11.1.2 Business Analysis Scope
.1 Change Sponsor
It is important that a sponsor of an agile initiative be familiar with the agile philosophy, mindset, and approaches, and also be open to the constant feedback that will require trade-offs from the stakeholders.
An agile sponsor understands and accepts the:
- use of adaptive planning over predictive planning,
- use and value of a fixed period of time for a work cycle, and
- need and value of the sponsor’s involvement.
The sponsor’s (or empowered SME’s) active involvement with the agile team is critical to providing the sponsor with the ability to preview and understand the product being developed, as well as allowing an opportunity for the sponsor to provide continuous feedback to the team and adjust the product as needs change.
.2 Change Targets and Agents
Agile approaches are most successful when the organizational culture and working environments lend themselves to intensive collaboration, frequent communication, and a strong disposition towards incremental delivery of appropriate solution value.
Agile teams are frequently either small or around teams of small teams. The simpler and flatter structure doesn’t change the fact that the deliverables may affect a large group of stakeholders. The change agent, also considered a stakeholder, is not different because the project uses agile. The primary agents for a change using an agile approach can include:
- Agile team leader: the facilitator of the work of the team. An agile team leader frequently shares the same soft skill set of a project manager, but completely delegates the tasks of planning, scheduling, and prioritization to the team. Rather than traditional command-and-control management, servant leadership is preferred in all the agile approaches. Depending on the approach, this role may be called scrum master, iteration manager, team leader, or coach.
- Customer representative or product owner: the active team member responsible for ensuring that the change being developed addresses the requirements for which it has been mandated. In Scrum this role is called the product owner. The dynamic systems development method (DSDM) refers to this role as that of a visionary, and extreme programming (XP) refers to it as a customer representative.
- Team members: the specialists or domain experts that include both technical and customer representation. Depending on size and particular context of the initiative, individuals within a team have different specialties. Usability experts, technical architects, and database administrators are just a
sample of such specialized roles that provide support to the team as needed. - External stakeholders: all of the remaining stakeholders who may not be considered team members, but are an interested party in the outcome of the project or simply required for its completion, playing what can be considered a supporting role in the team.
.3 Business Analyst Position
An agile team may have one or more team members with business analysis skills who may or may not have the job title of business analyst. This recognition of cross-skilled team members expands the practice of business analysis beyond that of a single specialist role.
On agile teams, business analysis activities can be performed by one or a combination of:
- a business analyst working on the team,
- the customer representative or product owner, or
- distributing these activities throughout the team.
Refer to the Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide for more details.
.4 Business Analysis Outcomes
In an agile environment, business analysis brings people together and ensures that the right stakeholders are involved with the agile team at the right time.
Open communication and collaboration is one of the principal outcomes of successful business analysis in an agile project.
Business analysts ensure that the project’s vision and direction are in strategic alignment to the organizational goals and business need. The business analyst holds shared responsibility in defining strategic criteria for project completion and during the project assists with defining acceptance criteria. They also facilitate the articulation of the product vision statement. The product vision statement is a common initial deliverable.
Documentation rigor and style is highly dependent on the purpose and the context in which it is produced. Agile approaches favor just enough and just-intime documentation rather than establishing predefined models for documentation to be delivered. This documentation approach allows for the documents to incorporate as much of the change introduced as possible while keeping the cost of change low. Mandatory documentation, such as that required for auditing or compliance reporting, are still produced as part of each delivery cycle. It is important that documents address an identified need and deliver more value than the cost incurred to produce and maintain them.
