Agile from a BA Perspective
By Sandra Jones
Sandra Jones
 Practicing Business Analysis in a BA Role for over 10 years
K-LOVE and Air1 Radio
[email protected]
 IT and Business Roles
 CBAP certification in 2014
 Promotes the development of the business analysis practice
at K-LOVE and Air1 Radio Networks
 Combines passion for technology with solving business
needs to deliver tangible business value
Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/sandra-jones-cbap-74831393
Our Goal
Understand the BA Role in Agile and how to practice
Business Analysis in an Agile Environment.
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
Manifesto for
Agile Software
Development
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value
the items on the left more.
“Manifesto for Agile Software Development." http://agilemanifesto.org. (2001).
Agile
Framework
Waterfall
 Traditional Waterfall Project
Model for 9 years
My Agile Story
Agile
 Began Agile Software
Development in 2015
 Projects
 Agile Teams
 Change Requests
 Scrum framework
 Software Support
 Dev Ops
 Different Types of Initiatives
and Products
 Dedicated to a set of
Software Products
 Business Sponsors
 Product Owners
 Phased Approach
 Ceremonies
Share your Agile story! In what ways did you modify
Agile or step out of the traditional 4 ceremonies to
improve Agile in your organization?
Breakout!
There are four ceremonies in Agile (scrum):
1. Sprint Planning
2. Daily Scrum or Stand Up
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective
Adaptable?
BA Role in
Agile
 Ensuring the right information is available to
the development team in the right level of
detail, at the right time, so they can build the
right product.
1. Evaluate Business Needs
2. Create Stories
Business
Analysis
Activities in
Agile
3. Create Acceptance Criteria
4. Manage the Product Backlog
5. Enable Sprint Planning
6. Manage the Sprint Backlog and Sprint
Review
7. Release Planning and Deployments
8. Product Documentation
Evaluate
Business
Needs
 Do “just enough” analysis to understand the
business need
 What are the benefits of solving the need?
 Is that need worth satisfying?
 Should the team deliver something to satisfy
that need?
 Types of Stories
 User
 Foundation is a technical story
 Spike is a research story
Create Stories
 User Story is a brief, simple statement of a
requirement from the user’s perspective.
 As a user role, I want desired function, so that the
benefit of the function.
 Focus on the what, not the how
 Use INVEST
 Acceptance Criteria are Conditions of
Satisfaction and should be included in the User
Story as:
Create
Acceptance
Criteria
 Constraints
 Definition of Done
 Test Cases
 Refine User Stories
Manage the
Product
Backlog
 Prioritize User Stories
 Plan ahead for Future Sprints
 Story Review Session
Enable Sprint
Planning
1.
Is there shared understanding of the User Story?
2.
Is the User Story sized appropriately?
3.
Is there enough knowledge to plan the tasks?
4.
Are all external dependencies fulfilled?
 Be Available to the Team
 Communicate with Business Sponsors
Mange the
Sprint Backlog
and Sprint
Review
 Embrace the feedback Loop
 Reconfirm Business Value in the Sprint Review
 Create Additional Stories
 Story Mapping
Release
Planning and
Deployments
 Coordinating Release
 Create Deployment Plan for larger releases
 Manage Deployment and Risk
Work Products
Product
Documentation
 Used solely for product
change
 Lean, short-term artifacts
like User Stories
Deliverables
 Organizationally required
documents for compliance,
audit, transition
management, or knowledge
management purposes
Share your BA Activities in Agile! What Business Analysis
activities do you practice in Agile?
Breakout!
1.
Evaluate Business Needs
2.
Create Stories
3.
Create Acceptance Criteria
4.
Manage the Product Backlog
5.
Enable Sprint Planning
6.
Manage the Sprint Backlog and Sprint Review
7.
Release Planning and Deployments
8.
Product Documentation
Thank you!
Questions?