What Does a Business Analyst Do on an Agile Project?
By Kent J. McDonald Senior Instructor, B2T Training more succinct recording of requirements is sufficient. s the use of agile approaches Another change with increases, business analysts agile approaches is the Astruggle to determine how their use of short, time boxed role maps to the new approach and delivery cycles referred to how it has changed from their familiar as iterations or sprints. development process. Business analysts, These iterations include for example, often find themselves all the work necessary to proclaiming “in everything I read/hear go from a requirement to about agile, I never see “business analyst” a running, tested feature mentioned!” that could be delivered Even though the role of business to production. The use of analyst is rarely mentioned in descriptions iterations allows the team of agile it does not mean that business to continuously reflect analysis does not occur. In fact, agile’s on their past efforts and focus on delivering value to customers adapt their processes requires the entire team to collaboratively to improve. The short perform business analysis on a frequent timeframe of iterations basis. This and other characteristics of (typically a week to a agile change how a business analyst works month) means that the on a project. scope for each iteration is One change that agile introduces is a much smaller than most barely sufficient process which does not traditional projects so prescribe any documentation, including the business analyst only requirements artifacts. That does not mean needs to focus on the that documentation is not produced, portion of the solution being delivered effective, the person filling the product rather the business analyst collaborates during that iteration. Business analysts owner role should be well versed in many with other team members to decide what collaborate with other team members core business analysis techniques, but is needed to best deliver the solution, to determine how much analysis is they rarely are. This provides the business including how much documentation is needed at the beginning of the project analyst an excellent opportunity to assist necessary. Contrast this with the detailed to establish the big picture, and during the product owner as is discussed below. methodologies and standards for plan- each iteration in order to establish a Finally, all team members have the driven projects used by large organizations shared understanding without creating an opportunity to perform analysis so the that require business analysts to complete extensive requirements inventory. business analyst also coaches the other extensive requirements documents. These A third change in agile is the existence team members on analysis techniques and artifacts lead business analysts, especially of the product owner role. The product the appropriate stakeholders to contact. less experienced ones, to document the owner is the ultimate decision maker Allowing multiple team members to same requirements several ways using and ultimate representative of business perform analysis prevents handoffs that different models and text even though needs for the project. In order to be truly occur in phased based approaches, and
Page 1 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 keeps the business analysts on the team Agile approaches allow teams to focus Agile Roles from becoming bottlenecks to overall on delivering the highest value as set by Because of the focus on teamwork team progress. the business in the shortest time. Teams and collaboration, roles in agile The activities that a business analyst using agile approaches self-organize to approaches are more general in performs to advise the product owner and rapidly and repeatedly inspect actual nature than those of more plan coach the team, as well as other business working software in iterations ranging based, or traditional prescriptive from one week to one month in duration. analysis considerations are discussed below. approaches. Tasks specific to the At the end of each iteration, anyone can business analyst are not prescribed What is agile really about? see real working software and decide to in an agile environment, so business There are as many different definitions release it as is or continue to enhance it analysis practitioners need to know of agile as there are people providing for another iteration. where business analysis techniques definitions. For the sake of this paper, The biggest impact of iterations on need to be applied in a project. agile is defined as collaboration among business analysts is the lack of an analysis stakeholders to deliver value to customers phase. Instead of performing all analysis There are four primary roles included in frequent increments with consistent work to develop detailed requirements in an agile project. reflection and adaptation. at the beginning of the project, business This definition The Product Owner is the ultimate analysis occurs throughout the project focuses on the characteristics that exist in decision maker for the product. This all agile environments, namely: with an initial high level picture of the role is responsible for defining the • Collaboration – how the people overall scope, followed by more detail on product vision, prioritizing features involved in the effort work together specific features when they are delivered. according to business value, and which includes both the delivery team The key is knowing the sufficient answering team questions. and project stakeholders amount of business analysis necessary to • Deliver value – the true purpose of understand the problem and the aspect of The Scrum Master is the guardian efforts is to provide value to customers, the solution currently being delivered and of the team’s process. This role is whether that is through new software, still keep the project moving forward. responsible for ensuring the team more efficient processes, or new Another aspect of agile approaches has the appropriate environment to products. that impacts business analysts is the succeed, removing obstacles, and enabling close cooperation across all • Frequent increments – the team delivers lack of prescription. Agile approaches roles. values every few days, weeks, or months are based on the premise that simple rather than once at the end of a project rules generate complex behavior so they The Team is a group of 5 – 9 people • Consistent reflection and adaptation provide a minimalist framework for dedicated to the project full time who – the project team reflects on their teams to organize their work and leave are responsible for self-organizing approach and the product on a regular the rest to the self-discipline of the team. to deliver value to the customer in basis and adjusts accordingly. So while agile approaches do not require each iteration. The team determines how the product is developed, and how the work is divided up to do that based on the conditions at the time.
