**EBG What Clients Say After Working with Us**

What our clients say

We engaged EBG Consulting for a series of 3 courses – Agile Requirements, Scope Modeling and Get the Right Stuff Fast. In addition, we received The Jogger and to the online Requirements training, both of which have proven valuable particularly as we have added new staff members post-training.

The Agile Requirements training was effective in getting us off on the right foot adopting the User Story/User Acceptance Testing model of requirements documentation. We have since successfully integrated the practice into our entire engineering organization.

It was a pleasure to work with Ellen – her engaging and approachable style made learning fun and helped us bond as a team during the exercises. She also did a great job helping me prepare for the class in order to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.

Sarah Buck, Manager, Software Requirements & Analysis, EBSCOhost Product Management, EBSCO Publishing

Mary Gorman conducted a two-day customized Agile Analysis training program that was tailored toward our organization’s specific needs. The business analysis team worked very closely with Mary before the class to make sure that the curriculum offered experience and training that would be of value to the diverse roles and skill sets of all program participants (product customers, business analysts, product managers, project managers, quality assurance analysts, and system architects).

Mary’s command of the subject matter was apparent in her familiarity with the topics discussed and the many real world examples she shared from her own experience. Throughout the program, Mary provided guidance and suggestions about issues and opportunities that our teams have experienced on projects. She demonstrated very effective facilitation skills and ensured that class was kept focused and on schedule. Following the class, Mary made herself available to assist with follow-up questions. We have already started applying the tools and techniques from the program across many of our software development projects.

Wendy Keipek, RN, MSHI, PMP, Vanderbilt Informatics Center

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights with the team. The Agile Requirements training and Agile Jumpstart workshops have answered a lot of questions and set us on a path that has increased our chances of success, stoked the enthusiasm of the team and already allowed us to reap benefits that other teams are wanting to emulate. We enjoyed working with you and appreciate your offer to stay in touch. Thank you again.

Norman E. Stang, Senior Software Engineer, Lexmark International

"Ellen, I wanted you to know that I was finally able to apply what I learned from you and Mary Gorman. We held a requirements workshops for a project that I'm supporting. I took the lead on planning the workshop, and even better yet, I also facilitated it. It was a wonderful experience. I "retrospected" myself afterward and fortunately was able to come up with a few things I did right, along with lots of areas for improvement. I certainly realized that facilitation is not an easy job. Not that I ever thought it was, but this experience confirmed my thinking tenfold.

The Get the Right Stuff, Fast using Facilitated JAD Workshops and Roadmap to Success: Analysis Modeling courses were so instrumental in the success of the workshop and in my role as the facilitator. It felt so good to put what you taught me to use. The team involved in planning the workshop held our own retrospective this morning and came up with some really good ideas on how we can make the next one even better."

Deb McCormick, Senior Business Analyst, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

EBG Consulting has played a pivotal role in helping me to establish improved methodologies in requirements practices. Ms. Gottesdiener's book The Software Requirements Memory Jogger has served as a very effective basis for training and coaching activities. She and her colleague Mary Gorman have, through their seminars in facilitated workshops and requirements modeling practices, helped us tremendously in how to practice these techniques. Their knowledge and mastery of the subject matter and their talent and enthusiasm for teaching the material delivers great value.

Requirements engineering is both a skill and an art. Ellen can show your company how to master both. It has been a pleasure to work with Ellen and her company. I highly recommend their services.

Janette Allen, Divisional Software Project Manager, Roche Diagnostics

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.

Thank you for the recent Agile Requirements and Agile Jumpstart workshops. I know many of us have learned much, and we will have no problem apply these concepts and ideas in our projects. I believe these new concepts and ideas will have a direct impact upon our ability to delivery quality software. As always, I greatly appreciate your insights into the software industry and your practical and applicable approaches that are indeed industry best practices. Thank you for your time and your efforts with our team. It's always a pleasure working with [EBG].

Randy A. O'Neal, Software Engineer Specialist, Lexmark International

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.

Fantastic Online Requirements Course! IIBA CBAP prep/qualifying

I recently finished the best (and most affordable) course I've ever taken (in person OR on line) and wanted to share this info. The course was "Roadmap to Success: Foundation for Requirements Development and Management" from EBG Consulting. It is a self-paced eLearning course and will earn you 24 IIBA CDUs. Here is a link to more course information

I was so impressed with this course, I can't say enough about it. Absolutely EXCELLENT content presented in the best online format I've ever seen. Plenty of user interaction that relates to many different learning styles visual, auditory, kinetic, etc. and includes interactive quizzes and module reviews that test and reinforce your retention of key concepts.

It also includes many excellent downloadable requirements assets and management tools and provides references linking the subject matter on each page linking to relevant parts of the The Software Requirements Memory Jogger, an excellent little reference book/tool, also published by EBG Consulting, that is of the same high quality.

This course content is obviously compiled and designed by experts in the field and the course format is of professional educator quality.

It took me about 5 days (not full days, but some were 8 hours or more the content was just so engaging and the format so pleasant to use I couldn't bring myself to stop!) to go through the entire course. It allows you print the content for future reference / refreshers.

When you purchase the course you get 90 days access and within that time you can go over any of the content any number of times. As soon as I finished, I was so excited and energized by the excellent knowledge (I WISH I had known all this five years ago!) that I immediately started through the course from the beginning doing all the Quick Checks (mini-quizzes) and module reviews. I actually like this online course better than taking an in-classroom course. Unlike some online courses, there is nothing much to be gained and lots to be lost (for me) if this were given in the traditional in-classroom setting.

Not only is it a fantastically put-together course with top notch content, but it was FUN. Anyone looking for the best requirements training around would be well served to investigate this course. I just can't say enough good about it. I am actually going to purchase an extension so that I can go through it again before sitting for the CBAP.

Thanks so much for an EXCELLENT resource.

Katie Elever, Business Analyst

I have to say that dollar for dollar, the elearning offered by EBG Consulting was the best I have taken. I completed Foundation for Requirements Development and Management elearning, and the material is well presented in manageable segments, clearly articulated with excellent supporting graphics. The templates provided have proven to be useful long after I finished the course over one year ago. I was able to work through the course at my own pace at my own desk, and read and review the material as I chose. Definitely time wisely invested and money well spent.

Karen Johnstone, Business Analyst, Scotia Bank (posted on BATimes)

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.

More on Roadmap to Success Training

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

More on Get the Right Stuff, Fast Training

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