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iSAQB® REQ4ARC - Requirements for Software Architects

“The system should be performant” carries no architecture decision at all. REQ4ARC shows you which requirements actually matter for the decisions in front of you. Then you sharpen them: vision and scope first, then use cases and acceptance criteria. With Gherkin you write them as scenarios that an automated test can check. Curriculum 2026.1 adds a part of its own on AI-generated requirements and the hallucinations that come with them.
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What this module delivers.

Requirements and architecture do not happen one after the other; they emerge together. That is where REQ4ARC at tecnovy starts: you elicit quality scenarios yourself, test them at the quality gateway and prioritise by business value, not volume.

How the training runs

Method
Eliciting, sharpening and prioritising requirements in exercises
Outcome
30 credit points: 20 methodical, 10 communicative, no course exam

Dates & booking

Choose a date that fits

6 dates

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Sessions with this symbol offer up to 25% group discount. Click “Details & Registration” to learn more.

08–10 Sep 2026CEST
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
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Time zone CEST
Language German
Trainer SK Serkan Karagulle
Seats 5+ seats
10% Earlybird Discount

2,537 $−254 $2,283 $

excl. VAT
15–17 Sep 2026CEST
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
Germany Guaranteed
City Frankfurt
Language German
Trainer GS Dr. Gernot Starke
Seats Only 4 left
10% Earlybird Discount

2,826 $−283 $2,543 $

excl. VAT
01–03 Dec 2026CET
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
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Time zone CET
Language English
Trainer SK Serkan Karagulle
Seats 5+ seats
10% Earlybird Discount

2,537 $−254 $2,283 $

excl. VAT
09–11 Mar 2027CET
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
Germany Group Discount
Venue to be announced
Language German
Trainer GS Dr. Gernot Starke
Seats Only 5 left
10% Earlybird Discount

2,826 $−283 $2,543 $

excl. VAT
20–22 Apr 2027CEST
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
Online training Group Discount
Time zone CEST
Language German
Trainer GS Dr. Gernot Starke
Seats 5+ seats
10% Earlybird Discount

2,537 $−254 $2,283 $

excl. VAT
21–23 Sep 2027CEST
Tue–Thu 09:00–17:00
Germany Group Discount
Venue to be announced
Language German
Trainer GS Dr. Gernot Starke
Seats Only 5 left
10% Earlybird Discount

2,826 $−283 $2,543 $

excl. VAT

Fit

Who this module is designed for

Typical roles

  • You make architecture decisions from requirements somebody else wrote.
  • You work out with product owners, business analysts and testers what a system has to do.
  • You turn vague quality wishes into acceptance criteria that can be checked.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites

You can start right away. Helpful: hands-on experience with backlogs, stories or requirements documents, design decisions of your own in at least two systems.

Consider instead AGILA Gives 300 of its 1080 minutes to group decision procedures and architecture decision records, where REQ4ARC works on the requirements themselves.

Curriculum

CPSA® REQ4ARC Course in Detail

Curriculum 2026.1 splits REQ4ARC into ten parts with 705 teaching minutes and 375 minutes of exercises. It starts at architecturally significant requirements and the cooperation between roles. From there it runs through the clean start to functional and quality requirements, and ends at prioritisation, tools and examples.

01Introduction and Motivation

This part settles which requirements an architecture decision actually needs.

  • Separating architecturally significant requirements (ASR) from all the others
  • The roles around requirements: business analyst, requirements engineer, product owner
  • Just-in-time requirements: eliciting only what the next decision needs
  • Quality criteria per ISO 29148 and the Volere quality gateway as the check
02Cooperation between Roles

This part is about the handover that modern approaches no longer have.

  • Design thinking, design sprints and lean startup as cooperative product development
  • Three amigo sessions with product owner, development and test
  • The twin peaks model: requirements and architecture grow together
  • Traceability to architecture, code and tests, and what it costs in effort
03Clean Start

This part settles what has to be clear before the first detailed requirement.

  • Phrasing vision and business goals with SMART or PAM
  • Identifying stakeholders and telling their value propositions apart
  • Setting the scope and drawing the system context
  • Personas and user journey maps as the way into the requirements work
04Handling Functional Requirements

The longest part of the curriculum: 300 minutes of teaching and exercises on functional requirements.

  • Hierarchies from epic through feature to story, and criteria for breaking them down
  • Documenting value-creating processes as a use case or a scenario
  • INVEST and the definition of ready as the end of refinement
  • Writing acceptance criteria and working with specification by example
05Handling Quality Requirements and Constraints

This part covers the kind of requirement architectures really fail on.

  • Telling quality requirements, constraints and non-functional requirements apart
  • Categories of qualities along the Q42 model
  • Eliciting quality requirements as scenarios, refining them and giving them acceptance criteria
  • Pragmatic alternatives for when detailed acceptance criteria get too expensive
06Behavior Driven Development

This part brings the requirement and the test into one format.

  • The principles of behavior driven development and the settings it suits
  • Given-when-then as the structure for acceptance criteria
  • Gherkin and Cucumber as examples of executable specifications
  • Automated tests as a by-product of precisely phrased requirements
07AI in RE

New in curriculum 2026.1: large language models in requirements work.

  • Where they help, from preparing interviews to generating requirements
  • Placing hallucinations, bias and non-deterministic output
  • The tacit knowledge no model draws from context
  • Human-in-the-loop: reviewing AI output and protecting confidentiality
08Prioritization and Estimation of Requirements

This part puts requirements into an order you can defend.

