Agile Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring
Today I am discussing the tasks from the BABOK associated with Business Analysis and Planning. These are the tasks to determine which business analysis activities are necessary to support an effort. There are six tasks associated with Business Analysis and Planning. I show the BABOK® purpose. Then I discuss the impact on who and how in projects leveraging progressive elaboration, incremental delivery, close customer engagement, ongoing learning, and self organization.
Plan Business Analysis Approach
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| Describes how to select an approach to performing business analysis, which stakeholders need to be involved in the decision, who will be consulted regarding and informed of the approach, and the rationale for using it. | The Business Analysis approach is agreed upon by team at the start of the project. The approach will support progressive elaboration of requirements and feedback from the customer. It will also support evolution of the business analysis approach throughout the project via learning that occurs through retrospectives. |
Conduct Stakeholder Analysis
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| Covers the identification of stakeholders who may be affected by a proposed initiative or who share a common business need, identifying appropriate stakeholders for the project or project phase, and determining stakeholder influence and/or authority regarding the approval of project deliverables. | This will be performed by the Product Owner, Project Management, or Business Analyst. Additional understanding of the Stakeholders will be needed for Agile projects. What is the impact of the Agile cadence on the stakeholder? How does progressive elaboration impact the expectations of the stakeholder? Can the stakeholder participate in updating the processes, interactions, and products specifications during the course of the project? |
Plan Business Analysis Activities
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| Determine the activities that must be performed and the deliverables that must be produced, estimate the effort required to perform that work, and identify the management tools required to measure the progress of those activities and deliverables. | This will be performed and agreed upon by the team. The business analysis activities will be consistent with the business analysis approach. There is less of a focus on formal documentation (although it still exists at a situation appropriate level) and more focus on progressive elaboration of documentation throughout the life of the project. Also, much of the elaboration is replaced by interactions and ceremony so these outcomes need to be accomplished with activities addressed in the communication plan. |
Plan Business Analysis Communication
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| Describes the proposed structure and schedule for communications regarding business analysis activities. Record and organize the activities to provide a basis for setting expectations for business analysis work, meetings, walkthroughs, and other communications. | This will be performed and agreed upon by the team. In Agile projects, some deliverables – or elaboration of these deliverables – are replaced by specific interactions or ceremonies. By definition, these interactions and ceremonies require real-time participation by the Business Analysis. The Business Analysis Communication activities need to address these interactions and the team needs to have a shared understanding of the purpose of these interactions and ceremonies |
Plan Requirements Management Process
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| Define the process that will be used to approve requirements for implementation and manage changes to the solution or requirements scope. | This will be defined by the team and performed by the Product Owner or Business Analyst. The term “Requirements Management” raises the hackles of Agile practioners. It implies a change is an exception rather than anticipated outcome of learning. Producing documentation that is going to change before it is used and any efforts to “Control Change” are therefore considered a wasteful effort. A Requirements Management Process must support approval and changes in a way that facilitates delivery of value – rather than tracking for the sake of tracking. |
Manage Business Analysis Performance
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BABOK Purpose |
Agile Impact |
| To manage the performance of business analysis activities to ensure that they are executed as effectively as possible | This will be performed by the Product Owner or the Business Analyst’s manager. This should be measured based on performance of the project rather than adherence to process. The Business Analyst is making sure just enough of the right features are being developed. The right features are those that burn down risks early and drive deliverable business value as early as possible. The business analyst also has to find the balance between formal requirements documentation and clear communication of need. Effective Business Analysis Performance will result in limited rework of the requirements documentation, effective prioritization and scoping of requirements, and clear communication of need to the development team. |
Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Summary
All of the tasks in Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring are important on Agile projects. They won’t be dictated from existing policy, they will be decided on as a team. The activities will support the Agile approach. The primary distinctions in this Knowledge area are planning for continuous engagement with the customer and the progressive elaboration of requirements. In an enterprise that has governance requirements, the team will have to negotiate how they will deliver communications to the governance team that is sufficient to support the needs of the business.
Tags: Agile, Big Agile, Business Analysis
