What is an agile business analyst
An excerpt from How To Be An Agile Business Analyst, a book that explores how to apply your business analysis skills in an agile manner so that your team solves the right problems with the right solutions.
Should agile adoption be top down?
Sometimes the outcome you're asked to deliver is a reduction in staff. This post explores how to deal with mandated outcomes such as reducing staff.
Role of a Business Analyst in Agile
The role of a business analyst in an agile setting varies based on the context. Find out about the 3 most common models for BAs in an agile setting.
Getting the Most out of Agile2015
Agile2015 is next week in Washington DC so I thought I’d share some ideas for getting the most out of the conference.
The Power of Feedback
Feedback is an important ingredient to successful projects. One reason teams use iterative approaches, either time boxed sprints or single piece flow, is that they have the opportunity to get frequent and rapid feedback. A few recent experiences have inspired me to think a bit about how helpful feedback can be and some subtle aspects of feedback that are important to keep in mind.
Beyond Requirements on Mastering Business Analysis Podcast
About a month ago I was honored to talk with Dave Saboe on his Mastering Business Analysis Podcast. We talked about my forthcoming (for a while now) book Beyond Requirements: Analysis with an Agile Mindset and other things analysis and agile.
Feature Injection Clarified (Hopefully)
I take a shot at providing a practical, useful explanation of Feature Injection, an approach where teams understand the value an initiative intends to deliver, deliver the features that provide that value, and build a shared understanding about those features primarily through examples.
5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Agile2014
I’ve learned a lot of lessons, some more painfully than others, about how to get the most out of the conference. I thought it would be good to share some of those lessons as we are about to embark on Agile2014 in Orlando.
BDD and the Business Analyst
This morning (November 22, 2013) I had the opportunity to be involved in a very unique discussion. SkillsMatter hosted the Agile Testing & BDD Exchange in London. This particular discussion involved people from three different countries, and only one of them was actually in London when the conversation occurred.
Analysis and Product Management In Agile
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 first activity of the program will be an Agile Open Jam at the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference
Better, Cheaper, Faster, sort of…
If your development organization is adopting agile, you may be able to get to better, cheaper, faster but you aren't going to really see those types of benefits unless you bring your stakeholders along for the ride.
Do we really have to create new labels?
We have a tendency to create new labels for concepts that are similar to, but slightly different than existing concepts. Some of these labels include Scrum, Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Feature Injection. Are these labels helpful? I'm not so sure they always are.
Scrum is a subset of agile, not an alternative.
It's not agile/scrum, it's not agile and scrum or agile or scrum, it's just agile.
Agile 2012 Tuesday Thoughts
With my work done, I spent Tuesday attending sessions and acting as the prodigal product owner at the Agile Philanthropy Dev Lab. Here are some summaries of the sessions I attended, including Bob Sutton's Keynote, a great talk on BDD, and a discussion around why the Product Owner Idea is not such a good one.
Agile 2012 Monday Thoughts
A few thoughts from the sessions I attended on the first day of Agile 2012. These sessions discussed how to determine whether projects are worth it, and how to improve communication and collaboration through improv.
The Roundabout BA
BA's may not be bridges, they may be more like roundabouts helping information flow in more than just two directions without any stop signs or stop lights.
Five Things Teams Should Remember
The Scrum Master from a team I was coaching recently asked me to provide a list of 5 things, that above else the team should remember when going forward and when a coach was no longer present. I thought this list would be helpful for others to do as well, so I thought I would …
A Domain Agnostic Description of Agile
I recently saw probably the best description of agile I have ever seen, from PMNetwork, the magazine of the Project Management Institute. The article discusses the agile movement 10 years after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, and interviewed four of the signatories in order to get an informed perspective. In response to a question …
Too Much Collaboration?
“Too much fun? What’s that mean? It’s like too much money, there’s no such thing” Trace Adkins “I Ain’t Never Had Too Much Fun” On an agile project, is there possibly such a thing as too much collaboration? Collaboration is one of the cornerstones of the agile mindset. We’re reminded about it in several places: …
Ten Things Business Analysts Should Pay Attention To
The end of one year and the beginning of the next brought with it a slew of posts covering the top trends for just about every field. I’ve run across three so far, all of them providing a different perspective, some I agree with, some I don’t. Regardless of my thoughts, they deserve reading: Glenn …
Agile 2011 – Agile Thinking for Business Analysis: Beyond User Stories
After an inexcusably long delay, here is another post on one of the sessions from Agile 2011. This one, Agile Thinking for Business Analysis: Going Beyond User Stories was presented by Steve Adolph & Shane Hastie. The premise of the session was that although User Stories are the “industry standard” way of documenting requirements in …
Agile2011 Making the Entire Organization Agile
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 …
BA Questions: The Scrum Master
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 …
BA Questions: Offshore and Agile
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 …