  • Telling kinds of business value apart and ranking requirements by them
  • MoSCoW and WSJF as prioritisation procedures
  • Estimating with affinity estimation, story points and function points
  • Spotting contradictory requirements and resolving them with the people involved
09Tools for Requirements Engineering

Here you place tool categories rather than learning individual products.

  • Cards, wikis, modelling tools and issue trackers compared
  • Heuristics for which kind of tool suits which kind of system
  • The strengths and weaknesses of the categories, not of the products
10Example

To close, you assess requirements, the good ones and the bad ones.

  • At least one example of well-formulated architecturally significant requirements
  • Counter-examples: ambiguous, inconsistent and contradictory requirements
  • The curriculum deliberately leaves the choice of examples open
Official syllabus(external link)

Outcome

What you will be able to do afterwards

  1. 01

    You separate architecturally significant requirements from the rest and call them in just in time.

  2. 02

    You set the vision, business goals and system scope, and name the stakeholders behind them.

  3. 03

    You break epics down into stories and test them against INVEST and the definition of ready.

  4. 04

    You phrase quality requirements as measurable scenarios instead of a wish list.

  5. 05

    You write acceptance criteria in given-when-then form and judge where BDD pays off.

  6. 06

    You check AI-generated requirements for hallucinations, bias and missing tacit knowledge.

  7. 07

    You prioritise requirements with MoSCoW or WSJF and resolve the contradictions between them.

Certificate of participation

The tecnovy certificate of participation records your attendance of the REQ4ARC training, not a passed examination.

Open the Certificate Showroom tecnovy →

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Why tecnovy

What you get on top with us

02

Certificate Showroom

Get your certificate of participation and, if you have one, add your exam certificate from E-Learning. Fully automated, beautifully designed. Just for you, only at tecnovy.

03

No Slideshow, Hands-On!

Promised: no PowerPoint marathon. We work in groups, tie theory to practice, and you get real project examples from our experienced trainers plus the exchange with like-minded people.

04

Attend Twice, Pay Once

You are welcome to attend the training online again within a year as a refresher.

05

Learn from Authors

Your instructors are not just trainers, but the authors of the preparatory literature for the iSAQB CPSA-F certification exam and at the same time an active member of the iSAQB Foundation group.

06

Flexible Date Change

If you are not able to attend the course, you can rebook your training free of charge up to one week before the start of the training.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions

01Do I need CPSA-F to attend the tecnovy REQ4ARC training?
No. You need CPSA-F for the CPSA-A certification, not to attend the tecnovy REQ4ARC training. The iSAQB curriculum lists the Foundation Level certificate under the conditions for certification, not under those for the course.
02Is there a REQ4ARC examination?
No. There is no examination for the REQ4ARC module. The tecnovy REQ4ARC training earns you 30 credit points and a certificate of participation; the assessment comes later on the path to CPSA-A certification, and it covers all modules together.
03How many credit points does REQ4ARC carry?
The tecnovy REQ4ARC training carries 30 credit points: 20 methodical and 10 communicative. REQ4ARC awards no technical points, which matters for your planning: CPSA-A admission requires 70 points in total and at least 10 in each of the three areas of competence. The iSAQB may re-evaluate point allocations every 12 months; these figures are as of August 2026.
04How does the CPSA-A certification work?
CPSA-A certification consists of a written assignment. Two examiners recognised by the iSAQB assess it, and you then defend it in discussion with them. You can take it in German or English, and tecnovy is glad to help if you have questions about the process.
05How long is the REQ4ARC training?
The tecnovy REQ4ARC training runs for three days. The iSAQB curriculum 2026.1 sets three days as the minimum and splits 1080 minutes into 705 of teaching and 375 of exercises. At tecnovy the ten curriculum parts sit across three full course days.
06What is the difference between REQ4ARC and AGILA?
REQ4ARC works on the requirements themselves: eliciting, sharpening and prioritising them across ten curriculum parts and 705 teaching minutes. AGILA works on how a team reaches architecture decisions and gives 300 of its 1080 minutes to group decision procedures, decision scopes and architecture decision records. Both modules award 20 methodical and 10 communicative credit points, so the difference is the subject and not the score.
07Does REQ4ARC cover the use of AI in requirements engineering?
Yes, and since curriculum 2026.1 it has a part of its own worth 60 teaching minutes. It covers where large language models help in preparing interviews, analysing requirements and generating them, and where they stop: hallucinations, bias and the tacit knowledge no model draws from context. In the tecnovy REQ4ARC training you practise reviewing AI output rather than adopting it.
08Is REQ4ARC worth it when product owners or business analysts write the requirements?
Yes, because that collaboration is exactly what the curriculum covers. REQ4ARC settles which requirements you have to demand as an architect, which ones you elicit yourself, and how formats such as three amigo sessions and the twin peaks model interlock architecture and requirements. The tecnovy REQ4ARC training makes you a more precise client of the requirements work, not a requirements engineer.
09Do I get the flipcharts from the REQ4ARC training?
Yes. You receive every flipchart produced during the tecnovy REQ4ARC training as a photo protocol after the seminar.

What does your training at tecnovy look like?

REQ4ARCREQ4ARC - Requirements for Software Architects

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