Overview of Agile for Business Analysts

Overview of Agile & Scrum
For Business Analysts
Presenter: Sally Elatta

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About the Speaker

• Sally Elatta
• Founder of AgileTransformation.com
• Enterprise Process Improvement Coach, Architect, Trainer
• Coached over 18 teams on adopting Agile methods.
• Taught over 600+ students on Agile
• Certified ScrumMaster, Scrum Practitioner, IBM, Sun, and
Microsoft Certifications.
• Sally@AgileTransformation.com
• 402 212-3211

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Copyright(c) Sally Elatta 2009 www.AgileTransformation.com

Session Goals

• Quick overview of Traditional Development
• Provide an overview of Agile, Scrum
• Overview of the Agile Roles
• Focus on the BA Role
• Overview of the basic process
• Why it‟s being adopted
• Resources
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The Waterfall Process

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Waterfall Characteristics

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The Agile Values

The manifesto‟s shared value statement:
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals & interactions Over Processes & Tools

Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change Over Following a Plan

“That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items
on the left more.”

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Project Management Engineering Principles
Principles (TDD, Continuous Integration,
(Release Planning, Sprint and Refactoring ..etc)
Iteration Planning, Daily Scrum,
Sprint Demo and Retrospective ..etc) 8

Agile Characteristics
Product
Backlog

Test Driven Development Business / IT as One Team
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Agile/Scrum Roles
Committed:
– Scrum Master
– Product Owner
– The Team
Interested:
– Stakeholders
– Users

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Who is the Product Owner?

 1 Person in charge of the backlog!
 Prioritizes the backlog stories for highest ROI.
 Most likely from the business. Has the most Product
to loose/gain from project outcome. Backlog

 Accepts or rejects work completed.
 Knowledgeable, Empowered, Engaged
 Only one who can add or remove
stories from the backlog.
 The Captain of the Ship!
Owns final success or failure
of project.
 Can stop the project if no ROI is
being delivered.
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BA and Product Owner Collaboration

• Much of our project 'Waste' is a result of :
– Missing stories
– Mis-understood stories
– Team working on non-valuable stories
– Business changing their mind on what
they want in a story
• The BA‟s role is to address all these issues by
engaging the product owner early and often.

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The ScrumMaster

• Is the owner of the “Process”.
• Attacks impediments like a hawk!
• Makes sure the team is getting the
business collaboration needed for success.
• Helps build teamwork, motivation and
create self organizing teams.
• Prepares 'visual' reports that represents the
teams progress.
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The Team

• Small, cross-functional group of people that work
together daily. Size is 7 (+- 2)
• Team is made up of developers, analysts,
testers, business users, data and systems folks
..etc.
• Some members are dedicated (75%+) and
some are shared with other projects.
• Each member attends all the core meetings,
breaks down and estimates tasks.

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Business Users and SMEs

• Help Product Owner and Team by:
 Identify User Acceptance Test cases ahead of each
planning meeting.
 Answering team questions and being a business
SME.
 Help define priority and work that will provide most
value.
 Perform user acceptance testing and recommend
acceptance or rejection of work.
 Provide positive and constructive feedback to the
team.
 So how is different from their role today?

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Sample Team Structures

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The Business Analyst
• During the iteration, the BA works on making sure the
requirements and test cases are understood by
developers for all stories. (Not just documented well!)
• They chase down answers to questions, help
facilitate meetings and help make sure each
developer has what they need.
• They work ahead with the product owner to define
stories and test cases for the next iteration.
• The work closely with testers (IT or business) to track
testing progress.
• A strong BA is usually the ScrumMaster‟s right hand
person and their backup.

BA Role ..
• The BA is also in charge of making sure the
backlog and project workbook is updated.
• Make their artifacts and documentation easy to
read and find by people who need them.
• Makes sure the right SMEs are attending any
team sessions that need them.
• A strong BA is the „glue‟ that helps tie everything
together during the iteration.
• Results driven, focused, energetic, positive,
collaborative, strong facilitator, willing to do
„whatever it takes‟ to help the team succeed.
These are the qualities of a strong agile BA.
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The Agile Lifecycle – Big Picture

Release Planning

• What are the top priority items we need to
deliver in this release?
• How Big/Small is each one? What is the
dependency between them?
• How much can the team handle each
iteration? Pencil in the next several
iterations.
• What are our „Conditions of Satisfaction‟
for this release? When are we „Done‟?
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Release Planning

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Product
Sprint
Product Backlog
Backlog Tasks
Owner Each story is broken

Sprint 1
thinks of down into tasks. Each
New Idea team member signs up
Sprint 2
for tasks and provides
estimates of effort.
Sprint 3
Sprint 4

Each Iteration is 1 – 4
weeks in length.
Multiple iterations
Sprint N

make up a Release.

