Testing Requirements Engineering Skills

This thesis addresses the issue of junior business analysts (BA) or requirements engineers (RE) and their struggle to effectively and efficiently prepare for a BA/ RE certification assessment. With this thesis, the writer wants to tackle this issue by introducing a skills assessment tool that covers knowledge of some of todays widest recognized Business Analysis (BA) and Reqirements Engineering (RE) standars (i.e. IREB & BABOK). The tool shall encourage students, business analysts, and other participants of an upcoming BA or RE certification to not only rely on their test-smartness but gain assurance about their understanding of underlying concepts and their use in practice.Nowadays, businesses require their (prospective junior) BAs/ REs to be ready to tackle business problems, understand the vocabulary and have a profound knowledge of business analysis techniques. Thus, having the right toolset acquired is important. Commonly, this is done through passing an official certification. However, these certification exams can also be passed by developing so-called ‘test smartness’, in which participants gain an understanding of the exam design, to evaluate which of the multiple-choice answer are right, yet deep understanding about the subject matter is of secondary importance. While two of the most widely acknowledge BA and RE standards (BABOK & IREB) offer relatively comfortable paths to a certification by certified training facilities, little emphasis is drawn on customized preparation preferences. As a consequence, the preparation solely serves the purpose of achieving the certification goal, disregarding the sustainable learning effect....