Situational Leadership Role of Business Analyst in Agile teams
Traditionally
Role of Business Analyst or Requirements Engineering has been defined in the context of a project using the waterfall model of software development cycle (SDLC), where the analyst collects all the requirements and business rules in the beginning, before starting to develop. However, the accelerated demand for solutions has changed the dynamics of the development of a more agile approach, where the requirements and business rules are defined at the same time developing software in iterative cycles. Thursday, August 12, 2010
Digital Comics Folder
This raises the question "Is there a need the Business Analyst role on a team of agile software development? "
If the reader of those who think that the role of Business Analyst is not necessary in the agile approach, I wonder whether it has assessed what it looks convincingly expanded the role of the developer to incorporate the activities necessary to interact directly with the customer.
I think that regardless of the software development cycle chosen, the role of functional analyst is required. In the case of the agile approach, can be risky for the project Business Analyst functions be absorbed by development team members .
For purposes of this article, we will take Scrum method of agile software development.
The Role of Business Analyst as Facilitator
will differentiate the role of Product Owner (Product Owner) in Scrum, which is to ensure that it meets the needs of business, the Business Analyst role is to translate the vision of the Product Owner List of Requirements (Backlog) that will serve as input to the development team.
In some projects, both roles can be represented by the same person.
Functional Analyst works as a liaison between project stakeholders (stakeholders) and the development team. It uses different techniques and skills (brainstorming, voting on features, cost-benefit analysis, to generate active, keep the work in focus, etc.) To assist project leaders in achieving the objectives proposed.
In development projects using agile cycle, contributes Functional Analyst two main activities: ensure compliance with the Vision and Scope, and moderate the Planning and Review meetings for each iteration.
Every project begins with a definition of the Vision and Scope of the solution to be developed to meet a business need. In the agile approach, vision and scope are defined in a series of meetings, each representing a portion of the vision and scope at the time, which is determined by stakeholders.
The challenge for the project sponsor is to ensure that the vision and scope of the project are the result of a collaborative effort among all stakeholders in the project, hence the need Functional Analyst's role as facilitator . The Business Analyst should use techniques that facilitate all project stakeholders collaborate and reach consensus on a prioritized set of high-level functionality to be developed. must ensure that these functions are justified and have correspondence with business needs. All features are subject to the approval of the project sponsor.
Planning Meetings, Synchronization and retrospective
After identified the feature set of high-level meetings begin with the development team consensus on which of them will be developed in the first iteration. Once selected a finite set of functions and were assigned a delivery date (time-box), daily synchronization meetings are held to review the progress and remove obstacles. Finally, the prototype is validated and implemented, by then the meeting back to back and start a new meeting planning functions to include in the next iteration.
At these meetings, there is the same challenge, to ensure that the software developed is the product of collaborative efforts and consensus of the participants. Again the need arose for Functional Analyst's role as facilitator .
These meetings involving business and technical details vital to the effects of the solution to be developed:
- Functional requirements associated Business Rules User Interface
- technical implementation methods
In synchronization meetings, the Business Analyst role is different from that in the planning. In planning meetings, the Business Analyst and implemented an agenda defined in the synchronization's role is to assist those interested in the project and the development team to determine system requirements, in order to build prototypes that comprise the system incrementally to develop.
The Role of Business Analyst facilitates the above by utilizing tools Modeling Business to identify and analyze user requirements, system requirements and business rules:
- Activity Diagrams - manual processes
- Cases use - functional requirements
- Entity-Relationship Diagrams Diagrams Transitional
- states
- class diagrams - object-oriented implementations
The thoroughness with which the
Functional Analyst must model the business is determined by the needs of the development team. Instead of performing a thorough and detailed documentation requirements such as the waterfall model (waterfall SDLC), the analyst generates documentation "necessary and sufficient " that allow the computer to encode the prototype development. Conclusion While
are defining, prioritizing, analyzing and / or developing the functionality, the Business Analyst will ensure that project stakeholders approve the final solution. The Role of Business Analyst could be carried out by a member of the development team, however, consider the risk involved to a less trained and less experienced in Functional Analysis is responsible for building consensus among the participants. The level of productivity and consensus will be directly related to the effective use of functional analysis tools.
addition, there is a risk that the project stakeholders and developers focus on technical aspects of the prototype rather than the requirements.
is prudent to avoid these risks, and effects of "ensure" the success of the team, the best practice is that the role of Business Analyst be formalized in a person assist the software development team agile.
