Essential Agile for Business Analysts

This 3 day course will provide Business Analysts and others who need to undertake analysis and determine project requirements, with the understanding and tools required to work on an Agile team.

This course will provide Business Analysts with an understanding of what Agile software development is, how Agile development differs from traditional software development (and how it does not), the common terms and practices used in Agile, a clear understanding of the Business Analyst's role on Agile teams and the tools available to them.

• What Agile software development is and how it differs from traditional software development.
• The main Agile methods: Scrum and XP, plus the relationship of Agile to Lean.
• How Agile software projects and teams are organised and the roles on these teams.
• Why the role of the Business Analysis in Agile is both essential too, and frequently overlooked on Agile teams.
• Tools Business Analysis can use on Agile teams to accelerate delivery, increase business value and ensure teams do the right thing

Agile & Scrum Overview
• What is Agile software development?• Review of Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) methods
• The relationship between Agile, Scrum and other methods
• Benefits of Agile and Scrum
• Empirical processes control
• Agile Manifesto: values and principles
• Self-organizing teams

Sprints and Iterations
• Sprint/Iteration Cycle• Planning
• Sprint Backlog
• Commitment
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Reviews
• Retrospectives
• Demonstrations
• Release
• Velocity
• Sprint Goal
• Abnormal Termination

Technical Practices
• Test Driven Development (TDD) • Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
• Refactoring
• Continuous integration
• Simplicity
• Code Reviews and Pair Programming
• Work breakdown
• Estimation with Planning Poker

Management Practices
• Impediment removal• Vertical teams
• Quality
• Risk management
• Burn-down, burn-up and cumulative flow charts
• Visibility
• Definition of Done
• Kaizen continuous improvement

Requirements
• Product Owner role• Customer involvement
• User Stories: Epics, Features and Tasks
• Story breakdown and estimation
• Product Backlog
• Prioritization
• Roadmaps and Release plans

Roles
• Scrum Master• Product Owner, Customer and Business Analyst
• Team
• Developers and Testers
• Stakeholders

How Agile Affects Business Analysis
• Short iterations and just-in-time analysis• TDD and model driven analysis
• Communication over documentation
• Up-front QA with BA
• Business value over requirements or features

Tools for Agile Business Analysis
• User Stories and INVEST• User stories as placeholders
• Prioritisation: MOSCOW rules and Absolute prioritisation
• Managing backlogs
• Assigning business value
• Real options based investment

Other items
• The role of documentation
• Overview of Kanban software development method
• Importance of quality
• ScrumBut and The Nokia Test
• The Learning Organization