Features/Stories Small Stories 22

The Backlog Hierarchy

Business Domain
Theme/Feature/Epic Feature2

Story1 Story2 Story3

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Sample Backlog

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Agile Requirements
• Stories: Light weight description of a small
valuable business deliverable.
• Details of a story can be extracted using:
– Acceptance Test Cases
– Business Rules
– Business Process /Activity Diagrams
– User Interface Prototypes
• All documentation must be valuable and
actually consumed by someone!
• More on this in August!

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Release Planning Meetings

• Here are some common meetings during
Release Planning:
– Resource Planning Meeting ( who do we
need?)
– Story Identification, Breakdown and
Prioritization
– Story sizing and dependency.
– Building the Release Plan

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Iteration Pre-Planning
• The BA along with the product owner should
spend some time each iteration pre-planning
for the next iteration. This involves:
– Identifying the top priority stories the team needs
to work on next.
– Identifying and writing acceptance test cases for
each.
– Identifying any upfront design or testing work that
needs to be done.
– Developing any UI sketches or business activity
diagrams.
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Iteration Planning

• Half day or full day meeting to answer the
following:
• What are the top stories we need to get done this
iteration?
• Discuss how will we know when each story is „Done‟,
review and contribute to the acceptance test cases?
• What tasks do we need to get each story done?
• Who will signup, commit and provide an ETA for each
task?

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Sample Iteration Plan

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Story Points

• We simply use relative complexity buckets
to size each story.

20+

Smallest Small Medium Med-large Large Very Large EPIC!

How many stories a team gets ‘Done’ each
iteration is their Velocity
Copyright(c) Sally Elatta 2009
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www.AgileTransformation.com

BA Iteration Check List
 Help setup task board
 Get acceptance test cases to each
developer
 Update workbook & backlog
 Pre-Planning for next iteration
 Test data setup coordination
 Coordinate user testing
 Coordinate final demo and retrospective
 Glue everything together!
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Daily Tracking

• What did you do yesterday?
• What will you do today?
• Any Impediments?

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Iteration Review
• Product owner and team show off what the team got
done in the last iteration and discuss impediments.
• Get feedback from other users
and stakeholders and discuss
plan for next iteration.

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Iteration Retrospective

What Worked What Needs
Well? Improvement?
• Impediments were • Prioritize stories
removed quickly before team meeting
• Team collaborated well • Identify acceptance
to solve problems. tests before meeting
• Business users • Begin using TDD
attended standups

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New BA Skills Needed

• Facilitation and Controlling Meetings.
• Flexibility, being a Generalizing Specialist.
• Requirements Gathering Skills are different.
• Working on a cross functional team.
• Measurement of Success is based on team
delivery of actual points not documentation
signoffs.
• What else?

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New Skills Are Needed!

• Business:
 Leadership, Teamwork and Collaboration
 Ability to define stories and user test cases
 Ability to perform acceptance testing
 Ability to truly prioritize what is needed now and
what provides value.
 Better understanding of the technical world
 Time management and commitment.
 Support and stay positive
 Understand ROI and when we‟re „Done‟
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New Skills Are Needed!

• IT:
 Facilitation, Leadership, Teamwork and Collaboration.
 Ability to breakdown stories into small manageable
tasks.
 Ability to focus on getting stories completed
 Ability to work and collaborate within the IT department
(cross functional).
 Communication, synchronization between multiple
teams.
 Focus more on business value (ROI) than technical
implementation.

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So Why is Agile Being Adopted?

 Seeing working software each demo.
 High visibility into project progress.
 Early and continuous customer feedback results in
delivery of software they want and will use.
 Product Owner is empowered to make decisions.
 Customer can get what has been completed on the
release date if they choose.
 Agile change management is more welcoming to
change than traditional change management.
 Highest Priority Items delivered first.

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How Agile Can Fail!

No top level management commitment and support
No customer commitment to collaboration
Inexperienced Scrum Masters leading the effort
Reverting to form due to no agile evangelist
Ineffective or no release planning
Skipping Iteration 0
Ineffective use of retrospectives (or no
retrospectives)
A culture not open to change
Not comfortable dealing with what Agile exposes
A culture of command and control

How We Can Help
Training Coaching & Consulting
• Executive and Business • Troubled Project
Overview of Agile/Lean Assessment &
• Real World Agile and Recovery
Scrum team training + • Agile Project Initiation
Project Jump Start and Planning
• Effective Facilitation & • End to End Project
Requirements Gathering Execution
• Servant Leadership • Organizational
• SOA Assessments
• … More! • Process Improvement
Roadmap Execution

Resources
• My Article: http://tinyurl.com/6h5mam
• Watch the 10 minute video intro to
Scrum: http://tinyurl.com/5py7ct
• www.AgileAlliance.org
• Questions? Sally@AgileTransformation.com

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Overview of Agile for Business Analysts

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