A Stakeholder is anyone who can impact the project and provide input to the business objectives of the product. Stakeholders actively involved in the project are part of the team. Stakeholders who are not actively involved in the project may still interact with the product owner to provide their input on the product backlog.
Page 2 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 any documentation, they do not prohibit expert on the team) revised, created, or eliminated? any either. Rather it is the appropriate The nature of the change in the • What information do we want to know amount of documentation. When teams business analysts’ work is focused about and track about various entities? are deciding what to document in an exclusively on how they interact with • What stakeholders (such as customers, agile project, business analysts may their team members, product owner, and suppliers, vendors) and systems are suggest they ask the following questions: stakeholders. They are no longer solely involved in the effort? • Is this something a stakeholder is responsible for requirements so they • What policies and rules guide business requesting? will have a lot more interaction helping behavior and decisions? • Is this something the team needs in their team members improve their order to effectively do its job? analysis skill sets and focusing on more While it is important to establish a strategic focused activities through their shared understanding of the business Because the business analyst is not interaction with the product owner. domain, this can’t take a great deal of so focused on trying to document all time, especially because the models requirements, rules, etc. for a separate The Business Analyst as change as the project progresses and the development team, they can focus more Business Advisor team learns more as they proceed through time on actual analysis – did we consider Most agile approaches have a specific the project. To keep this analysis focused, all the scenarios that may occur? Are we role to represent the ultimate business business analysts time box their analysis keeping our solution consistent? Do we decision maker, such as the role titled investigation, prioritize the topics being know what unintended consequences we product owner. The product owner sets analyzed, and stay on task with any team may be creating with this change? the product vision and is responsible for discussions. A final aspect of agile that represents understanding and representing the needs The business analyst helps the team a departure from traditional approaches of the business and user stakeholders. decide if the requirement models are is the focus on teamwork over rigid The product owner determines which useful beyond the life of the project. specialization. The most noticeable result requirements are most important prior to Factors to include in this decision are to business analysts is that everyone the start of each iteration and determines the effort required to keep the model up on the team is encouraged to talk with how to release value incrementally to to date and the value of the model after stakeholders directly to understand their best satisfy the needs of the product the project. If the model is only needed needs. Business analysts may initially stakeholders. for a brief discussion to figure something consider this a threat until they realize A business analyst does not always out, a sketch on a whiteboard persisted that they have an opportunity to coach have the decision making authority in the form of a digital picture may be their teammates how to be the most necessary to be an effective product sufficient. If the diagram is necessary effective performing this activity, and they owner, but they can become indispensible throughout the project or is expected to get to expand their toolkit by helping the by supplementing a product owner’s lack live on past the end of the project, the other team members with their tasks. of time or business analysis skill sets. team may wish to establish the model in Agile teams don’t always start out A business analyst supports a product using a modeling tool. This decision is being completely collaborative. Teams owner by helping them analyze the an aspect of generating the appropriate will often initially fall in the trap of business domain, stocking the product amount of documentation. having developers only do development, backlog, and grooming the product testers only doing testing, and of course, backlog. Stock the Product Backlog analysts only doing analysis. Business Stocking the product backlog means Analysts help move the team toward a Analyze the Business Domain to establish a list of user stories that more collaborative nature by adopting the The business analyst helps the team and represent the overall scope of the two roles that position them to be a truly product owner understand and describe project. A user story briefly describes value added member of the team: the business domain and problem to be functionality or a feature valuable to • Business Advisor (supporting the solved by facilitating the discussions that either a user or customer of a system or Product Owner) explore the following questions: software solution. In the remainder of • Business Coach (Acting as the analysis • What business processes need to be this paper, user stories, and their bigger
Page 3 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 variant, epics will be referred to as stories Groom the Product Backlog • Look to work with another unless there is value in distinguishing Grooming the product backlog refers to organization to deliver stories that them. Business analysts help the product maintaining the product backlog so that support partner activities. owner derive stories from the models it remains a tool for the product owner • Decide whether to deliver those stories created during business domain analysis. and team and not a burden. Business that support the “who cares” activities. This is analogous to identifying the analysts help the product owner groom Business analysts can help the product business requirements for the project and the product backlog by considering owner order the product backlog by establishing the initial scope. purpose, prioritizing the stories, providing information on stakeholder’s Additional stories emerge as the organizing the stories, splitting epics into perceived value of the various items in project proceeds and are elicited from user stories, and ensuring a complete the product backlog. The