dynamic and cascading parameters, conditional formatting, creating expressions, publish reports. SSAS teaches creating multidimensional cubes, building dimension and fact tables, data warehouse concepts, star and snowflake schema.

11. Data Visualization with Power BI and DAX – Power BI Desktop lets you connect to, transform, and visualize your data. With Power BI Desktop, you can connect to multiple different sources of data, and combine them (often called modeling) into a data model. This data model lets you build visuals, and collections of visuals you can share as reports, with other people inside your organization. Most users who work on business intelligence projects use Power BI Desktop to create reports, and then use the Power BI service to share their reports with others in a cloud.

12. Effective Communication Skills Workshop – in this module students will polish their communication skills for business environment: presentation skills, conducting effective meetings, effective listening, and other communication techniques.


Customized training available: Business Intelligence with SQL module can be replaced with Data Analysis with Python Programming module.

225 instructor-led class hours

Prerequisites:
Basics of Statistics and Excel, Bachelor's degree, Admission Interview. Industry experience is a plus