I am proud to be a part of a new program in the Agile Alliance – Analysis and Product Management in Agile that was formed with the purpose of providing a way for practitioners in the business analysis and product management communities to share stories, questions, and puzzles about using those skills in an agile setting and to share ideas between communities.
The idea for the program grew out of discussions after hours at Agile2013 with Jake Calabrese, Jeffrey Davidson, Inger Dickson, Kupe Kupersmith, Chris Matts, and Leslie Morse (and probably others). Along with some deep conversations about the utility of Comic Sans, we discussed the intersection of analysis, product management, and agile and the benefits that could arise from encouraging more interaction between those various communities. We also thought this would be a good way to build on discussions that occurred in February in London and May in New York City.
Our intent with the program is to provide a place for conversations to occur at various gatherings of the three communities with our first iteration being an Agile Open Jam at the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference where attendees can take part in conversations about the intersection of business analysis, business process, and business rules with agile principles and techniques. It works like this: Participants offer sessions for sessions relevant to the overall topic of analysis and product management in agile. Participants decide what time the sessions will be held.
All sessions will be hosted by analysts with extensive agile experience and some of the folks that helped establish the program – Jake Calabrese, Jeffrey Davidson, Mary Gorman, Ellen Gottesdiener and I. We are going to be hosts,not presenters. We’ll curate the outcomes of the discussions and make them available to Agile Alliance members.
I hope this will be the first of many opportunities for the analysis, product management, and agile communities to share ideas at gatherings of one of the three communities. It’s through discussing stories, questions, and puzzles that we can help organizations build the right thing (or not build anything if that is what makes the most sense.)