Answers.
Acceptance criteria - ANS The conditions that must be met for a solution to be considered
acceptable to key stakeholders.
Active listening - ANS Intense, focused listening to both verbal and nonverbal
communications, paraphrasing back to confirm understanding.
Affinity diagram - ANS A group creativity technique where ideas from other requirements
gathering techniques are organized by similarities.
Allocate requirements - ANS Assigning requirements to specific solution components to
verify they are included; or assigning requirements to releases or phases (aka tracing
requirements)
Alternative analysis - ANS Generating and evaluating options or alternatives; in PM
alternative analysis is used to evaluate ideas about how to conduct the project; in BA this
is used to evaluate solution options.
Backlog management - ANS Maintaining a list of requests on an adaptive life cycle
project.
Baselining - ANS Documenting or freezing requirements at a particular point in time so
you can refer back to them later.
Benchmarking - ANS Comparing metrics or processes of two similar organizations (within
the same company or competitors) looking for potential improvements.
Brainstorming - ANS Creative idea generation that focuses on thinking outside of
traditional solutions.
Business activity diagram - ANS A diagram showing the flow of business activities using
UML notation (may use vertical swim lanes; aka UML activity diagram)
, Business case/business value, cost-benefit analysis - ANS Assessing the value or
benefits an organization aims to receive as a result of a project and comparing them to the
estimated costs. A business case provides justification for the project.
Business objective model - ANS A tool used to analyze goals, problems objectives,
success metrics, and high-level features (aka goal model)
Business requirements document - ANS A package of requirements to present to an
individual or group of stakeholders.
Business rules analysis/rule model - ANS Business rules are policies, guidelines, and
constraints that guide the work of the business. A rule model is a collection of rules with
supporting definitions, relationships, and details.
Business rules catalog - ANS A table used to store business rules and their
characteristics.
Capability table - ANS A tool used to examine problems, their root causes, and needed
capabilities.
Cause and effect diagram - ANS A diagram used to break down a problem and find its root
causes (aka Fishbone, Ishikawa diagram).
Characteristics of requirements - ANS Complete, correct, feasible, necessary, prioritized,
unambiguous, and verifiable.
Class diagram - ANS A diagram that includes business concepts such as classes, nouns,
or entities, their characteristics, and their behaviors (used in object oriented analysis and
design).
Business requirements - ANS Requirements that describe the higher-level needs of the
organization such as business issues or opportunities; provide the rationale for why the
project is being undertaken. Usually stated as a business need by stakeholders, stated or
diagrammed using business language. Shows how the business gets work done, what
information is used, how decisions are made (business rules), and describes the
problems/opportunities.