Source: This article is a summary and translation of the article Mark A. Monteleone www.batimes.com
Friday, August 6, 2010
Virus Life Span In Open Air
The new trend in business is currently marked by the Work Life Balance. Attending
lately a series of seminars, there was a concept that was raised in all cases and I were very impressed: WOLKE LIFE BALANCE. The new trend in business is currently marked by the Work Life Balance.
"This is a practice seeking to balance work and family life for a healthier working environment and efficient ".
Work Life Balance The expression dates from late 1970 to describe the balance between an individual's work and personal life. Then, in the U.S. (1986) began to be on the table. The different social and cultural situations, coupled with technological advances of the last 30 years have become the fastest work environments, intense, competitive, stressful, unstable, etc. It was predicted that technology would eliminate most household chores and work and, thus, allow people more time for leisure activities, but this option, encouraged by consumer culture and a policy that has raised the work ethic to unprecedented demand limits to the detriment of value to the family and affections are causing problems that are only now being identified and share a common stress.
The approach of different policies based on the emotional responsibility that a company takes for its employees support this new approach to improve and optimize their performance by doing the same with their employees. It is considered essential to place the work activities and the personal at the same level, trying to find a balance. Different
Studies indicate that poor performance of employees in a company is going primarily by factors such as stress and lack of flexibility in their time, resulting in negative consequences that are reflected in company results. This is intended to make a difference which was only exposed in terms of operational activity of a resource, identifying that the resource is a human being and that, therefore, your mood affects their performance (the problems do not lie outside work).
companies have (and need) now have the option of giving the employee more freedom, more attention to their personal needs and give higher priority to family requirements. Many People have a huge responsibility to work and at the same time, raise a family.
Search and achieving a balance to adopt the Work Life Balance aims to link the different areas (work and family) through the integration activities, programs to improve the quality of life and eliminate the boundary between one activity and another. Similarly, create a family atmosphere within the job.
course, these policies are those in the first instance, employers and workers finally.
A study by the IAE Business School - Universidad Austral, through a survey of 118 companies from countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, found that only six companies, which include Coca-Cola and Unilever, had a good score on the attention of the personal needs of their workers. Thus, we concluded that 78% of respondents are barely on track to be a family-friendly company. Particularly
think it's an interesting concept to explore, develop and implement as far as possible and especially in small companies where it is forming the culture of the same.
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Sunday, August 1, 2010
Cruising Men Etiquette
Work Life Balance Project Diaspora genius "or little girl?
Diaspora Project proposes the creation of a Social Network and Open Source distributed but in this case, the information the users themselves would stay (each hostearía or outsource the hosting and manage its own information) in an attempt to maintain control over your own information ...
Shortly after writing my note ' you have in Google's (or the price of ambition) ', which proposed to build a distributed social network delivering content, reduced to a minimum (the data) and therefore meaningless in various enterprises SMEs thus avoiding having to fall into unhappy partnerships like Google with Microsoft's NSA or the CIA, a friend (William Gette) I said that a group of American students was facing a similar project called Diaspora.
Diaspora Project proposes the creation of a Social Network and Open Source distributed but in this case, the information the users themselves would stay (each hostearía or outsource the hosting and manage its own information) in an attempt to maintain control over your own information ...
Shortly after writing my note ' you have in Google's (or the price of ambition) ', which proposed to build a distributed social network delivering content, reduced to a minimum (the data) and therefore meaningless in various enterprises SMEs thus avoiding having to fall into unhappy partnerships like Google with Microsoft's NSA or the CIA, a friend (William Gette) I said that a group of American students was facing a similar project called Diaspora.
The Diaspora Project proposes the creation of a Social Network and Open Source distributed but in this case, the information the users themselves would stay (each hostearía or outsource the hosting and manage its own information) an attempt to maintain control over proprietary information, the network would use a standard protocol, free for encryption of information transferred and would be allowed, its users, recover your data already housed in other Social Networks (Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, etc) and migrate to Diaspora without much effort. Media prevailing
given enough handle the project, I believe, motivated more by hitting Facebook that share the project idea (I already said in my previous note where the anger comes with Facebook ) and but hoped to raise $ 10,000 to begin the project, have collected just over $ 200,000 selling certain bonds ranging from 5 USD to almost $ 2,000 to about 6,500 users who saw the site and were interested in the project and get some benefits in return your vote of confidence.
