Just in time product management resources
Steve Denning, a former world bank executive and author gave two presentations at Agile 2011, both of which were of extreme relevance and importance for business analysis practitioners. I was able to attend both and found in this case at least, we were able to schedule across stages in the right order. His Making the …
There are two ways to look at the topic of Portfolio Management: How do you incorporate projects using an agile approach into your broader overall portfolio How do you manage your portfolio in an agile manner? Kenny Rubin in his presentation Strategies for Portfolio Management explored the second, which implicitly covered some of the first. …
The first session I attended was Jez Humble’s Applying the Lean Startup Model to the Enterprise. This session introduced the Lean Startup Model and discussed how the concepts could be applied to larger more established organizations, specifically how to organize development and operations. About the talk If you are not familiar with lean startup, don’t …
The first keynote at the Agile 2011 Conference was Barbara Frederickson, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, who has done a great deal of work on the impact of positive emotions. In her talk Why Care about Positive Emotions, she discussed how positive emotions can change people's physiology and impact their effectiveness at work, in …
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 …
Question: Have you seen vendor driven agile working well in traditional waterfall companies? I have to date not seen a situation where a vendor was using an agile approach, and the customer was a traditional waterfall company. I’m not saying that it does not happen, just that I have not seen it. I think the …
The role of Scrum Master is specific to Scrum. Since Scrum has become the most widely known of the agile approaches, the term Scrum Master has become a common term for the person who is acting as process guardian and facilitator for agile teams. Question: How do you feel about the BA being the daily …
Question: How do offshore resources fit into agile? Agile is heavily reliant on team communication and collaboration. The most effective means of communication is face to face, at a white board because you have the most means of transmitting information – the words, the nonverbals, and tone of voice. An ideal situation is for all …
Question: What is agile? There are as many different definitions of agile as there are practitioners. Not to be outdone, here is mine: Agile is collaboration among stakeholders to deliver value to customers in frequent increments with consistent reflection and adaptation. Question: In your experience, what are the core trends of agile? That is, what …
Question: What value does the BA provide within a true agile project? There’s actually two interesting points to discuss in this question. First, the question regarding the value provided by a business analyst, and the second, the label “true agile project”. I’ll address each point separately. The value provided by a business analyst on an …
Question: What has been the business side’s response to it [agile]? Generally the response has been initial skepticism and reluctance, followed by acceptance and finally enthusiasm in those cases where they are involved properly. The initial skepticism and reluctance spring from the increased frequency of their time commitment, and the smaller amount of documentation available …
Question: How do you learn about the agile approach? How does a BA learn to manage the agile approach? Find a good coach. Become part of a team that has done it before, or is doing it. Do it. Sometimes the simplest answers are the best.
Question: How do you overcome the expectation for a complete product when you are delivering piece by piece? The idea behind incremental delivery is that each individual piece delivered to the customer provides some value, although not all of the value that the overall product is expected to provide. If the product is a system …
Question: What, in your mind, is the one biggest benefit of agile? The biggest benefit of agile is the frequent delivery of valuable increments of the product. This is a great benefit or a couple of reasons: Customers and stakeholders are able to get a much better perspective on what the product is going to …
Question: Does agile typically require greater or fewer resources than a similar waterfall project? Software development projects use some interesting terminology. Aside from drug dealing it is the only domain that refers to its customers as "Users"… well I guess there is some software that is fairly addiction. The reference to team members as "resources" …
