Requirements

Requirements Elicitation: The Sunstone Expedition

Chase a treasure through a self-sealing jungle temple while learning to pull real requirements out of vague, solution-first, or symptom-only requests.

30
mins
Certificate included Free access
The Sunstone Expedition

Course overview

About this course

Join the Cartaris Exploration Society on a race against a self-sealing temple door. Along the way, practise pulling a genuine who/what/why out of every teammate's tangled report — then prove it at the temple itself, finishing a lost expedition's unfinished work sorting old correspondence into requirement, solution, assumption, and out of scope to crack the final lock.

What you'll learn

Practical outcomes

  • Extract who, what, and why from vague or solution-first requests.
  • Tell a genuine requirement apart from a solution, an assumption, and irrelevant noise.
  • Apply the framework under pressure, synthesising across scenes rather than just recognising an answer.

Pre-requisites

What you should know first

  • None — suitable for complete beginners.

Ready to begin?

Start learning through real challenges

Work through interactive exercises, unlock the next steps as you progress, and earn a certificate on completion.

Start Course

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Technical

Reading Code: The Legacy Inheritance

The developer quit. The repo is a mess. The new developer starts Monday. Read the code, find the debt, write the story.

30
mins
Certificate included
Tech Debt

Course overview

About this course

The developer quit on Friday. The repo is a mess. The new developer starts Monday. You are the Product Owner — and everything Joel built lives in code only he understood.

Work through three code files, a half-finished handover document, and a database schema. Find the technical debt, identify what is missing, and write the story that will brief the incoming developer. The combination to unlock your access is hidden somewhere in the work Joel left behind.

What you'll learn

Practical outcomes

  • How to read code as a non-technical person using comments, function names, and flag markers.
  • What technical debt is, how it accumulates, and how to identify it.
  • The difference between code that works and code that is production-ready.
  • How to read a database schema to understand what is possible and what is missing.
  • How to write a user story from incomplete, real-world information.

Pre-requisites

What you should know first

  • Recommended: The Broken Backlog, or existing knowledge of user stories.
  • No coding experience required.

Ready to begin?

Start learning through real challenges

Work through interactive exercises, unlock the next steps as you progress, and earn a certificate on completion.

Analysis

Root Cause: The Vanishing Uncle

Your uncle is missing. His last release is broken. The clues are in the code — if you know how to read them.

30
mins
Certificate included
Root Cause: The Vanishing Uncle

Course overview

About this course

Your uncle Marcus is missing. The release he deployed on Friday night is broken in a way nobody can explain. On his desk: a laptop, still open. A sticky note reads: "If you're reading this, you know what to do. Start with the logs." Decode the deployment logs, trace the broken sequence diagram, find the missing requirement — and crack the safe that will tell you who took him and why.

What you'll learn

Practical outcomes

  • How to read a deployment log and identify meaningful error patterns.
  • How to read and interpret a sequence diagram to spot missing steps.
  • How requirements gaps and deliberately removed acceptance criteria cause production failures.
  • How to identify NFR failures in API response data.
  • How to write a blameless post-mortem that identifies systemic causes rather than individuals.

Pre-requisites

What you should know first

  • Recommended: The Broken Backlog, or existing knowledge of user stories and acceptance criteria.
  • No technical background required — all concepts are taught within the course.

Ready to begin?

Start learning through real challenges

Work through interactive exercises, unlock the next steps as you progress, and earn a certificate on completion.