Hi, everybody!
Dr. White here the founder of the Business Analysis Doctor,
So, if you are a business analyst working in an agile environment, you’ve probably
had to deal with finding your place in agile projects.
Many agile frameworks don’t distinguish the business analyst role, leading to some
agile practitioners believing that BAs are not necessary for agile projects.
The truth is, BAs are needed even more in agile environments due to the dependency on
collaboration, flexibility, and feedback.
A key point to consider is that in agile environments the BA role transitions into a BA skillset.
This means that in Agile projects, you might be designated as a member of the development
team or value team vs being the designated BA.
In addition, many of the traditional BA roles are designated to the Product Owner or customer
in agile environments.
So, what does that mean for the BA?
It means you need to add value in any way you can.
Ans in order to do this, you need to be well versed.
So here are 6 core capabilities of an agile business analyst.
Situation Analysis in the agile context involves collaborating with the business to make sure
you understand what’s happening today, what needs to change, the expected outcome, and
how value is determined.
This usually involves the following tasks.
Analyze current situation Identifying and communicating with the right
stakeholders ensure business needs are identified and defined.
Getting context on where we are today by collaboration and continuous feedback from product owners
and other key stakeholders through activities such as shadowing and observation.
Clear understanding of the BIG Picture of the current state
Determine Vision (high-level) Facilitate a vision exercise to develop a
vision statement to determine Goal and benefits
Scope Impact Metrics
Continuously analyze new information to understand the expected impact of a vision.
Brainstorm and analyze a range of high-level solutions approaches
Use impact metrics from the vision statement to determine the best approach
Clear understanding of the intended outcome of the initiative
Align Initiatives Now that we know the current situation and
the vision- now it’s time to start aligning initiatives from the solution approaches to
the organization's goals in order to determine the best approach
Each approach can be assessed through feasibility studies and experimentation with continuous
feedback.
Value Stream Mapping BAs can use all the information above to facilitate
current and future state value stream mapping sessions.
Value stream mapping is common in Agile and Lean practices and is used to identify value-added
and non-value added activities.
Key deliverables of the situation analysis are Current and Future State value stream
maps and a refined vision statement.
While the BA may facilitate the vision statement exercise, the product owner or customer is
ultimately responsible for the vision statement.
Plan BA Work
Team Charter BA activities are planned out in alignment with the team charter.
This is a document created by the agile team to establish the team values, agreements,
communication, and operating guidelines, conflict resolution processes, meeting guidelines,
and team agreements
Understand your overall role in the team.
In an Agile context, the business analyst role may not be specifically defined and is
usually recognized as a member of the development or agile team.
Agile BAs, shift from a BA role to a BA skillset, which is often expanded to exercise T-shaped
or cross-functional responsibilities.
This means that you will be able to add your skillset in any way that can add value to
the project, which may include analysis, modeling, communicating requirements, testing, or even
some development work.
Just as long as you have an appropriate skill set to complete the required task.
Agile BAs utilize Rolling Wave planning – Which is an iterative planning technique where the
near term is planned in detail, while activities and deliverables that are further in the future
are planned at a higher level.
This is often facilitated through planning workshops.
Planning Workshops During initial planning, the project team
will create a high-level release plan.
Planning workshops for release planning can be facilitated by the business analyst, product
manager, team leader, or scrum master, depending on the framework.
More detailed plans such as upcoming release plans or iteration plans are also done closer
to delivery.
Product Roadmap - The BA can also help facilitate or be included in the development of the Product
Roadmap.
This is a strategic planning document that communicates overall direction and progress
towards the vision for a project.
The document typically includes
A vision statement, Desired Outcomes,
Product Management team, which is led by the product owner,
Themes and high-level requirements
Key deliverable for planning BA work is the Team Charter, A high-level Release Plan, and
Product Road Map
Now the following capabilities are done in iterations, which means you will be doing
the activities in smaller increments over and over throughout the initiative until full
delivery is complete.
Gather and Elicit Requirements
Gather requirement involves collecting information identified during the development of the vision
statement and product roadmap.
The product owner or customer is initially responsible for identifying and communicating
with the needs in the form of a product backlog, however, the agile BA may be needed to refine
the backlog to ensure initial product backlog items are usable for further work
Story Decomposition.
