Sept 10, 2013

The Agile
Business
Analyst
 Maureen McVey, CBAP
• Head of Learning & Development, IIBA

16+ BA Experience

I.T. industry for over 25 years.

20+ Experience in learning and development

Founding member of IIBA

Industry experience: banking, finance, insurance,
government, policing and manufacturing

Accountable to business analysts in the areas of
competency and career development

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Vision and Mission

The world's leading association for

Business Analysis professionals

Develop and maintain standards for

the practice of business analysis and
for the certification of its
practitioners
IIBA® is an international not-for-
profit professional association for
business analysts.
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 New Member Benefit!

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Today’s Session
• 5 minutes Introduction
• 40-45 minutes presentation
• 15-20 minutes questions

• What are the key differences in

these different styles of Agile?
• Why are blended roles so
important in an Agile project?
• How are the Knowledge Areas
applied in an Agile project
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© International Ins titute o f B u s i n e s s An a l ys i s
 Margaret Dessypris Thomas, PMP, CSP, CBAP
• Margaret Dessypris Thomas is a Manager with
CapTech Consulting in Richmond, VA. She has
over 12 years of experience in the health care
IT industry, working with an array of
technologies in web development, service oriented
architectures, and business intelligence. Her business
focus includes process improvement, operations
management, and organizational change management.
In these IT and business projects she has served as lead
business analyst, project manager, and scrum master.
Margaret earned a B.S. in Information Technology from
Virginia Tech and an M.S. in Information Systems from
VCU. She holds PMP, CSP, and CBAP certifications.
Q&A: How to Participate
Use the question box
•

to share your questions.

Margaret Dessypris Thomas Maureen McVey

The slides will be available in 5 business days

www.iiba.org > Professional Development>Webinars
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© International Ins titute o f B u s i n e s s An a l ys i s
The Agile Analyst

September 10 2013
IT Management
Consulting
Systems Integration
Data Management
 The Agile Analyst
• Variety in Agile implementations
• Three distinct approaches to the
BA role
• When in the agile process do
the BA practices take place?

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Agile/Scrum Variety
in Projects
KanBan

KanBan
Work Teams

Scrum-But Scrum

Waterfall /
Iterative Pure Agile
Iterative
BRUF
Practical
Agile

Iterative

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Scrum - Who are the
analysts?

www.realmdigital.co.za
©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved. 11
 Scrum - Who are the
analysts?

www.realmdigital.co.za
©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved. 12
 Scrum Approach Using
KanBan

http://cdn.tutsplus.com/net.tutsplus.com/authors/jeremymcpeak/scru
m-to-lean-kanban-board-typical.png

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Analysis Teams in KanBan

Project or Program Team

Development
Analysis Team 1
Team A
Development Testing
Team 2 Team
Analysis
Team B Development
Team 3

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Three views on the BA role
Analyst Team
BA = PO Analyst Team Member
• Product Owner • KanBan • BA serves as a
is responsible approach for proxy to a
for the activities crafting the partially-
associated with stories available
the BA role • Hand-off of Product Owner
• Team of stories to a • Will also
developers will development perform QA role
perform the team and solution
planning and verification and
any lightweight validation
documentation

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Good Stories &
Decomposition
Project

Epic
Epic

Epic
Repeat
Group A Group B
First

A.1 A.2 B.1 B.2 B.3 Second

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Continual Activities

Project Product
Initiation Vision

http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/product-backlog/grooming-the-product-
backlog/
©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
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 Where does analysis take
place?

www.realmdigital.co.za
©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved. 18
 Where does analysis take
place?

www.realmdigital.co.za
©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved. 19
 Management &
Communication
• Minimum Viable Product, Communication of
Scope Release and Sprint Commitments

• Stories can be reused for functionality

Reusability based on the decomposition

• Continual and ongoing from PO to BA/Team,

Communication during planning and daily stand ups

• Epics, Themes, Trains, - > Acceptance

Traceability Conditions and Test Criteria

• Lightweight, Still can be within a repository

Documentation and other agile/scrum tools (V1, Rally, etc.)

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Modeling Requirements

www.agilemodeling.com

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Someone has to perform BA
tasks

IIBA – BABOK 2.0

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
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 The Agile Analyst

Teams are most successful when the PO has

some understanding of a traditional BA role

PO needs the support of analysts within a
team

Analysis should be a shared role in specific
team members

Analysis activities all happen the same way
in a waterfall type of project, but in smaller
slices, with a higher frequency of iteration.

©2012 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 Contact Information
•

Margaret Dessyprise Thomas

•mthomas@captechconsulting.com
•@greekdaisy
•Blogs.captechconsulting.com

Maureen.mcvey@IIBA.org
@mcvey_mcvey
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profession, events, product launches, articles
and more.
•

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about the BABOK® Guide.
•

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