Analyzing the available information on the project (they will not believe it is a lot) share 100% the idea of \u200b\u200bdeveloping open source Distributed Social Network, but otherwise, in the present context, I think the project has many weaknesses that lead to failure in the short or medium term (do not come to claim me if it is a success 5 years from now or evolve the idea of \u200b\u200bthe project).
The time we have been working in IT projects will know that giving cycles: the first computer networks consisting of a server or mainframe gross containing information and several dumb terminals that had access to it, then came the personal computer and information began to distribute, finally simplify mobile technology for generation of information (photos, videos, sound files, etc.), and people going by staying out of disk space is returned to the current scheme, very similar to that of mainframes and dumb terminals ( Social Network would act as the server, and we agree that netbooks are pretty much a dumb terminal). Thus, entering the next cycle, the idea of \u200b\u200bDiaspora would be very good but in the current cycle, there seems to be, although storage costs have dropped to become almost negligible compared to the costs of transfer are precisely transfer costs which remain high and if the idea is to share information, it would need to spend a ticket transfer rate.
The proposal of these students would be the end users as customers and act as a server at a time or to outsource the hosting (now very expensive for an end user, unless the providers start offering services to end users at a price appropriate to use the service), the idea that the end-user machines are the servants of this social network seems a little childish, an end user does not implement security best practices commonly used by companies (regular backups , hardware firewall, the Using a UPS to ensure the continuity of electric service or something as basic as not to install the messenger on a server), it tends to leave your machine running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Imagine watching a movie that a friend went to the net and cut 10 minutes before completion because our friend went to bed or you went off, or you have a connection of 5 Mb and our friend a 512 Kb or that both have a 5 MB connection but our friend came up with the complete saga download Lost ...
conclusion, I welcome the start to find alternatives to Corporate Social Networks and I agree that the way is the distribution of both information providers and, after butchering to remove their meaning making isolated facts, consider that suppliers should continue to companies, both SMEs forming cooperatives or the same corporations but regulated and limited by the state but not as a member of the Corporation (dividing the spoils) but as a regulator to create a legal framework for protecting the user and information.
thank images morgueFile given enough handle the project, I believe, motivated more by hitting Facebook that share the project idea (I already said in my previous note where the anger comes with Facebook ) and but hoped to raise $ 10,000 to begin the project, have collected just over $ 200,000 selling certain bonds ranging from 5 USD to almost $ 2,000 to about 6,500 users who saw the site and were interested in the project and get some benefits in return your vote of confidence.
Analyzing the available information on the project (they will not believe it is a lot) share 100% the idea of \u200b\u200bdeveloping open source Distributed Social Network, but otherwise, in the present context, I think the project has many weaknesses that lead to failure in the short or medium term (do not come to claim me if it is a success 5 years from now or evolve the idea of \u200b\u200bthe project).
The time we have been working in IT projects will know that giving cycles: the first computer networks consisting of a server or mainframe gross containing information and several dumb terminals that had access to it, then came the personal computer and information began to distribute, finally simplify mobile technology for generation of information (photos, videos, sound files, etc.), and people going by staying out of disk space is returned to the current scheme, very similar to that of mainframes and dumb terminals ( Social Network would act as the server, and we agree that netbooks are pretty much a dumb terminal). Thus, entering the next cycle, the idea of \u200b\u200bDiaspora would be very good but in the current cycle, there seems to be, although storage costs have dropped to become almost negligible compared to the costs of transfer are precisely transfer costs which remain high and if the idea is to share information, it would need to spend a ticket transfer rate.
The proposal of these students would be the end users as customers and act as a server at a time or to outsource the hosting (now very expensive for an end user, unless the providers start offering services to end users at a price appropriate to use the service), the idea that the end-user machines are the servants of this social network seems a little childish, an end user does not implement security best practices commonly used by companies (regular backups , hardware firewall, the Using a UPS to ensure the continuity of electric service or something as basic as not to install the messenger on a server), it tends to leave your machine running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Imagine watching a movie that a friend went to the net and cut 10 minutes before completion because our friend went to bed or you went off, or you have a connection of 5 Mb and our friend a 512 Kb or that both have a 5 MB connection but our friend came up with the complete saga download Lost ... conclusion, I welcome the start to find alternatives to Corporate Social Networks and I agree that the way is the distribution of both information providers and, after butchering to remove their meaning making isolated facts, consider that suppliers should continue to companies, both SMEs forming cooperatives or the same corporations but regulated and limited by the state but not as a member of the Corporation (dividing the spoils) but as a regulator to create a legal framework for protecting the user and information.
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