EBG What Clients Say After Working with Us
What our clients say
We researched many different companies for requirements and business analysis training, but found the offerings to be lacking depth and missing real-world expertise. Until we found Ellen and EBG consulting. Ellen was very knowledgeable, met with us to explain the course material in detail, and crafted a course to meet our specific needs. In the class room, Ellen's training was excellent. She has a talent for engaging a group's interest, explaining difficult concepts with insight and ease. She was able to answer questions from a roomful of experienced analysts, embedding real-world examples to illustrate her answer. We found the training material provided to be very helpful and can be used as a handy reference after the training. If you are looking for a seasoned professional to train your team, I highly recommend Ellen.
Kumar Brahnmath, Senior Manager, Sallie Mae
We have made lots of progress in agile thanks to terrific training you both provided. It was the best investment I have made in training in my career.
We have been using Agile for a little over 6 months and we had made some progress, but it was spotty and inconsistent. We had various levels of success, but did not know how to gather the requirements properly and we did not have a rhythm that is so important in Agile.
[EBG's agile training] has really promoted commitment in our company. The executives in my company gave me the leadership award for 2007 and said that bring in the agile methodology had the biggest positive impact on the company.
Ellen is extremely knowledgeable and really spent time with me and my direct reports prior to the training and after the training to make sure we were going to cover the things most important to the organization and then we had a few follow up conversations with Ellen to see how the team was doing. Ellen is extremely well regarded in the Agile world.
...it was the best training I have ever spent money on. I had several individuals who work in various groups on my team comment as well. I would recommend [EBG] and the training Ellen's company offers to any executive I know.
Ed McLaughlin, Senior Director - Technology, ShopLocal LLC
You cannot go wrong with EBG Consulting! I have attended a few different requirements training programs and their approach to requirements training (Roadmap to Success: Comprehensive - formerly called Roadmap to Successful Requirements) is by far the best! I was so impressed that we had them do on-site training for our whole BA team.
As we hire new team members, they are able to get up to speed with the rest of us by taking the training in a self-paced e-learning format (Roadmap to Success: Foundation for Requirements Development and Management) .
Other training sessions simply discuss all the items that you might find in a BA toolkit but aren't effective at explaining how or when to use the tools in it. EBG Consulting's Roadmap http://ebgconsulting.com/Services/ReqtsRoadmap-EBG.pdf) helps a BA organize their toolkit so they know what techniques to use when. Instead of walking away from this training and not knowing exactly where to start, each of us were able to quickly integrate what we learned into our daily requirements activities and the feedback we have gotten from those that have benefited from the knowledge we gained has been outstanding.
Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman are both highly respected in the BA community and are involved in writing the BABOK and CBAP exam. I understand the IIBA adopted the glossary Ellen wrote in The Software Requirements Memory Jogger as the glossary for the BABOK. The Memory Jogger is a great resource - I have team members that carry this with them!
Marcy J. Boeh, Director of Business Analysis, Corporate IT, RSM McGladrey, Inc.
EBG Consulting provided on-site training at my company. After taking the [Requirements] Class, I asked Ellen to partner with my project team to guide us through the development of user requirements. The facilitated session we organized not only assisted us in gathering our requirements but also provided the project and extended team a sense of enthusiasm and unity. We implemented the system over 4 years ago and there have been no major changes to date! We continue to use the tools and techniques learned to drive complete user requirements…the combination of both the education and the experience ensured that the techniques would be well learned for repeated application. Thanks EBG Consulting!
Cathy L. Beeskow, Senior Manager, Finance, Cisco Systems Inc.
EBG Consulting is the best resource for any business initiative that would benefit from a solid, practical, and simple approach to requirements elicitation. We had to improve our Enterprise Service Management System.
Our biggest challenge was to understand requirements from a variety of business stakeholders. Ellen played a pivotal role in our success by showing us how to gather multiple perspectives in building enterprise-level requirements effectively. As a result, we were able to produce an integrated business solution that meets the complex needs of global users.
Bonnie L. Rapp, Senior Business Systems Analyst, JP Morgan Chase
The facilitation and retrospectives techniques that we learned from Ellen are having a major impact on team effectiveness and communications. We are using them to conduct iteration planning workshops, iteration assessments and project retrospectives. We’ve been able to bring together developers, project managers, testers and stakeholders from Marketing and Service and have them communicate effectively about requirements, risks and tradeoffs. It’s really refreshing to discover techniques that not only help people to do a better job but that they actually enjoy.
Nanette Brown, Director Architecture & Quality Management, Pitney Bowes Inc.
