BASSA 2012 There is no BA in agile - The Myth 04092014

Due to rapidly changing market conditions, changing business priorities and requirements, organisations need to be “agile” in being able to respond to these changes and reducing their delivery cycles.
As a result of this, agile development frameworks and methodologies have been adopted to meet the customer’s ever changing needs based on the highest business value. Gartner’s analysts (Thomas Murphy and David Norton) predict that by 2012 “agile” development methods will be utilised in 80% of all software development projects.
Scrum is the most widely used framework within the Agile process and if you look at the Scrum framework, there seems to be no role for a Business analyst – only that of a ScrumMaster, Product Owner and Team. Over and above that, there is also the myth that within Scrum there is no need to document requirements and specifications.
The presentation provides an overview of Agile and Scrum and uncovers the importance of business analysis and the business analyst role within Scrum with the objective of dispelling these myths. It will also provide an overview of how teams look at requirements and when and how they are defined in the process outlining some practical tools and techniques that can be adopted.
The Agile approach impacts every role on a project team and provides a major opportunity for individuals to grow and learn new skills and develop new ways of working collaboratively to meet and exceed the customer’s expectations. These skills include facilitation, collaboration, leadership, coaching, and team building. As a business analyst it is important to apply these within a team context to be able to deliver high quality products.

Learn how to
• Understand basic Scrum principles
• Dispelling some of the myths of Agile (Scrum) with specific focus on the Business Analysis role
• The role of Business Analysts in an Agile (Scrum) environment
• Tools and Techniques on Business Analysis utilising an Agile approach (Scrum)