© 2014 BA Convention Sneha Prabhu Namitha Anand Scaling Agile Analysis is like teaching an elephant to dance
© 2014 BA Convention
Sneha Prabhu
Namitha Anand
Scaling Agile Analysis
is like teaching an elephant to dance
© 2014 BA Convention 2
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Agenda
• Analysis in Agile
• Scaling in Agile
• What happens to Agility when we scale?
• Scaling business analysis
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Analysis in agile
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Agile Principles
Source: AgileManifesto.org
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Typical Agile Team
Continuous Integration
Code Repository Cruise Installables
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Development Process
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Analysis in Agile - Principles
• Welcome change
• Evolutionary Design
• ROI based planning
• Scope management
• Cross-functional role representation
• Face-to-face communication
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Scaling in Agile
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Defining Scale
• Lots of functionality in a short timeline
• Many stakeholders
• Multiple delivery teams
• Lot of integration points
• Distributed delivery teams
• Operations and support functions
• Overall rhythm and momentum
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A real life analysis scaling problem
Our learning is based on working on a large scale agile project that
had the following characteristics:
• Largest online retailer of train tickets in the UK
• 250 member team with planned rotation. Single code base
• Distributed across London, Bangalore, Pune
• Productize the solution, to allow multiple tenancy
• Cross-channel sales capabilities
Goal: Replace a legacy system with a new platform that provides the
capability to add new features quickly while the product needed to
continue with planned revenue generation
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Scaling without adapting
Continuous Integration
Code Repository Cruise Installables
Story Lists
What Happens to Agility when we scale? Cannot teach an elephant to dance without a shared vision
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What happens to Agility when we scale?
Team organization
Unmanageable team size
Ad-hoc overlap of responsibilities
Loss of ownership
Continuous Integration
Components Dependency issues
Deployment Overheads
Maintenance of different product versions
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What happens to Agility when we scale?
Planning
Aggregation of work across streams
Depth of knowledge and Involvement in dev process
Scope creep and/or system gaps
Communication
During release initiation meetings, virtual conferencing leads to
inefficiencies
Frequent face-to-face communication adds to project expenses
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Multiple teams
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Scaling Business Analysis
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Planning: Across multiple teams
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Planning: Rollups
Ver. 1 Ver. 2 Ver. 3
Inputs
– g
round u
p
Inputs
– g
round u
p
External
Dependency Legend: Internal
Requirement
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Planning: what worked for us
CONCEPT TRIAGE
PIPELINE TEAM
SYSTEMICO MODEL
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To recap…
Concept Triage Pipeline team Systemico
Model
What ? Present the
business case
Dedicated team Prioritize value
How ? Like you pitch to
a VC
Work with
portfolio
manager
User goal & User
engagement
Ideas gets
questioned &
sized
Immediate high
level estimates
Additional
dimensions
Too much focus
on cost
Pre-solved
features to the
dev teams
Matured
products ?
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Execution: what worked for us
BA Standups
Release Kick off / Feature Kick off
BA Showcase
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Sustaining: What worked for us
JOHN’S BUCKET SWAT TEAMS
REPORTING
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44
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Toolsgeneral
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UserFunnel
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Performance
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Benchmarking
Recruiter
Addar clestoFavouriteitems
CustomAddon
Authors
Educa onalusers
Insurance
SME
SavingSearches
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Security
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TopicMigra on
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In-linestylesmigra on
Industries
SEO
EMTenhancements
UKBetaSite
StoryPoints
Features
FeatureCompletenesswithinMilestone3
Done
InProgress
Backlog
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What happens to Agility when we scale?
Team organization
Unmanageable team size
Ad hoc overlap of responsibilities
Loss of ownership
Continuous Integration
Components Dependency issues
Deployment Overheads
Maintenance of different product versions
Teams re-organized based on system
layers split or feature based split
Team composition
Support teams for NFRs, release mgmt.,
Prod & Operations support
Infrastructure & automation
Development practices – code
reviews, technical assurance,
refactoring work items, rigorous
test coverage
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What happens to Agility when we scale?
Planning
Aggregation of work across streams
Depth of knowledge & Involvement in dev process
Scope creep &/ system gaps
Communication
During release initiation meetings, virtual conferencing leads to inefficiencies
Frequent face-to-face communication adds to project expenses
Idea generation with
business case template
Concept Triage
Release Planning
Team Iterations
ID, DD/ inception
Planned travel for niche roles – program BA, Technical architects
before release planning
Cross team staffing across roles
F2F inceptions
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Takeaways
• Shared vision and understanding across the program – Release Kick offs,
Feature kick offs
• Overall product stability with increased collaboration across dependent
features and external dependencies
• Immediate revenue generation from the revised product while having
stakeholders collaborating at a desirable level
• Team BAs and Development Managers – redundancies, developing fool-proof
solutions, removing bottlenecks, increased product understanding
• Data analysis benefits for studying industry trends & user dynamics
© 2014 BA Convention
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