©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. www.captechventures.com IT Management ConsulAng Systems IntegraAon Data Management Agile Techniques for Analysts
Jun 24, 2015
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. www.captechventures.com
IT Management ConsulAng Systems IntegraAon Data Management
Agile Techniques for Analysts
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Who Knows Agile?
ScrumMaster 46%
Project Manager 16%
Director/VP 15%
Developer 10%
Product Owner 4%
Product Manager
3%
QA 2%
ExecuAves 2%
BA 2%
Source: VersionOne 2013 State of Agile Survey
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agile Analysis Principles
See the Whole
Get Real Using Examples
Understand What is Doable
Think as a Customer
Analyze to Determine What is Valuable
SAmulate CollaboraAon and ConAnuous Improvement
Avoid Waste
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
See the Whole
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Business Capability Analysis
§ Capabili@es are the ability of the business to transform something to help achieve a goal § Increase revenue § Reduce cost § Improve service § Compliance
§ Agile facilitates frequent reassessment of business needs
§ Teams must maintain a constant view of the business capabili@es
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
An Outcome
Capability Map
An Outcome An Outcome Performance Gap
Customer Value
Risk • Business Risk • Technology Risk • Organizational Risk • Market Risk
Business Value
§ Provides a graphic view of elements involved in business capability analysis
§ Shows what capabili@es should be addressed first
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Personas
§ Fic@onal characters that exemplify user interac@on § Help understand value from the standpoint of a par@cular customer
§ Goes deeper than tradi@onal actor descrip@on
• SoluAons can be prioriAzed based on how well they address the needs of a persona
• Provides a human “face” to focus empathy
• Personas can be created that try to embody traits of every user which is not realisAc
• Not a good subsAtute for a real user
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Personas Exercise
Give your persona a name and create their personality and moAvaAon
In your group, create a persona for one of the users of the app
You are working on a project to create a smart phone app for the DC tourism board (washington.org)
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Get Real Using Examples
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use Concrete Examples
§ Communicate with the team and the customer § Use the appropriate level of granularity § Drives
§ Acceptance criteria § Developer design § FuncAonal tesAng
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Behavior Driven Development
§ Expresses product needs as concrete examples § As the project progresses examples grow in clarity and detail
§ Examples should be real life business scenarios
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How to create a scenario
GIVEN <a context>
WHEN <an event>
THEN <an outcome>
There can be mulAple GIVEN and THEN statements in a scenario, but there should only be one WHEN
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Usage Considera@ons
• Expressed customer need in natural language
• Supports producAon of effecAve test cases
• Scenarios can be easily prioriAzed
• Possible to miss important scenarios
• Can be too many scenarios if business rules are complex
§ Developers and Testers use the examples to show them what the product needs to do
§ BAs iden@fy the scenarios with the users by asking “what-‐if” ques@ons
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Understand What is Doable
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rela@ve Es@ma@on
§ Team ac@vity § Es@ma@on is con@nuous
§ Accuracy will increase § Teams will build confidence § Largely based on points
§ Can be impacted by team changes Project
Release
Sprint
Knowledge Complexity
Size Uncertainty
Story Points
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Planning for Delivery
§ Important to think about what is pragma@c and doable
§ Balance capacity and demand
Planning
• Team pulls top priority work items off backlog and esAmates units of work
Review
• Product Owner reviews planned work, approves esAmates and authorizes team to execute
ExecuAon
• Team executes on planned work
Review
• Product Lead reviews output and determines if Acceptance Criteria have been met
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Real Op@ons
§ Helps define when to make the decision § Three Rules
§ OpAons have value § OpAons expire § Never commit early unless you know why
§ Only priori@ze un@l the next investment decision point
§ Determining when the op@ons expire is important
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Think as a Customer
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Story Elabora@on
§ Lowest level of story decomposi@on § Just-‐in-‐@me § Produces the detailed requirements § Facilita@on skills are key
• Decreases elicitaAon Ame • Avoids documenAng requirements that will probably change
• Can be difficult to determine exactly when to document
• ElaboraAng the story with enough detail
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Story Mapping
§ View of the sequence of ac@vi@es to be supported
§ Usage and Priority § Connects stories together
User Stories
Epics
Steps
• Prevents losing the big-‐picture
• Shows end-‐to-‐end value
• Hard to do with large products
• Do not show dependencies between specific requirements
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Analyze to Determine What is Valuable
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Kano Analysis
Group 1: You are in the market for a $18,000 new car
Group 2: You are in the market for a new smart phone
Group 3: You want to spend a
weekend at a hotel for vacaAon
What are some features that would make you choose one brand over another?
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Characteris@cs
Threshold • Absolutely necessary • Challenge to elicit
Performance • Linear increase in saAsfacAon • Easier to elicit
Excitement • DramaAcally increase customer saAsfacAon • Not met by anything currently on the market
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
MoSCoW Analysis
Must Could
Should Won’t
• Powerful in prioriAzing backlogs
• Can be subjecAve if there is not a clear focus on business value
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Purpose Alignment Model
§ Assess ideas based on customer and business value § Rates capabili@es or products in two dimensions
Partner DifferenAaAng
Who Cares? Parity
Market Differentiation
Mission Critical
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S@mulate Collabora@on and Con@nuous Improvement
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Con@nuous Improvement
§ Product and Process § Healthy teams rely on trust § Role of the BA is to create the environment where everyone can contribute value
Retrospec@ve • What we did well • What improvements can
we make
• What could we do beYer • Focus on the process not
the people
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Structured Games
• Construct a box for the product as if it was being sold in a retail store
Product Box
• Write down features on sAcky notes, put them on a wall and move them into themes
Affinity Map
• Divide team into two groups • One group speaks about a topic which others listen and document their observaAons
Fishbowl
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Avoid Waste
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Ways to Avoid Waste During BA Ac@vi@es
§ Avoid producing documenta@on before it is needed § Ensure commitments are met § Make commitments as late as possible § Elicit, analyze, specify and validate requirements with the same models
§ Models should be as simple as possible § Close proximity to customers and dev team § Con@nuous aYen@on to technical excellence
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Lightweight documenta@on
§ Documenta@on should not create overhead § Must create value § Compliance documenta@on does create value § Make documenta@on part of the living code base where possible
§ “Working so[ware over extensive documenta@on”
©2014 CapTech Ventures, Inc. All rights reserved.
Ques@ons?
See the Whole
Think as a Customer
Analyze to Determine What is Valuable
Get Real Using Examples
Understand What is Doable
SAmulate CollaboraAon and ConAnuous Improvement
Avoid Waste