Recently there was an article which drew a parallel between the book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess to how most people don’t like change. It was eye opening to think that from the earliest of ages we are taught that resisting change is silly and once we give in, change is normally good. However, as adults we still fight against change of almost any kind.

In the business world this can be fatal to companies. In order to see growth in profits and influence, it is important to embrace change every single day and never become comfortable which leads to complacency.

Pierson Requirements Group is a company made of of ‘Sams”. Those who will bring you the platter of eggs and tell you that they are good. Although “Sam I Am” was a bit more pushy than a company aimed to help should be, they will still work hard at helping you to understand the basic concepts of change and why they will be good for you.

Contact Pierson so that you too will be able to say some of the things that other clients have said:

“We thoroughly enjoyed our training provided by Pierson Requirements Group. Like you, we had very limited experience with gathering and writing requirements going into the training. We were able to take the materials from the course and immediately apply them to our work. The training provides many examples, templates, and additional materials that are easily adapted to fit your business needs. Additionally, when going through examples, Joy has people take on the role they actually play in the elicitation, which makes the process more relevant and applicable. She also gives a lot of practice with the different techniques, so the process is easier to remember and you can also find the method that will work best for your business. Many of the other training courses we’ve taken have failed to do this. Additionally, Joy tailored the course as we were going through to best fit our needs. She really took the time to understand our needs and spent more time ensuring we fully understood the parts of the process most important to us. We found the training to be so helpful we plan on sending more of our employees in the upcoming months.” – Rachel Horowitz, Statistician Project Manager, U.S. Census Bureau

“Most of our customers have put the methodology directly on their company intranet. Some strengths of our methodology are as follows:

		The format is easy to use and is concise. For each workstep the following is given: Description, Input, Output, Tips & Techniques, Agendas, Roles and Responsibilities, Templates.
		The methodology is a detailed guide telling you exactly ‘how to’ successfully conduct your projects.
		Our training is patterned after the methodology and assists you in successfully implementing it. The author of the methodology also wrote the related training seminars.
		The methodology is relevant and current. It incorporates the Unified Process and uses the notation of the Unified Modeling Language.
		A number of leading Web Development and E-Commerce consulting companies as well as companies writing intranet and mainframe applications are using our services for development methodology and to train their project teams.
		Pierson mentors and trains companies to assist them in implementing the methodology.”

The above is an excerpt from the Pierson Requirements Group website. They are committed to helping those who want to implement changes in their businesses.

Since 1990 Pierson has been creating new and different strategies for businesses of every size to grow, shift, and change in good ways. These companies have experienced the improvements these strategies have brought about.

Visit their site today to see testimonials and clients comments and see what they can do for you.

Pierson Requirements Group has been a consulting and training company since 1990 and they’ve helped many businesses realize their potential by using practices to uniquely steer your company down the road to success. They can help you take your idea from inception to full fruition in a clear and concisely planned way which will aide the smooth running of your ship. 

• project management
• business analysis
• system specification
• and more

Pierson’s training provides a framework for project teams that promotes development iterations throughout the life cycle of a project using a RAD/Agile software development approach. NEW Virtual Instructor-Led Training is a time efficient and cost effective way of delivering training to individuals and groups of attendees without travel. When we use Web Conferencing instead of traveling, we use less gasoline and we reduce our impact on our environment. Web Conferencing is a green technology. Instructor Led Classroom Training is also available for classes that require a face-to-face format to improve facilitating, requirements gathering and conducting effective meetings skills. All of Pierson’s training can be conducted on-site.

With business trends being up and down it is important to make sure your company is running at top speed and top performance.

Pierson Requirements Group is dedicated to testing and training your crew to ensure you are making the most of every aspect of your team.

If you are looking to make some changes to either your web presence, software package, or team training in 2011, contact the courteous team at Pierson Requirements Group for an evaluation and recommendation.

The offer classes both online and in person:

Business Requirements Gathering & Writing Seminar

How to gather, analyze and write effective project scope, business requirements, functional specifications and non-functional requirements documents using UML and Use Cases.

Facilitation Toolkit for Business Analysis-Collaborative/JAD Approach to Requirements Gathering

How to control group dynamics, gain consensus and facilitate decision making in collaborative process improvement and requirements sessions using facilitation methods, Joint Application Development (JAD) and Focus Group techniques. Trainers provide tips, techniques, session agendas and scripts.

Data Requirements Skills

How to build and define detailed data requirements for data driven, data warehousing & business intelligence projects.  How to build and when to use context diagrams, conceptual data models, entity relationship diagram, domain object models, data flow diagrams and data requirements specifications.

The methodology necessary to make true change in a seamless and workable manner is often confusing and difficult to find. Pierson Requirements Group can make the entire process less of a hassle by breaking each step down in a way that is understandable and implementing each step when the time is right.

As stated on their website, they are committed to finding what in your company needs improvement and then giving you solutions that will promote the change necessary.

Contacting the offices will provide a one on one conversation that will become the first step toward your next step.

“Pierson can provide you with a customized methodology for Object-Oriented development projects using the notation of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Unified Process. This customized methodology can be placed on your intranet to serve as a handbook or guide for the software system development teams. This document defines the steps and phases that should be followed, technical modeling options, and refers to quality procedures which should be employed. In this methodology Pierson will provide your company with a repeatable process for:

• Using the notation of UML Modeling and Unified Process
• System Development Life Cycle deliverables
• Joint Application Development (JAD) activities and JAD Session agendas
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Documentation templates

Best practices to be utilized throughout the Problem Statement, Requirements, Analysis, Design, Construction, Business User Final Acceptance and Transition phases of the system development life cycle.