EBG Consulting worked diligently to customize a training program unique to the needs of our growing E-Commerce Business Analysis practice. Their willingness to invest time before the training course coupled with their masterful execution of the training materials provided GSI Commerce with a superior rate of return on our training investment. As such, we continue to benchmark our methodology on the best practices EBG Consulting offered to us.
Andrew Ari Clibanoff, Lead Business Analyst, GSI Commerce, Inc.
We worked with Ellen on our Web Security rewrite. She came in to run a JAD for us which also focused on transferring knowledge to our own personnel so we could run future JADs on our own. Ellen guided us through the pre-work process to take a full pass at security requirements. She recommended requirements artifacts and elicitation methods. She guided us through the application of the artifacts and methods which allowed us to evaluate our critical requirements at the beginning of this highly complex software development effort.
We are now near rolling out our Security rewrite for our .Net version of our HR/Payroll package. With Ellen’s guidance contributing to our effort, we now have a bullet-proof robust security module with solid requirements documentation that we implemented via Agile development methods.
Nicki Anders, Director, Product Integration, Ultimate Software, Weston, FL
Ellen worked with us to design and deliver a training program for our development organization. We are just beginning to use facilitated workshops for requirements gathering. Most of the project teams were unfamiliar with use cases and requirement gathering techniques. Customers and developers were not working as a team in most instances. Although we haven’t reached the point where all project teams understand and use facilitated sessions to generate/validate use cases, the environment has improved. In addition, for the first time since I’ve been here, most project teams actually recognize the importance of good user requirements, provided by the users.
Trish Zwirnbaum, Lead, Requirements Engineering
Working with Ellen has been both a pleasure and a learning experience for me and my peers. We originally hired her to help us drive closure on the requirements for a large global cross functional project. Ellen worked with us to customize a facilitated session that leveraged best practices while at the same time accommodating our existing processes. She has just the right blend of flexibility, experience, and composure to design and deliver successful workshops. On the first day of our 3 day session, several of our business clients were saying there was no way it could take a full 3 days to get the requirements documented. By the middle of the 2nd day the comments were changed to: there is no way we can get all this done in 3 days. The clients developed a real appreciation for the amount of work required to get it “right” and a real sense of ownership for the requirements developed during the workshop.
The workshop was so well received that we subsequently brought Ellen for a 3 day training course on Facilitated JAD Workshops for our entire team of Product Managers. Ellen’s flexibility in blending our “local culture” with her best practices expertise made for a successful course that was highly rated by the participants.
Tom Morrissey, IT Group Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
We engaged Ellen for a project where the business was going to be taking a greater role in the administration of the business process through a system. It was very important that we define the requirements to allow as smooth a transfer as possible from IT administered systems over to the business people. Through training and additional coaching sessions, Ellen helped us understand where we were in the elicitation process, what we needed to do to move forward, and help guide us in model selection that was appropriate for this project. The project team was able to successfully use the tools and training to identify the business scenarios and confirm the requirements through prototyping. The planning process Ellen guided us through for developing the requirements helped the team with communication and allowed us to be more effective by giving us a foundation from which to work.
Maureen West, Computer Software Quality Engineer, Global Healthcare Products Company
Client comments on our training
EBG Consulting is an Endorsed Education Provider (EEP) with the International Association of Business Analysis (IIBA). Following are some of our client training endorsements sent to the IIBA publication for its newsletter or to EBG directly.
The self-paced Software Requirements e-training [Roadmap to Success: Foundation for Requirements Development and Management] was a wonderful course for me as a Business Analyst to better recognize and understand the most effective methods for gathering, analyzing, and managing requirements throughout the entire life-cycle of a project. So much time is spent on trying to define requirements up front, but then the ongoing validation and managing of those requirements can often end up as a forgotten task. This course really highlighted the importance of getting the right people involved at the outset and ensuring that all parties are in agreement when defining requirements.
The Software Requirements Memory Jogger is a wonderful, pocket-sized resource that I reference on a regular basis. It continues to assist me and my team in planning and conducting effective requirements workshops, which in turn will lay the foundation for a successful software implementation.
Molly McIver, Business Analyst, Baker Hill, An Experian Company
Ellen’s presentation style makes this training ideal for all levels of Business Analysts. For entry-level BAs, it’s a great chance to be exposed to the models and how they can be used together, while also getting a taste of how requirements workshops are run. The course is so interactive that intermediate and senior BAs can actively engage in the training with questions and examples, while picking up new ideas and techniques to help them grow in their positions.