model does models created or updated as well as description of the solution. not provide guidance on priority, but through conversations with impacted Through understanding how a story there are other techniques used to gather stakeholders throughout the project. supports the purpose of the project and priority information from multiple Business analysts help the product organizational strategy a business analyst stakeholders. Two of these techniques owner, stakeholders, and the team create can help the product owner decide are value points and buying features. In stories as a reminder to deliver some whether a story should be included on the value points approach, stakeholders functionality represented by the models, the product backlog and the approach are asked to get together as a group or discussed in a conversation. Stories used to deliver that particular story. and indicate the relative value of stories can be derived from requirements models The Purpose Based Alignment model in comparison to other stories in an such as data models, process flows, work makes it easier for teams to understand approach similar to planning poker. flow diagrams, use cases, business rules, the organization’s strategy by looking In the buying features technique, and user interface diagrams. at what activities are differentiating stakeholders indicate how much each Stories also result from conversations and making project level decisions item in the product backlog is worth to with stakeholders. These conversations can accordingly. By placing stories in the them by spending an amount of “feature vary from an informal chat to a planned, appropriate block, it helps the team dollars” across some or all of the items facilitated workshop specifically for the determine how to: in the backlog. The amount of feature purpose of establishing a list of stories. • Deliver stories that support dollars they assign to a given item Informal conversations resulting in differentiating activities uniquely. indicates the importance they place on new stories occur throughout the project • Deliver stories that support parity that particular requirement. and are a big advantage of projects in the activities in the simplest way possible. Prioritizing a backlog certainly helps agile environments. The use of a product introduce some backlog – a list of things to deliver on order to a backlog, the project - allows the team to take but teams often note of these new requirements as they need other ways to occur without being distracted from order requirements. the immediate work of the iteration. Business analysts help The requirements are placed on the the product owner product backlog for further analysis and and team keep the consideration by the product owner. product backlog easy New stories also surface during to follow and manage work in the iterations and during through a variety of end of iteration demos. Seeing some techniques including functionality delivered inspires grouping the stories stakeholders to consider additional into themes, and features that may be needed or to think of organizing the stories other scenarios where the system should into releases and behave differently. iterations.
Page 4 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 Teams working with a fairly large Project Lifecycle in Agile product backlog on a complex project The iterative nature of projects in an agile environment changes the form of the find grouping the stories into themes project lifecycle, but not the activities that are performed. a great way to add some hierarchy to the product backlog. Stories that satisfy different aspects of the same need or that need to be grouped together to deliver complete customer value are good candidates for themes. Teams also organize the product backlog into releases and iterations to provide an indication of when specific stories are targeted for delivery. Exactly when stories get assigned to a release or iteration depends on the point in the lifecycle. During roadmap planning business analysts help product owners and stakeholders organize the stories in the product backlog into releases based on priority to deliver the highest value stories first. Stakeholders get an initial feel for when they can expect functionality to be Organizations working in an agile environment plan in a variety of different delivered and available. levels, at differing levels of detail. The nearer term the plan, the more detailed During release planning business it is. analysts work with the product owner In Product visioning, the product owner describes how the organization or and team to decompose epics in the product should look in the future in order to implement organizational strategy. Business analysts support product planning through working with the product current release into user stories and owner to define the vision for a product and purpose of the project. identify the iteration in which each During roadmap planning the business analyst, along with the rest of the story may be delivered. The release team and stakeholders, help the product owner determine at a high level what to plan changes as work on the iterations deliver by stocking the product backlog with epics and user stories (stories). proceeds. The release plan helps the team During release planning the business analyst, along with the rest of the team determine if they need outside assistance and stakeholders, help the product owner prioritize the stories in the current from any outside resources or if stories are release and identify in which iterations the stories are targeted for delivery. complex and need to be analyzed during In iteration planning, the team commits to deliver a set of stories and identify the iteration prior to their delivery. a corresponding set of tasks needed to deliver those stories. This set of tasks During iteration planning the team creates the sprint backlog. The business analyst fully participates in this activity commits to delivering a set of stories in as a member of the team and may facilitate this activity. that iteration and the product owner makes any necessary changes to the reminders of general functionality that used approaches are splitting stories on release plan. needs to be further defined as the time operational boundaries (create, read, Business analysts often work with for implementation nears. This further update, and delete) or on data boundaries the team to right size stories for delivery definition creates user stories, which (different pieces of information associated within an iteration. Stories are of different are small enough to deliver within an with an entity). sizes based on how close they are to being iteration and planned to be delivered in A final way that Business analysts help delivered. Epics are too large to deliver the near future. There are many different product owners is to help them ensure within a single iteration, and exist as ways to split stories. Two frequently that the portion of the solution being
