Certified Agile Requirements Specialist (CARS) Curriculum

Topics and learning objectives:

The learning objectives are described below, sorted by subject area. To pass the certification exam, these learning objectives must be met.

To prepare, you will find all the necessary literature in the bibliography

to achieve the learning objectives.

Alternatively, you can also be prepared for certification with a training course: Training offered by our partners

Introduction and Basics

You know the conditions under which agile approaches are well suited to the development of products and systems.
You are familiar with the agile manifesto (principles and values).
You know the principles of lean software development.
You know the values of the Scrum framework and their significance for requirements engineering (commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect).
You are familiar with agile practices (Scrum, XP, Kanban).
You know the objectives of backlog refinement.
You understand the meaning of the "Ready" status of product backlog entries.
You know what a Definition of Done is used for.
You know the elements that are typically contained in a Definition of Done.
You know how the sprint retrospective can help to improve requirements engineering.
You know which Scrum roles can and cannot take on requirements engineering tasks in product development.
You know how to deal with new and changed requirements during the sprint.
You know the main objectives of requirements engineering.
You know the impact of an agile approach on requirements engineering.

You know what is important for a product vision.
You know agile methods for presenting the product vision.
You can use the vision board according to Roman Pichler.
You will know the meaning of the terms system, context, system boundary and context boundary.
You will be familiar with common diagrams that can be used to represent the system context.
You will be able to use use case diagrams.
You will know how to differentiate between problem and solution.
You know the term stakeholder and its meaning.
You know the concept of persona.
You will understand how an MVP can help to prevent misguided development.
You will be familiar with options for the model-based description of requirements.
You can apply story mapping.
You will know how to document in the short and long term.

You know the different types of requirements elicitation techniques.
You will know the difference between functional requirements, quality requirements and framework conditions.
You know the FURPS model.
You know how functional and non-functional requirements can be represented in the Scrum framework.
You know the importance of the sprint review for requirements engineering.
You know what is meant by consolidation.
You are familiar with the Kano model and know how it can help with backlog prioritization.
You know MuSCoW as a prioritization method.
You know Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) according to Don Reinertsen as a prioritization method.
You can describe user stories.
You know the 3 Cs for user stories.
You know the INVEST criteria.
You know the various options for describing acceptance criteria.
You know questioning techniques that help to find acceptance criteria.
You know the relationship between user stories, acceptance criteria and test cases.
You will be familiar with the concepts of Acceptance Test Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development and Specification by Example.
You are familiar with the principle of relative estimation.
You have understood the idea of story points.
You can adapt the level of detail of backlog items to the respective planning horizons.
You know how to cut user stories (e.g. according to Richard Lawrence's patterns)