Understanding Customer Needs and Proposing Solutions

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Customers have needs based on opportunities to exploit or a problems to resolve. These needs have to be understood in more detail so that solutions can be proposed. It is important not to jump to problem solving too soon, but to elicit a complete set of high-level requirements first. After the requirements are uncovered, alternative solutions are proposed. The feasibility of these solutions are analyzed and a recommendation made. A Business Case is proposed for the recommended solution.  

The purpose of this interactive workshop is to understand and practice how this process works so that the best solutions can be brought forward for funding. Students will learn the concepts one at a time and will collaborate on exercises to practice all of the important concepts.

Prerequisites

None

Learning Objectives

At the end of this class, participants will be able to:

• Be able to define customer business needs
• Uncover high-level requirements for business needs
• Propose multiple solutions after hearing all the facts
• Gain agreement on recommended solution
• Help the customer sponsor create a Business Case

Who Should Attend

• Senior managers that need to develop accurate mission, vision, goals and strategies
• Technical staff that want to provide more business consultation to their management teams
• Senior team members that need to understand high-level customer needs

Course Outline

• Define customer needs
• Elicit high-level requirements
• Propose alternative solutions
• Gain agreement on recommended solution
• Help create Business Case

The class contains numerous exercises that are worked on throughout the course.

Class Length

• One day (8 Total PDUs – 0 Technical / 4 Leadership / 4 Strategic)

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