Eliciting requirements involves decomposing the themes and features that have been identified
in the backlog into smaller stories that can be prioritized.
Story decomposition may be facilitated through observation, interviews, or other collaborative
methods.
Continuous collaboration and feedback.
Confirmation is also facilitated through continuous collaboration and feedback.
At this point, the BA will work closely with the product owner or customer to ensure the
needs high-level requirement, themes, features or stories are capture appropriately.
Story Mapping.
BA and product information can be communicated through story mapping.
It can be used to elicit and model information about a solution.
This helps create an understanding of product functionality, workflow, and helps with prioritizing
product delivery.
Story mapping generally includes themes, features, stories, and their ranked priority.
Key deliverables for Gathering and Eliciting Requirement in generally the product backlog
decomposed into stories and a story map.
Documenting and Maintaining Requirements
Documenting Requirements – The initial documentation of requirements may be the responsibility
of the product owner, customer representative, or Agile BA depending on the organization
and selected framework.
Agile specifies requirements through lightweight documentation.
The most common approach is through user stories.
Other widely adapted approaches include job stories and various types of product backlog
items.
Either approach might be accompanied by supplemental techniques such as
Use Cases, Data Models,
Process Models, Prototypes and mock-ups
Analyzing requirements in an agile environment consist of constantly learning and assessing
new information and then reviewing and reprioritizing the backlog to ensure items that have the
greatest impact and provide the most value are delivered sooner.
Agile BAs and product owners or customers work hand in hand here.
Backlog Refinement.
Verifying requirements involved ensuring the delivery team can clearly understand the backlog
items.
This occurs through backlog refinement sessions, which consists of story elaboration for items
with higher priority and ensuring stories meet the INVEST criteria, have high-level
acceptance criteria, and meet the definition of ready prior to being added to the next
iteration.
BAs help ensure backlog items are refined in preparation for the next planning workshop.
Validate Requirements – Test cases are generally facilitated through detailed acceptance criteria,
which are tested automatically through Behavior Driven Development or manually through user
acceptance testing by the business.
Tracing requirements in agile is a lightweight effort tracing stories back to epics, features,
and themes.
Change Requests and Approvals are embedded in Agile practices through continuous learning
and feedback loops and adapting the new information by constantly reprioritizing the backlog.
Approval is assumed when the customer allocates a story to an iteration for delivery.
Key Deliverables – A backlog with higher priority items decomposed and refined.
Any supplemental documentation to provide story clarification can also serve as a deliverable.
Support Solution Design and Implementation
Story Elaboration is the lowest level of story decomposition and is used to facilitate design
discussion and detailed acceptance criteria.
Agile BAs can help facilitate breaking the stories down into individual pieces of work.
Agile BAs serving as cross-functional agile team members.
As mentioned earlier, agile teams emphasize the T-shaped learning where team members have
one in-depth knowledge that is supplemented by several high-level knowledge areas allowing
for more opportunities to add value.
BAs perform testing and development functions, while also helping to facilitate the learning
and feedback loops from the customer.
BAs can collaborate with the team leader or scrum master to help facilitate iteration
planning.
Key deliverable includes a refined backlog with elaborated stories and iteration plans.
BAs don’t have the sole responsibility for producing these deliverables but should be
involved in the process.
Monitor and Evaluate the Solution
Continuous Feedback - Agile development delivers solutions to customers in smaller increments,
allowing for greater ability to identify whether or not the functionality delivered is functioning
properly and meeting expectations.
Reviews – solution evaluation prior to delivery often comes in the form of reviews to allow
the development team to elicit feedback from the customer and course correct the solution
prior to delivery.
The BA may be responsible for taking note of requested changes and new requirements
to be added to the backlog for prioritization.
UAT can occur in iterations and allows the customer to evaluate the solution from a business
perspective prior to implementation.
And the Agile BA may be the point of contact for this.
Post-implementation evaluation – After the solution has been delivered for production,
BAs, as well as other team members, may be involved in monitoring the performance or
success of the last release as well as collecting feedback from the customer that provides learning
to allow the team to adjust the in-progress activities.
Well, those are the 6 core capabilities that sum up the role of the Agile business analysts.
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for more BA mastery tips.
Also if you’re interested in more comprehensive training be sure to check out the courses
page @ the badoc.com/courses
That’s all for now!
Have a productive and prosperous week!
Until next time!