Course Description
Traditional system-development methodologies are rapidly being replaced by more iterative or agile approaches. More organizations are realizing the benefits of faster product deployment at a lower cost, with less rework due to missed requirements. Effective business analysis is key to developing those requirements and keeping projects on track. This course explores the contributions of good requirements development in an Agile environment and equips business analysts with the critical thinking, analytical skills, and necessary people skills they need to add value to every Agile project.
In this course, you will learn the techniques for discovering, understanding, and describing product vision; understanding and depicting personas and user stories; identifying and describing additional requirements and acceptance criteria; modeling desired product features and functions; working collaboratively with other team members; and communicating expertly with colleagues, sponsors, and business customers. Lively lectures combined with insightful demonstrations and realistic practice exercises provide you with the competence and confidence you need to improve project outcomes through better requirements definition.
A variety of demonstrations, large-group activities, and small-group team exercises will refine and enhance your Agile business analysis skills. Working in small groups, you and your peers will identify, discuss, and practice the tools and techniques your organization should be using to better define and communicate requirements for your Agile project.
Highlights: - Importance of business analysis in Agile projects
- How analysis adds business value for an Agile project's sponsors and customers
- Key roles and responsibilities of Agile team members
- Ways business analysis aligns with the principles of the Agile Manifesto
- Role of the business analyst in an Agile project
- Similarities and differences between plan-driven ("traditional") and change-driven ("agile") approaches, and how business analysis supports both
- How to use early and continuous feedback to drive change in your projects
- Various flavors of Agile such as Scrum, XP, Kanban, and Lean
- Key concepts of Agile approaches such as backlogs, sprints, and stories
- How to write effective user stories and define acceptance criteria for them
- Techniques of story mapping, story decomposition and story elaboration
- Connection between user stories and use cases
- Concept of behavior-driven development
- Build an effective discovery and delivery framework to help your Agile project succeed
Audience: - Business customer, user, or partner
- Project sponsor or project owner
- Business analyst
- Business systems analyst
- Systems analyst
- Project manager
- Systems architect or designer
- Systems or application developer
- QA professional
- Systems tester
- Leader of systems, projects, or teams
- Anyone wanting to enhance their Agile business analysis skills
Agenda
Part 1: Getting Started
As we get started we will get to know each other and understand the objectives of the course. We will introduce the importance of Conversation in the Agile environment and how the Conversation can be managed for better communication and results. We will model the creation of Working Agreements that contribute to building trust on a team.
- Introductions
- Course Objectives
- Impact of other Domains on Agile Beginnings
- The Agile Conversation
- Working Agreements
Part 2: Agile Overview
YouÆve heard it all before: ôAgile means developing software without any documentation. Agile means developers decide on a productÆs features. Agile is the same thing as Scrum.ö Perhaps youÆve heard the most misleading concept of all: ôAgile means we donÆt do business analysis anymore.ö Nothing could be more false.
Learn what Agile really is, what the variations and hybrids of Agile are and how business analysis is critical to project success.
- Lean Beginnings
- Why Agile?
- Agile Manifesto & Principles
- Agile Practices
Part 3: Building an Agile Team
In Agile the Business Analyst has various possible roles from Voice of the Customer or Product Owner, member of the Customer side team or member of the Development side team. In this section we will explore how to create and effective Agile team with an Agile mindset and then see how the Business Analyst fits into this team framework and provides value.
- The Team as a System
- The Business Analyst
Part 4: Project Initiation
Agile follows an Adaptive, Just-in-Time planning model. In this section we will learn how Adaptive Planning can better meet the customerÆs needs and provide them more value with less resources by only elaborating requirements Just-in-Time.
- Five Levels of Planning
- Vision
- Themes & Roadmap
- User Roles and Personas
Part 5: Backlog Planning
The Agile vehicle of communicating requirements is the User Story. The Business Analyst is central in the process of writing and elaborating User Stories. This section will help the Business Analyst learn about User Stories and how to write and elaborate good User Stories.
- The Product Backlog
- Writing User Stories
- Guidelines for Good Stories
- Acceptance Criteria
Part 6: Managing the Backlog
After User Stories are written, they need to prioritized and estimated. As part of the Customer side team, the BA has a major role in prioritization. As a member of the Development side team, the BA will contribute in User Story estimation. Both of these come with low cost, low waste techniques that allow us to do this quickly and get on to the important work of implementing requirements.
- Prioritization
- Estimating
Part 7: Release Planning
The Business needs to know when they will receive product deliverables. In this section the Business Analyst will learn how milestones are set and how deliverables will be slated for a release with high confidence in meeting dates.
Part 8: Backlog Refinement
Backlog Refinement is where the Business Analyst if really worth her weight in gold. User Stories represent very thin statements of Customer wants and needs but they donÆt contain the details until the development team is close to working on them. As time to work on them approaches, the details need to be filled in and the Business Analyst is the central figure in requirements elaboration.
- Agile Documentation
- Requirements Elaboration
Part 9: The Iteration
When Requirements are ready to go û ready to go does not mean mountains of documentation. Much of the details are maintained as tacit knowledge with the Business Analyst and the others who have been involved with the Conversation. Continued collaboration is essential to turning what weÆve learned about the needs of the customer into working software. The Business Analyst is always there involved answering real-time questions from the team.
- Iteration Planning
- Iteration Execution
Part 10: Inspect and Adapt
Agile is an Empirical Process for developing complex software. Essential to and Empirical Process is feedback loops. Feedback loops can be both formal and more informal. In this section we will learn about the formal feedback loops that are built into the end-of-iteration timeframe for driving continuous improvement back into the process.
- The Iteration Review
- The Demo
- The Retrospective
Part 11: Agile Adoption
So you want to drive these concepts into your organization as you leave the class and go back to your work. This section will help you do that effectively.
Audience
- Business customer, user, or partner
- Project sponsor or project owner
- Business analyst
- Business systems analyst
- Systems analyst
- Project manager
- Systems architect or designer
- Systems or application developer
- QA professional
- Systems tester
- Leader of systems, projects, or teams
- Anyone wanting to enhance their Agile business analysis skills