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We Get it. We’ll Help You Get it Too.
any documentation, they do not prohibit
any either. Rather it is the appropriate
amount of documentation. When teams
are deciding what to document in an
agile project, business analysts may
suggest they ask the following questions:
• Isthissomethingastakeholderis
requesting?
• Isthissomethingtheteamneedsin
order to eectively do its job?
Because the business analyst is not
so focused on trying to document all
requirements, rules, etc. for a separate
development team, they can focus more
timeonactualanalysis–didweconsider
all the scenarios that may occur? Are we
keepingoursolutionconsistent?Dowe
know what unintended consequences we
may be creating with this change?
A nal aspect of agile that represents
a departure from traditional approaches
is the focus on teamwork over rigid
specialization. e most noticeable result
to business analysts is that everyone
on the team is encouraged to talk with
stakeholders directly to understand their
needs. Business analysts may initially
consider this a threat until they realize
that they have an opportunity to coach
their teammates how to be the most
eective performing this activity, and they
get to expand their toolkit by helping the
other team members with their tasks.
Agile teams don’t always start out
being completely collaborative. Teams
will often initially fall in the trap of
having developers only do development,
testers only doing testing, and of course,
analysts only doing analysis. Business
Analysts help move the team toward a
more collaborative nature by adopting the
two roles that position them to be a truly
value added member of the team:
• BusinessAdvisor(supportingthe
Product Owner)
• BusinessCoach(Actingastheanalysis
expert on the team)
e nature of the change in the
business analysts’ work is focused
exclusively on how they interact with
their team members, product owner, and
stakeholders. ey are no longer solely
responsible for requirements so they
will have a lot more interaction helping
their team members improve their
analysis skill sets and focusing on more
strategic focused activities through their
interaction with the product owner.
The Business Analyst as
Business Advisor
Most agile approaches have a specic
role to represent the ultimate business
decision maker, such as the role titled
product owner. e product owner sets
the product vision and is responsible for
understanding and representing the needs
of the business and user stakeholders.
e product owner determines which
requirements are most important prior to
the start of each iteration and determines
how to release value incrementally to
best satisfy the needs of the product
stakeholders.
A business analyst does not always
have the decision making authority
necessary to be an eective product
owner, but they can become indispensible
by supplementing a product owner’s lack
of time or business analysis skill sets.
A business analyst supports a product
owner by helping them analyze the
business domain, stocking the product
backlog, and grooming the product
backlog.
Analyze the Business Domain
e business analyst helps the team and
product owner understand and describe
the business domain and problem to be
solved by facilitating the discussions that
explore the following questions:
• Whatbusinessprocessesneedtobe
revised, created, or eliminated?
• Whatinformationdowewanttoknow
about and track about various entities?
• Whatstakeholders(suchascustomers,
suppliers, vendors) and systems are
involved in the eort?
• Whatpoliciesandrulesguidebusiness
behavior and decisions?
While it is important to establish a
shared understanding of the business
domain, this can’t take a great deal of
time, especially because the models
change as the project progresses and the
team learns more as they proceed through
the project. To keep this analysis focused,
business analysts time box their analysis
investigation, prioritize the topics being
analyzed, and stay on task with any team
discussions.
e business analyst helps the team
decide if the requirement models are
useful beyond the life of the project.
Factors to include in this decision are
the eort required to keep the model up
to date and the value of the model after
the project. If the model is only needed
for a brief discussion to gure something
out, a sketch on a whiteboard persisted
in the form of a digital picture may be
sucient. If the diagram is necessary
throughout the project or is expected to
live on past the end of the project, the
team may wish to establish the model in
using a modeling tool. is decision is
an aspect of generating the appropriate
amount of documentation.
Stock the Product Backlog
Stocking the product backlog means
to establish a list of user stories that
represent the overall scope of the
project. A user story briey describes
functionality or a feature valuable to
either a user or customer of a system or
software solution. In the remainder of
this paper, user stories, and their bigger