Course Description

This course is for people who require an understanding of how business benefits are managed and how to facilitate their delivery. This course also considers how systems are tested for business acceptance.
Key areas of the course include:

• Understanding the drivers for business change
• The business case
• Benefits management and planning
• User acceptance testing
• Test design and planning
• Implementation of business solutions and delivery of business benefits

The course underpins theoretical concepts with a realistic, practical case study, from which participants gain experience in applying benefits management and business acceptance techniques.

Target audience

Business analysts, project managers, business change managers, and anyone involved in managing business benefits and facilitating their delivery. Benefits Management and Business Acceptance is a Specialist Practitioner module on the BCS (ISEB) International Diploma in Business Analysis.

Exam

During this three-day course, you’ll receive all the training you need to prepare for the BCS Benefits Management and Business Acceptance certificate examination. Through a given business scenario, this open-book exam puts your knowledge of benefits, management, business acceptance testing, and benefits realisation to the test. A pass means you’re another step closer to achieving the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis – the de facto certification for practicing business analysts. One last thing; this course also enables you to develop SFIA skills BENM, level 5.

Course Content

The rationale for benefits management and business acceptance

• Lifecycle for business change
• The role and importance of benefits management
• The role and importance of business acceptance

Drivers for business change

• The business change lifecycle
• Internal and external drivers
• CSFs and KPIs
• Value propositions and the value chain
• Options for business change

The business case

• Structure and content of the business case
• Categories of business benefit
• Measuring benefits
• Quantifying benefits

Making the financial case

• Identifying and quantifying costs
• Investment Appraisal
•  Payback
• Discounted cash flow/Net present value
• Internal rate of return

Planning for benefits management

• Benefit owners
• The benefits plan
• Benefit profiles
• The benefits dependency framework

User acceptance testing for business acceptance

• Business acceptance in the ˜V™ model
• Principles and vocabulary of testing
• Testing roles and responsibilities
• The test process
• Functional and non-functional testing
• Test documentation

Test design techniques

• Activity diagrams
• Decision tables
• Decision trees

Test planning, monitoring, and control

• Progress monitoring and control
• Incident management
• Confirmation testing

Benefits management reviews

• Gateways scheduled and unscheduled reviews
• Assessing the impact of change

Implementing business changes

• Impact on people and evolving attitudes to change
• Planning the implementation
• Implementation strategies
• Training/learning approaches
• Lewin™s model of change

Delivering business benefits

• Embedding business changes
• Lifecycle for benefits management
• Project and benefits reviews
• Disaggregating benefits
• Fragmentation of benefits
• Identifying and evaluating further benefits