Product Agility

A blog about agile product discovery and delivery,
collaboration, and continual improvement

Agile Analysis, Agile Testing: Synergies for Successful Software Solutions

My experiences working with agile teams have taught me that agile analysis and testing skills are truly synergestic.

So much so, that I put together a tutorial for the April 2011 Quest Conference (Quality Engineering Software & Testing) entitled, “Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration”. Subsequently, I had the honor to work with agile testing guru Janet Gregory to present this at Agile 2011.

Next month, EBG’er Sue Burk will co-present this tutorial with Janet at Software Testing Analysis & Review (STAR) conferences. So, you might be wondering, what are those synergies?

The Testing Mindset

Product needs evolve into requirements that define what will be built, what will be tested, and how the product needs will provide value for the organization. People with testing skills need to be involved in requirements for the same reason the other product stakeholders need to be involved: to boost the team’s ability to deliver a high-quality product.

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Business Analysis for Business Intelligence

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?

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Best Books for Software Developers

This winter, SD Times editor Jennifer deJong Lent asked me to contribute an SD Times article on recommended books for developers. Jennifer and I agreed my list would exclude books about languages, databases or IDEs. I was pleased to contribute.

Jennifer begins her article with the following: “With the proliferation of online articles and ebooks, old-fashioned paper books seem not to have a place in today’s world. Many experts, however, still find useful things in paperbacks and hardcovers. From technology to people and team management, these books still help developers out today. Here are what the experts recommend.”

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Tips on Software Security Requirements

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.

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Power Up Your Agile Planning & Analysis

I’m pleased to share my podcast with Jochen (Joe) Krebs*, Founder of Agile NYC. The podcast was recorded on October 11, 2011, just before my presentation to the Agile NYC group.

The presentation, entitled, Power Up Your Agile Planning and Analysis:

Deliver Value via Structured Conversations describes how product stakeholders partner to develop a shared understanding of the product needs. I discuss how the partners gain a focused yet holistic understanding of the highest-value requirements and plan the project so that the delivery team builds the right product, at the right time.

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Agile 2011: Top 7 Agile Highlights and Trends

The tenth anniversary of the international Agile 20xx conference, Agile 2011, returned to its inaugural location, Salt Lake City, Utah. The attendance set a record for being the largest agile conference in the world! This year’s conference, held August 9-12 2011, was attended by 1,600+ people. It was jam-packed with morning-to-night activities. The conference also included events to reflect and celebrate on the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto.

We at EBG Consulting were pleased to have been selected (from over 900 submissions) to present three sessions. Here are some of highlights and trends:

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Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration

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.

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Requirements Tips for Data Centric Projects

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.

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