Agile for Business Analysts

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Course Overview

In this course, you will gain an understanding about agile business analysis. You will learn how business analysis on an agile project is ‘the same’ and ‘different’ than business analysis performed on waterfall projects. You will understand how the business analysis role changes on an agile team. A number of business analysis techniques suited for supporting agile teams will be introduced as will the various standards available to the community to help teams and organizations transition. Since few organizations are pure agile, you will also learn about delivery approaches that use a combination of practices from waterfall and agile and will also be introduced to the important concept of business analysis tailoring – the key skill used to adapt business analysis skills to all environments – regardless of the delivery life cycle selected. NOTE: This course will earn you 14 PDUs.

Who Should Attend

Anyone with the need to understand how business analysis is performed to support agile projects or who must transition their existing business analysis skills and practices from waterfall to agile.

Course Objectives

    • Understand the fundamentals of agile delivery and agile business analysis • Compare and contrast business analysis on waterfall and agile projects • Explain the value proposition for agile product development • Define the 4 main types of project life cycles • Complete an in-depth walkthrough of the agile delivery life cycle • Explain the major flavors of agile • Understand the major standards available to assist in transition of skills • Define business analysis tailoring and understand how to apply it • Learn over 20 business analysis techniques commonly used on agile projects

Course Outline

1 - Introduction

  • Learning and course objectives

2 - Module 1

  • What is agile
  • The Agile Manifesto
  • Agile principles
  • Agile benefits
  • Hands-on activity

3 - Module 2

  • The current state of agile
  • Agile trends
  • Agile skills
  • Value proposition
  • The business case for agile
  • The BA role changes on an agile project
  • Hands-on activity

4 - Module 3 – Understanding project life cycles

  • Project life cycle
  • Product life cycle
  • Incremental versus Iterative
  • Hybrid approaches to delivery
  • Choosing a project life cycle

5 - Module 4 – An in-depth look at Agile

  • The agile development life cycle
  • A sequence of iterations
  • Essential concepts
  • Inside each iteration
  • Iteration goal
  • Iteration planning
  • Sequence of tasks
  • Work period
  • Testing
  • End of iteration activities
  • Evaluation and feedback
  • Structured walkthroughs
  • Evaluation guidelines
  • The BA role in structured walkthroughs
  • Scripting scenarios
  • Defect list
  • Retrospectives
  • Hands-on exercise

6 - Module 5 – Type of Agile Delivery Approaches

  • The flavors of agile
  • Scrum
  • Scrum roles
  • Extreme Programming (XP)
  • Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM)
  • Feature Driven Development (FDD)
  • Testing
  • Best practices used by FDD
  • Kanban
  • Kanban Boards
  • Agile Unified Process
  • Scaling Frameworks

7 - Module 6 – Introduction to Agile Business Analysis

  • What is business analysis?
  • What is agile business analysis?
  • Framework for agile business analysis
  • Business analysis components
  • International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA®)
  • Project Management Institute (PMI®)
  • Context to business analysis
  • Our industry BA standards
  • Our industry Agile BA standards
  • Product Owners
  • What stays the same
  • What is expected to change
  • Agile requirements deliverables
  • Lightweight documentation
  • Requirements repository
  • Where business analysis fits in
  • The BA workload

8 - Module 7 – Business Analysis Tailoring

  • Business analysis tailoring (defined)
  • Tailoring considerations
  • What tailoring looks like
  • The PMI Guide to Business Analysis
  • Determining the ‘best’ BA approach
  • Methodology vs Standard
  • Why use methodologies
  • Determining your methodology
  • Business analysis impacts

9 - Module 8 – Tools and techniques for agile business analysis

  • Agile BA techniques
  • Backlog refinements
  • Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
  • Burndown chart
  • Collaborative games
  • Definition of done
  • Definition of ready
  • INVEST
  • Iteration planning
  • Kanban board
  • Minimum marketable features (MMF)
  • Minimum viable product (MVP)
  • MoSCoW
  • Narrative writing
  • Persona analysis
  • Product roadmap
  • Progressive Elaboration
  • Prototyping
  • Purpose alignment model
  • Retrospectives
  • Story slicing
  • Hands-on Exercise

10 - Module 9 – Prioritization Techniques

  • Requirements prioritization
  • Prioritizing on agile projects
  • Prioritization criteria
  • Business benefit
  • MoSCoW
  • Pair-choice comparison
  • Setting priorities with multi-voting
  • Cost to acquire and operate
  • Determining business value
  • Story point estimating
  • Planning poker
  • Project velocity
  • Hands-on activity

11 - Module 10: Course wrap-up

  • Making the transition to agile
  • How my role will be different
  • Course summary
  • Retrospective
  • Questions

12 - Appendix

  • BA Techniques Table
  • Pair Choice Spreadsheet
  • Class Exercises
  • Exercise 1: Self-organizing teams
  • Exercise 2: Review the case study
  • Exercise 3: Create user personas
  • Exercise 4: Create user stories
  • Exercise 5: Applying the INVEST technique
  • Exercise 6: Planning poker to prioritize

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Class Dates & Times

Class times are listed Eastern time
‘GTR’ = Guaranteed to Run

This is a 2-day class

Price: $1,395.00

Class dates not listed.
Please contact us for available dates and times.