In this presentation, you will know about the role and responsibilities of an Agile Business Analyst? What is the context and need for an Agile business Analyst

1. Business Analysis for AGILE
Projects
Presenter : Amit Tayal

2. AGENDA
 Overview of Agile
 Traditional Vs Agile approach
 Why Agile?
 Agile Philosophy
 What makes agile AGILE?
 Agile Methodology
 Why Business Analyst in Agile?
 Activities BA do in Agile teams
 Different team org for BA
 Challenges
 Case Study
 Questions ?

3. “
”
The business analyst is who understands
business problems and opportunities in
the context of the requirements and
recommends solutions that enable the
organization to achieve its goals.
- IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis)
Who is a Business Analyst?

4. What do business analyst do?
 Elicit and analyse the requirements from the customer
 Develop a communicable artefact to facilitate development of
solution with respect to the requirements
 Validate the requirements

5. TRADITIONAL Vs AGILE APPROACH
We
are
not
building
cars

6. TRADITIONAL Vs AGILE APPROACH
 Traditional Approach
 Agile Approach
Analysis Design Code Test Deploy
Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint Sprint
Each sprint is a time boxed mini waterfall

7. AGILE PHILOSOPHY
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Responding to change over following a plan

8. WHAT MAKES AGILE AGILE?
 Focus on what is important.
 Welcome the changes because you certainly don’t want to continue working on
something that is obsolete or unnecessary. However, change has an impact and
you have to give up something.
 4 factors of AGILE : Time, Money, Scope, Quality. Only one of these can be fixed.

11. AGILE METHODOLOGY
Build Product
Increment
Sprint Demo
Sprint RetroPBL Update
Sprint Planning
Daily Sync Up
• Project
Planning
• Initial PBL
• Initial Release
Plan
• Stakeholders
buy in
• Assemble
Team
• Potentially
Shippable
Product
Increment

12. WHY BUSINESS ANALYST in AGILE?
 Developers can't elicit requirements
 Stakeholders can't model and document their own
 You need analysis experts

13. ACTIVITIES BA do in AGILE TEAMS
 Scope the system
 Translate business needs
 Translate technical issues
 Model and document
 Act as a communication broker
 Test and validation
 Represent stakeholders

14. DIFFERENT TEAM ORG FOR BA
 One room - Developers and Stakeholders are Co-Located
 Over the wall - Single Location But Not Co-Located
 Across the network - Dispersed/Distributed Development

15. CHALLENGES for a BUSINESS ANALYST
 Scope trading
 Analysis Churn
 Offshore model
 Transition from traditional development
 Domain Knowledge
 Stakeholder and Communication management

16. CASE STUDY

17. ABC SOFTWARE
ABC software is a well-known software development company and following waterfall
method throughout their development since long. It’s a matrix organization for resource
setup and has laid out all the process well defined.
Customers have complained in past about the project communication, CR, testing process
and late deliverables of the company but ABC maintained to retain their customers because
of their market repo and price negotiation.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
A new software development company, XYG came to the market. XYG is promising ¼ TTM for
customer product. XYG is claiming no cost for any change request.
ABC is not having any clue how XYG is sustaining with these promises but its evident from the
market that lot of customers are moving to XYG for their new projects. How ABC can retain
it’s customers and market repo intact? What ABC should change at their end to match with
the market offerings and customer expectations?

18. AGILE ADAPTATION AS A SOLUTION
 ABC hired Andy as an Agile coach/consultant.
 Andy has done the gap analysis of the current process of ABC and figured out the
impediments for implementing Agile in the company.
 Andy prepared a list of suggestions and convinced the management for trying out
to follow agile for one of ABC new client project.
 ABC promised benefits to the client similar to the XYG software, with few T&C Andy
has suggested.
 Andy trained the resources for Agile and set up an Agile team for that particular
project.

19. AGILE JOURNEY of ABC
 High level of user input and collaboration
• Users – extensive stakeholder engagements at the start, monthly follow-up focus groups,
demos, etc.
• Customer/sponsor – weekly meetings plus participation in sprint planning meeting
• Business analysts – the internal “voice of the users” with deep domain knowledge
 Experienced cross functional development team physically in the same room.
 Bring users and developers together on specialized issues where features and
implementations are closely intertwined.
 Test driven development.
 Continuous integration with automated build and testing.
 Maintain PBL, SBL online with access given to the client. Daily update of the tasks at
online tool. [Radiator: Burn down chart]
 Final UAT done by business analyst and client before/after release.

20. RESULT
 After initial hiccups while adapting Agile, team successfully stabilize the sprint
velocity from 3rd iteration.
 Self-organizing team structure gave more job satisfaction to the resources.
 ABC was able to fulfill all the promises of early TTM and welcoming the changes
from the client, mid project without further price increase.
 ABC retain their client and implemented Agile, organization wide.

21. CHALLENGES
 Initial Agile transition – workspace arrangement, team mindset
 Team formation cycle time (forming-storming-norming-performing) – stabilize the
sprint velocity
 Long meetings to daily 15 mins catch up
 Top to bottom approach – Convincing the management
 Etc…

22. Questions?

23. Thank You