From the category archives:

Agile Business Analyst

Explore the role of the business analyst and product owner and software requirements in software development organizations employing agile practices.

Use cases: a personal history (and a bit of a love affair)

February 8, 2010 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

I recently discovered that even after 200 blog posts here, I’ve never written about a post about my beloved use cases! I guess I think that most of what there is to say has already been said. But we’ve each got our own story about how we discovered use cases, what we do with them, [...]

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Technical specifications and system documentation can take different forms

January 18, 2010 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

Do you demand that your documentation serve double duty as a technical specification and a system document? While in the past I’ve done exactly that, my recent forays into more agile practices forced me to split how I see the value in various pieces of documentation.
Adriana has already shared her views on how BAs help [...]

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The positive influence BAs have in the quality of documentation in agile projects

January 4, 2010 by Adriana Beal

As you read the title of this article, you may be thinking, “doesn’t agile methodologies emphasize verbal rather than written communication? is there any value in even talking about documentation in this type of project?”.
The answer is yes to both questions. Agile developers may require very little written documentation to do their work, but documenting [...]

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Grooming the product backlog: agile requirements management for improved sprint planning

November 9, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

When I first started working on an agile team, one of the habits I needed to develop was grooming  the product backlog. In an agile environment my week-to-week and day-to-day focus quickly became more integrated with what the development team was working on each sprint.  If I went  into a sprint planning session without a [...]

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Where does the agile business analyst fit? [video]

July 31, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

Wondering where business analysts fits in on an agile software development team? It turns out we’ve got to keep track of where our software team is headed at multiple levels.

Creative video shared by EBG Consulting. Check out their agile resource library.

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Defining the scope of an epic before listing user stories in an agile product backlog

April 22, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

Agile teams typically differentiate between “epics” and “user stories”. In most cases epics are just really large stories that sit far down on your product backlog until the team is ready to flesh them out into more detail.  The logical question is how to scope an epic and then break it up into user stories [...]

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“Agile but” and conflicts between expectations and investments in agile implementations

April 8, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

At the March SQuAD conference, presenters put forward some fairly stringent expectations for teams to meet before claiming they were truly “agile”.  While approximately 50% of the attendees claimed to have implemented agile practices within their organization, only a handful could say they were actually creating production-ready software every two weeks.  This got me thinking, [...]

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Thinking outside the project: implied responsibilities of an agile product owner

April 6, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

The agile/SCRUM product owner (PO) is one of the most multi-faceted roles in technology methodologies today.  Within a project, the PO is central in making the decisions and providing the details that keep the project team moving forward efficiently.  And, of course, we’re not just interested in moving forward efficiently, but moving forward toward a [...]

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Breaking down the agile product owner role (web resources)

March 9, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

After a few months of working on my first “agile” project, I’ve come to the realization that the core challenges lie in the multi-faceted product owner role.  In casual conversations with other business analysts (including Jake Calabrese, Ron Thompson, and Brad Swanson) and  I’ve begun conceptualizing some thoughts about the myth of the perfect product [...]

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Is your role displaced by agile? Think again.

February 16, 2009 by Laura (Brandau) Brandenburg

It seems that everywhere I turn, agile is the topic at hand.  It dominates online forums, webinar schedules, and one-on-one discussions. It took over last week’s SQuAD meeting intended to focus requirements management.  The agile trend and, in particular, how people talk about agile creates much confusion and at times downright fear.  People are thirsty [...]

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