Ellen’s Requirements Roadmap hangs in our BA seating area as a constant reminder of what tools and methods will help us derive the different types of requirements. We immediately started using Ellen’s techniques, especially those for stakeholder identification. And we love the sticky wall!!
Shelley Cudly and Brad Edmonds, Senior Business Analysts (at the time the course, Roadmap to Successful Requirements, was taken), TD Ameritrade
After completing Ellen’s course, we had few tricks up our sleeves in controlling “unreceptive environments,” during requirements gathering meetings. There are many factors to having a successful meeting, and “Get the Right Stuff Fast, Using Facilitated JAD Workshops” definitely helped us in understanding that. Having the trust, right people and focus questions amongst many other elements will get you to your goal. Also, the course made it clear that it is important to thoroughly prepare for workshops, which made it easier in keeping participants focused and able to accomplish more in one session than it would had we not geared ourselves up for the curveballs. Subsequent to the course, I was able not only to define requirements more effectively through this collaboration, but lay a strong foundation for good teamwork throughout the entire project.
We have spent a great number of workshops trying to capture requirements but in the end a lot more time was spent on recovering requirements that never got captured. That is why having “Get the Right Stuff Fast, Using Facilitated JAD Workshops” as your guide will help you succeed in today’s fast paced software environment. It is essential for everyone from a junior to a senior level position to take the “Get the Right Stuff Fast, Using Facilitated JAD Workshops” course. It truly helps to illuminate the role, effort, and awareness that everyone plays in conducting and managing workshops.
Apurva Shah, Principal, Requirements Engineering, SRA International Inc.
About Roadmap to Successful Requirements
Top three key learning points for you
Ellen’s requirements roadmap is an outstanding tool for an analyst or project manager to evaluate the artifacts that will drive requirements for successful projects. Her course dives into the detail of the most effective requirements artifacts to use on software projects, so that an analyst can reach into their toolbox and use the appropriate model to solve the problem at hand. Ellen's handbook, The Software Requirements Memory Jogger, is a lightweight and outstanding reference to guide an analyst in the creation of the requirements artifacts, and Ellen does a great job incorporating the Jogger into the course lecture.
What you're able to implement in your role within three months after the training
As a Director of Software Development, having trained my whole team on requirements mining and documentation immediately brought full awareness to the team on methods to get the requirements right from the very beginning of a project. Members of the team were successful from the day after Ellen’s training in using new artifacts to create project requirements, and the entire team was able to consume the requirements created by the analysts, so that each person could more successfully fulfill their roles on the development team. Given the depth of both Ellen’s experience and her materials for the course, going back to her training documents always provides new insight and a wealth of reference materials at one’s finger tips for analysis work on any project.
What type of BA (entry-level, intermediate, senior) would get the most benefit from the training
I believe intermediate and senior level BAs would get the most benefit from Ellen’s training although she can certainly gear the materials for entry level analysts. For me personally, I have been doing requirements analysis for 15 years and am a “go to” person in my organization for requirements . . . and I learned many many new things the last time I took Ellen’s course! If I took her course again tomorrow, I would expect to walk away with an even higher knowledge level of requirements and analysis gathering. I would anticipate that I could take the course time and again in the future and continue to learn new things given the wealth of information that Ellen has to offer and her organized way of transferring knowledge to her students.
Nicki Anders, Director, Product Integration, Ultimate Software
This email is to provide you some feedback about the EBG training (Get the Right Stuff, Fast, Using Facilitated Joint Application Design Workshops) that I attended in May 2006.
Top three key learning points for you
During this JAD session, first and foremost I learned that it is critical to be a “facilitator.” There is a big difference between being a true facilitator and driving the session. It requires greater listening skills and a better sense of being in tune with the participants’ needs in a whole new way. Then, I learned how to use posters, stickies and other visual aids in a new way. Finally, I learned that in-depth knowledge of the decision rules can be golden as it will save time and make the sessions go smoother as well as promoting an environment where participants feel that they drove the final decision.
What you’re able to implement in your role within three months after the training
I actually conducted a session with another co-worker within 60 days and was amazed at how much I learned and how much more I need to learn, practice, etc.
What area(s) of the BABoK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) the course helps to strengthen
I think the ability to see that a business process and planning can improve its chances of success by applying the workshop techniques, and templates.
What type of BA (entry-level, intermediate, senior) would get the most benefit from the training
Any level of BA or anyone who is involved in re-engineering process, planning process, project management, and facilitation of processes would benefit from this session.
F. T. Doan
Implementation Product Manager