Page 5 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 delivered in current iteration and release vital for project success. Business analysts the iteration prior to when user stories are is fully explained. Some questions to ask facilitate collaboration through helping delivered. to ensure the description of the solution with stakeholder analysis and acting Examples can take a variety of forms. is complete: as a language coach. Business analysts When describing the enforcement of • Do we know which users have the same have the clearest understanding of the business rules, the appropriate form is goal? stakeholders involved in the project so as a table. Communicating examples as • Are there some users who should they can provide suggestions on which tables makes it easier to grasp the content not be able to use the functionality stakeholders that team member should and spot gaps and inconsistencies. When developed? talk to for information. describing a process, the Given, When, • Are there any scenarios that we have Once they have helped their Then format is more appropriate. to account for in order to provide the teammates identify the appropriate expected value? stakeholders to talk to, business analysts Given Page 6 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too. www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 the entire team cannot be involved in generally performed by other roles such position the product to best deliver each of these exercises, some relaying as testing, user interface design, preparing value to stakeholders, in the process of this information is necessary. This test data, training, and providing an building their domain knowledge and information can be transferred by posting update to an executive sponsor. experience solving business problems. the business domain information on Business analysts also work closely with information radiators, or a common Conclusion their team mates to improve everyone’s shared area, available to the team to refer Agile approaches do not prescribe many analysis skills as well as acquire new to when needed. roles, primarily because the focus on skills including testing and perhaps even collaboration makes the establishment some coding skills. These opportunities Be A Good Team Member of many roles unnecessary. This lack position the business analyst to look Business analysts get the opportunity to of defined roles offers business analysts beyond a specific role and work with help their teammates clear bottlenecks. an excellent opportunity to expand their teammates to deliver value for their Doing this improves relationships with their horizons both from a business customers, and improve their worth in other team members and gives the BA an perspective, as well as a technical their organization. n opportunity to expand their toolkit and perspective. Business analysts work learn new skills through performing tasks closely with their product owner to Key BA Skills for Agile Projects A high performing business analysis professional on the team increases the likelihood that the resulting product meets true business needs and fits in well with the current business environment. If an experienced business analyst is not available, at least one team member must have extensive business analysis training and experience. Key business analysis skills that an agile project needs: • understanding of the business area that the project is • Ability to ask strong questions to help the team see areas involved with that may lead to problems • expertise in conceptual modeling; ability to see the big • Ability to document requirements formally or informally picture and envision possible solutions depending on the need of the project • outstanding verbal and non-verbal communication skills • understanding of the agile development process • Ability to multi-task • Familiarity with requirements techniques such as, user • Ability to facilitate a team to consensus on scope, design stories, use cases, and informal modeling. These are the decisions, and implementation decisions primary requirements techniques used by agile teams. Bibliography Cohn, Mike, (2004), User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development, Addison Wesley. Cohn, Mike. (2005), Agile Estimating and Planning, Addison-Wesley Professional. Cohn, Mike (2009), Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum, Addison-Wesley Professional. Cohen, Greg (2010), Agile Excellence for Product Managers: A Guide to Creating Winning Products with Agile Development Teams, Super Star Press. Pichler, Roman (2010), Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love, Addison-Wesley Professional. Pixton, Pollyanna, Niel Nickolaisen, Todd Little and Kent McDonald (2009), Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility, Addison Wesley. Page 7 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too. www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009 B2T Training is focused solely on providing business analysis training and professional development. We were established to provide the highest quality business analysis training and support for ongoing development of business analysis professionals. We bring over 25 years experience in business analysis to our offerings. B2T Training developed the first comprehensive BA training program in North America and has been a model for other training organizations. As experts in the field, B2T Training continues to shape the Business Analysis discipline and the careers of BA professionals in major corporations across the globe through its high impact training sessions and valuable resources. To support students in their transition from the classroom to their projects we provide individualized mentoring and consulting services to help companies develop their mentoring strategy. B2T Training is an endorsed education provider of the IIBA® and registered education provider of PMI®. Page 8 of 8 We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too. www.b2ttraining.com • 866.675.2125 • 11675 Rainwater Drive, Suite 325 • Alpharetta GA 30009