What practices can you adopt to help your team experience Agile?
This question was raised by a listener to the podcast we recorded on agile analysis practices with BA coach Yamo. (Find the podcast here.) The specific question that Katie Metcalf asked us was this:
“What Agile techniques would you suggest introducing to a software development team that is currently not using the Agile approach but would like to get a flavor for the methodology?”
Over the past few years, I’ve spoken to user groups to share my experiences working with use cases, scenarios, and user acceptance tests in support of data warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI) BI analysis. Afterwards, many people ask me to summarize my recommendations. In response, I wrote a short article – Requirements Tips for Data Centric Projects. You can access it here (note: you may have to register).
In my article, I focus on analyzing the context of usage. In addition, remember this: to elicit, analyze, and specify requirements in this space, almost all of the time-tested data-centric techniques are still necessary.
People often asked me for additional tips and advice. What additional considerations for business analysis for BI? Continue reading
Security requirements are a difficult quality attribute to elicit and specify. (Quality attributes are one the three types of nonfunctional requirements—along with interfaces, and design & implementation constraints*). Distinguishing can help. So too, it helps to
Sue Burk distinguishes between security requirements and security controls, shares four categories of security requirements, provides suggestions for eliciting security requirements, and explains why making them testable is important in her expert response. Continue reading
I’m honored to share my podcast with Yaaqub (Yamo) Mohamed of The BACoach. We discuss ingredients for effective requirements workshops described in my first book, Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs.
I’m thrilled to be collaborating with Janet Gregory, co-author with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing, on a workshop entitled “Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration” at Agile 2011 Conference and STARWEST.
I believe that there is a lot of cross-fertilization benefit to be gained when people with skills in different disciplines collaborate closely toward shared ends. This is very true for the disciplines of testing and business analysis. The tester mind-set is crucial for verifying requirements. The business analysis mind-set is crucial for validating requirements. Continue reading | 1 Comment
Are you working on data-centric software products? For example, ones that involves building a data warehouse, using extract-transform-load (ETL) and getting the gold—delivering business intelligence and analytic reports and queries for business decision makers?
Sue Burk shares the value of scenarios to define acceptance tests, and other practical techniques to improve your success with these data-centric projects in her expert response. Continue reading
I was recently interviewed by SearchSoftwareQuality editor Yvette Francino about this week’s Business Analysis and Requirements Workshop at the Better Conference/Development Conference this week in Las Vegas, Nevada (6-7 June, 2011).
Yvette asked me to explain the logistics, if we would be emulating gathering requirements for a particular project and if the workshop be relevant regardless of domain area. Here are my answers: As conference chair, Continue reading | 1 Comment
Have you been in a situation where there’s no documentation, yet you’re expected to understand functionality?
Trial transactions and observing behavior is one answer. But understanding context is also important.
Sue Burk suggests creative solutions in her expert response.
What Tough Agile Analysis Questions Do Business Analysts Need Answered? 
This is the question I posed to the participants in a facilitated workshop at the Building Business Capability Conference (BBC) 2010 this past fall. The BBC conference, held in the Washington, D.C. area, was the first official IIBA ® conference. It offered tracks for business analysis, business rules, and business process management.
As the facilitator, I had 30 minutes to “crowdsource” from an energetic, curious, and motivated group of 120 business analysts. Many analysts in attendance were new to agile practices. All of them cared deeply about the value of business analysis. They were eager to… Continue reading
In my earlier post, How Agile is Influencing the Traditional Business Analyst Role: Part 1, I provided the first set of answers to questions posed to me by a Modern Analyst writer preparing a article on how Agile is impacting the traditional business analyst (BA) role.
Here I continue with the questions and my responses.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree?
Yes, maybe, yes, maybe, yes maybe.
In Scrum, we have the product owner “role.” The PO is perhaps the most important (and burdened) role. The PO must conduct a mix of strategic and tactical activities.
Strategic activities are business or market facing—for example, analyzing the market and business case, defining the product vision and roadmap, developing requirements, adjusting the product backlog, and determining delivery plans.
Tactical activities are delivery team facing—for example, specifying the items to be delivered in each iteration, determining acceptance criteria for them, analyzing dependencies between items, and making tough decisions about what will be built to satisfy a given business need, technical risk, and requirements dependencies. Some great business analysts I’ve worked with pitch in to build and run user acceptance tests.
All this takes a lot of knowledge and many skills, and it consumes a lot of time.
On top of that, to fulfill both strategic and tactical activities on an agile project, the business customer needs experience in product development, along with deep domain and product knowledge.
I’ve coached (and trained) teams working on large, complex products, and I’ve seldom known a single business customer who can do these strategic and tactical activities.
That’s why many organizations turn to talented business analysts for help with the day-to-day, tactical decision making on their agile projects. In other cases, someone who was formerly a traditional business analyst will work out the backlog items, suggest the priorities, and then obtain validation from the business PO. Continue reading | 1 Comment
Founder and president of EBG Consulting.
Author, trainer, mentor, agile coach, facilitator,
conference advisor,
Certified Professional Facilitator,
Certified Scrum Master
