How to Become Agile in Business Analysis

Classroom	Sep 23 - 24, 2008	Yarmouth, Maine	$1195	Register

Check All Scheduled Business Analysis Training Classes
Print Course Description (pdf)

Agile software development has established itself as a viable option for delivering information technology that works. Some "Agilists" consider business analysis and requirements gathering to be unnecessary activities. Actually, real Agilists know that figuring out what the business community needs or wants and what the information technology group can deliver have been and still are critical steps in the system development process. It is not a question of whether business analysis and requirements gathering is needed – it is merely a question of how much, how thorough, when, and by whom these critical activities need to be done.

In this course, we present the concepts that make a project – or an organization – agile. We evaluate how this evolving approach impacts the still evolving discipline of business systems analysis. We take a detailed look at Scrum, XP (Extreme Programming), Agile Modeling, Lean Software Development (LSD), and other agile development concepts.

The goal of the class is to help you determine how to leverage the best of business analysis with the best agile development approaches to improve the quality of the delivered technology in useful increments with more contained costs. This course assumes that you have the skills necessary to do business analysis. On the first day, both business analysis managers and practioners should attend to assess the impact that Agile will have on their business analysis efforts. The second day targets specifically the business analysis practtioner with concrete ways of adapting your current business analysis skills to an Agile project, and introduces "User Stories", a very powerful requirements discovery technique from the agile approach.

Define “agile” approaches and how they change the software development paradigm
List the 6 major flavors of agile methods
Present the rationale, risks and rewards of agile development
Describe the daily Scrum meeting and how it can help your project
Defend the need for the business analyst role on agile projects
Discuss the pros and cons of the Agile Manifesto and why it is relevant
Use a checklist to test the viability of an agile approach on a project
Explain how business analysts have to change to become more agile
Present agile modeling concepts, principles and practices
List and rank business analysis techniques that make requirements determination agile
Define basic agile modeling rules
List models that business analysts can use on agile projects
Identify the 7 most significant challenges to organizations adopting agile methods
Apply a “Just in Time/Just in Case” (JIT/JIC) philosophy to analysis activities
Define the critical business analysis skills needed for agile team members
Discuss the impact that Agile has on current development methodologies
Capture and track user stories to document business requirements

ILT: 2 days
Virtual: Mods

Business Process Owners and Managers
Experienced Business/Systems Analysts
Experienced Requirements Engineers
Information Technology Managers
Anyone responsible for managing or practicing business analysis

NONE

Our instructors have extensive experience in applying these techniques on projects with business experts from a wide variety of fields.

View Course Outline (classroom delivery)