Pierson can also provide your company with a methodology to evaluate and select a vendor for outsourcing and for evaluation and selection of software packages.”

Business trends can be scary but with the current experts saying that our recession is technically over and we can all start breathing again, it may be time for your company to look at what you can do to take your bite of the rising profits.

Using a company like Pierson Requirements Group to show you in which areas you can improve and where to put resources can mean the difference between making money and throwing it away. Contact them to find out what training and analysis can do for your business no matter how big or small.

Listen to what others have said about the training Pierson Requirements Group can offer:

“I hired Pierson to come into Hallmark in 2002 to train a pilot class for a new repeatable requirements gathering process for Hallmark. I was the Manager of the newly created PMO whose task had been given by upper level management to bring Hallmark into qualification for SEI’s CMM- level 2 repeatable process. After Joy Matthews ran the initial training, I realized that Pierson had the ability to assess what our gaps were in order to become a top level organization and recommend solutions based on industry best practices. This proved to be a very successful project which Hallmark still maintains 5 years later with Pierson’s Requirements Group. In the middle of the project, Hallmark was rated CMM- level 3. Top management then brought in Accenture to assess the process and make recommendations for any gaps in the process. After several months, Accenture’s evaluation results stated that Hallmark was on the correct path and was already implementing a successful repeatable process with training that was customized where needed and which followed industry standards and best practices.

Pierson has trained 100s of business/systems analysts, requirements architects, developers, system architects, technical leads and project managers with a number of customized training classes to implement Hallmark’s “Quality Management Methodology”. Pierson is currently providing the same services for Hallmark Canada. I highly recommend that you use Pierson’s training.” – Manager of PMO hallmark

Tip number four of the five business tips we are discussing this month is:

Conduct a competitive analysis in your market, including products, prices, promotions, advertising, distribution, quality, service, and be aware of the outside influences that affect your business.

This tip is particularly great for Pierson Requirements Group because they specialize in business analysis. They also offer ways for you to learn more about the process of business analysis via online workshops.

Business Analysis Training Seminars

Pierson Requirements Group’s public seminars are presented as Virtual Live Interactive Instructor-Led Training Classes.

Virtual Instructor-Led Business Analysis Training Workshops

• Live Instructor-Led Interactive sessions (3 – 4 hours per day of live instruction over a 2 – 4 day period depending on the virtual class)
• Training material presented via the web and live interactive instruction by phone
• Interactive exercises both in groups and individually
• All participants receive printable .pdfs of materials
• PDUs, CDUs and Certificates of success completion are provided

Virtual Instructor-Led Training is a time efficient and cost effective way of delivering training to individuals and groups of attendees without travel. The class size is limited to 10 participants. More sessions can be scheduled on request. Group discounts are available.

Web conferencing training includes hands-on case study exercises and instructor one-on-one mentoring of exercise deliverables.

These classes and many more are but a few of the benefits available to anyone who hires the Pierson Requirements Group. Contact their offices for your personalized analysis.

“The hands on experience and class discussions were great! The instructor was very effective and had a lot of knowledge to pass on – I like the learn-as-you-go setup. The class size was perfect- I would not recommend having more than 10 in any class. It was mentally stimulating – Also, the group feedback for each person at the end of a facilitation practice exercise was excellent.”

“This was the best training I have received in my professional career!”

“Very informative. Corporate wide training classes should be instituted.”

The Pierson Requirements Group  has been a consulting and training company since 1990 and they’ve helped many businesses realize their potential by using practices to uniquely steer your company down the road to success. They can help you take your idea from inception to full fruition in a clear and concisely planned way which will aide the smooth running of your ship. 

The Requirements Gathering and Writing Training Seminar, using JAD and a use case driven approach, focuses on how to build UML diagrams, document and facilitate for requirements projects. The workshop provides training in facilitation, diagramming and writing techniques needed for project scoping, gathering requirements and developing a solution. The seminar focus is on:

• Requirements management and facilitation techniques
• Writing business and system use cases with agendas and scripts for facilitating
• Project Life Cycle using JAD and UML diagrams
• Managing the testing of the solutions and building test cases
• Package software evaluation and selection process
• Practical experience in facilitating and building UML diagrams for scoping sessions, requirements gathering sessions, and design focus groups

Each seminar participant receives a Seminar Handbook with sample agendas and scripts for conducting problem statement/scoping sessions, requirements definition sessions and design focus groups. A JAD Procedures Guide is also provided. Maximum of 10 students.

Continuing this months theme of reading and sharing information from popular business blogs, I’ve looked up some blogs who talk about why it’s important and helpful to have blogs integrated into your business.

First off, it gets your voice and opinion out there. This way your customers can know what you are thinking and why yo do the things you do. But perhaps more importantly it gives your customers and followers a change to talk back to you.

With blogs and the ability to comment on them, customers and readers are able to let you know how they would rate their experience at your place of business or how they would like things to be done differently.

At Pierson Requirements Group, they have business analysis training who will enable you to know what to do with that kind of feedback. With an aim toward making sure your company is the best it can be, Pierson hold seminars and training sessions that show you how to take feedback, run it through your IT department, and make it into a solid plan.

Contact the customer service department at Pierson Requirements group to learn more about their methodology and business analyst training offered.