On June 15th, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of business analysts who had a lot of questions about agile. I had been asked to give a 45 minute overview of agile and was provided a sample list of questions for the presentation would cover. I quickly realized that I would never come close to answering all of the questions with a prepared presentation, so I took a different approach. I asked everyone to write their questions on sticky notes and put them on a whiteboard at the front of the room. I then proceeded to work my way through the questions.
In addition to the questions I answered during the session, I thought I would share answers here to the questions that appeared on the sticky notes. Those questions are listed below as links to the posts in which I answer them. The posts referenced below represent my initial gut level answer to the questions. I encourage you to post any follow on questions or comments in the comments of the appropriate post, and I will reply back via comments or revise my post to provide more clarity where appropriate.
I’m still working on answers to some of the questions (those which do not appear as links). Once I have an answer, I’ll include the link.
- What value does the BA provide within a true agile project?
- How do you overcome the expectation for a complete product when you are delivering piece by piece?
- How do you get BA’s to convert from a waterfall methodology to an agile approach?
- When introducing agile, do you suggest business unit training first?
- What is the best way to get PM’s and executive stakeholders that are accustomed to waterfall on board with agile?
- How do you get your leads (with only waterfall experience) on board with attending daily standup meetings?
- How do you overcome the hurdle of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mentality with project participants? PM, IT, Stakeholders
- How do you go about getting the information you need to create your features?
- Have you seen vendor driven agile working well in traditional waterfall companies?
- What are some good requirement tools to use with agile? Quality Center?
- How do offshore resources fit into agile?
- How do you learn about the agile approach? How does a BA learn to manage the agile approach?
- In your experience, what are the core trends of agile? That is, what is both necessary and sufficient to have an agile development methodology?
- How do you feel about the BA being the daily Scrum Master?
- How does the PM role change in agile vs. waterfall?
- Does agile typically require greater or fewer resources than a similar waterfall project?
- What, in your mind, is the one biggest benefit of agile?
- What has been the business side’s response to it?
- What is the most challenging thing about implementing and using agile?
- How and when do you stop a “features list” from growing? At some point coding and testing needs to occur.
- In a pure agile world, “user stories” are used. How do you see this evolving?
- How is agile adaptable to smaller projects eg, 20 – 100 hours?
- The agile approach uses sticky notes a lot… how do you convert this into documentation for the business?
- How do you document the agile approach?
- What is a high level overview of the agile methodology & key inputs/outputs/scheduling?
- What is agile?
- How do you describe agile to business partners?
- How do you get business buy-in on the agile process?