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
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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
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