SCGMIS Agile Business Analysis Workshop July 2014

1© Life Cycle Engineering 2014© Life Cycle Engineering 2014
The Business Analyst in an Agile Environment
Presented by Justin Petite for SCGMIS

2© Life Cycle Engineering 2014
• 12 years in a number of roles supporting
software and the SDLC
• Past 4+ years adapting and applying Agile
and Scrum to SPAWAR projects
• PMI – Agile Certified Practitioner
• Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master
• Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Professional
jpetite@lce.com
@JustinPetite
JUSTIN PETITE

STARTING LINEUP
• 5 minutes
• Confidence in your understanding of Agile
• Without talking

AFFINITY ESTIMATION
• Visualize and create groups by relative scale
• Comparison by subjective measure
• Good for large groups, and large quantities
• Intended to be fast, and just precise enough
to get started
More on this later…

OBJECTIVES
• Explore Agility, the Agile Manifesto, and Agile
principles
• Understand how business analysis fits into the
Agile environment
• Introduce personas and user stories
• Experience a variety of analysis tools and
techniques used on Agile projects

System
Requirements
Software
Requirements
Analysis
Design
Code
Test
Operations
“WATERFALL”

MANIFESTO FOR AGILE
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.

AGILE
An iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach
to software development which is performed in a
highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams
within an effective governance framework with “just
enough” ceremony that produces high quality
software in a cost effective and timely manner which
meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.
Scott Ambler
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileSoftwareDevelopment.htm

AGILITY
Agility is the ability to both create and respond
to change in order to profit in a turbulent
business environment
Agility is the ability to balance flexibility
and stability
Jim Highsmith
Agile Project Management (2nd Edition, 2010)

WHY AGILITY
• Need to more effectively respond to change
– Organizational needs
– Market demands
– Threats and opportunities
• Manage evolutionary change to products,
processes, and culture
• Frequently and incrementally deliver value to
reach a desired goal or outcome

BENEFITS
• Greater responsiveness to changing priorities
• Measured increase in productivity
• Lower costs
• Managed risk through greater visibility
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Better overall quality
• Improved team morale

VALUE IN “WATERFALL”
cumulativebusinessvalue
time

AGILE VALUE PROPOSITION A
time

AGILE VALUE PROPOSITION B
time

AGILITY

AGILE PRINCIPLES
1. Our highest priority is to
satisfy the customer through
early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing
requirements, even late in
development. Agile
processes harness change
for the customer's
competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software
frequently, from a couple of
weeks to a couple of months,
with a preference to the
shorter timescale.
4. Business people and
developers must work
together daily throughout the
project.
5. Build projects around
motivated individuals. Give
them the environment and
support they need, and trust
them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and
effective method of
conveying information to and
within a development team is
face-to-face conversation.

AGILE PRINCIPLES
7. Working software is the
primary measure of
progress.
8. Agile processes promote
sustainable development.
The sponsors,
developers, and users
should be able to
maintain a constant pace
indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to
technical excellence and
good design enhances
agility.
10. Simplicity—the art of
maximizing the amount of
work not done—is
essential.
11. The best architectures,
requirements, and
designs emerge from self-
organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the
team reflects on how to
become more effective,
then tunes and adjusts its
behavior accordingly.

AGILE METHODOLOGIES
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Scrum
• Kanban
• Scrum-ban
• Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
• Feature Driven Development (FDD)
• Lean software development

AGILE PRACTICES
• Cross-functional teams
• Timeboxed iterations
• Story-driven modelling
• Backlogs (product, release, sprint)
• Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Continuous integration and deployment
• Pair programming
• Information radiators
• And many, many others

Accredited to Michael Sahota & Olaf Lewitz

ETHOS

Value
(Releasable Product)
Quality
(Reliable, Adaptable Product)
Constraints
(Scope, Cost, Schedule)
AGILE TRIANGLE
Jim Highsmith

AGILE METHODS DO:
• Position us to be more responsive to changing
priorities
• Allow better predictability of output for the
foreseeable time horizon
• Improve accountability
• Make priorities and risk calculations more
transparent

AGILE METHODS DON'T
• Make engineers write more lines of code per
day or designers create output faster
• Preclude the need to make good organizational
decisions about product, priorities, and
customer needs
• Allow the rest of the organization to assume
they think they know what lies months ahead

AGILE MYTHS
• “Agile is the silver bullet for our organization!”
• “Agile doesn’t scale, so it can’t work for our
organization!”
• “No more documentation or deadlines!”
• “Since we don’t do things upfront, we have no
design and poor architecture!”
• “With so much rework going on, nothing new, and
innovative gets worked on!”
• “Agile makes us faster!”

ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY
• More than just “doing Agile”
• Discipline of managed change through continuous
inspection, evaluation, and adaptation
• Tailored to the organization
• Leverages Agile methods appropriately at each level:
– Individual
– Team
– Project
– Program/Portfolio
– Executive

THE AGILE BUSINESS ANALYST
• Analysis still essential to software development,
regardless of project size, complexity, or
methodology
• Analysis is still about asking the right questions
• Vital to the agile requirements decomposition
paradigm
• Has an immediate impact on development
• Plays an integral role on the development team

ITERATIVE & INCREMENTAL

“Incrementing” builds a finished piece
Assumes the customer
has a fully formed idea
of what they need
Jeff Patton - 2008
http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/dont_
know_what_i_want.html

Jeff Patton - 2008
http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/dont_
know_what_i_want.html
“Iterating” builds something imperfect to validate and refine
Iterating allows for less
developed ideas to
evolve and be refined

SCRUM
• Framework:
– Defined Roles
– Ritual Meetings
– Artifacts
– Terminology
• Emphasis:
– Value
– Delivery
– Open communication
– Team self-organization
– Stakeholder Participation

SCRUM TIMEBOXES
• Release Planning
• Sprint Planning
• The Sprint
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review & Demo
• Sprint Retrospective

SCRUM ROLES
• Scrum Master
– Lead, promote, facilitate, organize, and coach Scrum
– Remove impediments for the team
• Product Owner
– Own, manage, and communicate the Product Backlog
– Advocate for the customer
• Scrum Team
– Turn work from the backlog into a “potentially
shippable” increment of working software

ANALYST PATTERNS
http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/business-analysts-in-scrum/

ANALYST PATTERNS

ANALYST ANTI-PATTERN

RESPONSIBILITIES
Product Vision
Product
Backlog
Guidance to
Scrum Team
Stakeholder
Expectations
PRODUCT
OWNER

5 LEVELS OF AGILE PLANNING
Vision
Roadmap
Release
Sprint
Daily
Suggested
Time box*
Outcome
Annual Vision
Semi-Annual Roadmap
Quarterly
Release
Backlog
2-4 weeks
Sprint
Backlog
15 mins daily “3 Questions”

PRODUCT VISION
The product vision is a
high level statement
that provides the team
with a shared
understanding of the
what the end product
will look like.

PRODUCT VISION
Bill Shakelford: ‘Design the box’
Front of the box
• Product Name
• Graphic/logo
• 3-4 key selling points
Back of box
• Description of key features
• Screens/mockups
Spine
• System requirements

ELEVATOR PITCH
FOR (target customer)
WHO (statement of need)
THE (product name) is a (product category)
THAT (product key benefit, compelling reason to buy,
problem being solved, etc.)
UNLIKE (primary competing alternative)
OUR PRODUCT (final statement of key differentiation)
Geoffrey Moore’s “Elevator Pitch”, Crossing the Chasm (1991)

AGILE PRODUCT CHARTER
• Mission: The “Why”, higher purpose, or the reason
for the project’s existence.
• Vision: the “What” of the project stating what will be
done in the project to achieve its higher purpose.
• Success Criteria: The success criteria are
management tests that describe effects outside of
the solution itself – Defines “Done”

AGILE PROJECT CHARTER
• 1 page (A3)
• High level, but specific
• Eliminate boilerplate
• Aligned with stakeholder
Shared understanding of
the charter is critical to
enabling team members to
collaborate effectively on
large, enterprise projects

TARGET PRACTICE
• 5 Minutes
• Pick a product
• Try a method
– Product Box
– Elevator Statement
– Charter (A3)
– What else works for you?
Successful vision defines at a high level:
User – Opportunity – Critical features
Other context specific objectives and success factors

ROADMAP
• Connects the Product Vision to the execution plan
• Provides the team with visibility, incentive, and focus
• Not a commitment … a visualization of the plan
July Aug Sep Oct Nov
Security
User Admin
Payments
User Admin
Product Admin
Fulfillment
Security

BIG ROCKS
Grouping like features can be helpful for planning
These are often referred to as Themes or Epics
Security
Login with
username/password
Password Reset
SSL 3.0
User Admin
User account DB
Update user info
Register User
Payment
Credit Card
Auto draft
PayPal Integration

ROADMAP

CHART YOUR COURSE
• 10 minutes
• Brainstorm how to
deliver value early
• Come up with some
high level themes
• Roughly prioritize
• 6 – 9 month horizon

PERSONAS
• A fictional character based on role, and real
qualitative understanding of your user base
• Emphasize the user-centric approach and
promote empathy for the user and customer
Picture
and Name
Details
Goals or
Solution
Choose a picture and a
name that are
representative, and that
allow you to develop
sympathy for the
persona
Relevant characteristics
and behaviors:
Demographics, job,
lifestyle, spare time
activities, attitudes,
common tasks, etc.
Why would this specific
persona want to buy or
use this product?
What problems are
solved for this persona?
What benefits are this
persona seeking?

TIPS FOR USING PERSONAS
• Start with quick and good enough - adapt over time
• Distinguish user personas from customer personas
• Choose a primary persona
• Make personas believable
• Stay focused and precise – problems and benefits
• Keep the personas visible
• Connect personas to user stories

INTRODUCE YOUR USERS
• 5 minutes
• Come up with 2-3 user
personas for your product
• Tie user’s problem to your
product’s solution
• Ensure each user has a role

TELL A STORY

USER STORY
• Simple and concise statement of requirement
from a user perspective
• Originated in Extreme Programming (XP)
• Ron Jeffries: 3 C’s
– Card
– Conversation
– Confirmation

THOUGHT TEMPLATE
A conversation with the stakeholder:
– “As a” specific user or persona
– “I want” need, feature, or functionality
– “So (that)” purpose and value of delivery

ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA
• Flip the card over to record expectations:
– User
– Customer
– Product Owner
– Team
How has the customer defined success for this story?

INVEST
Independent
• Can ideally stand alone as a working
product increment
• Avoids dependencies with other stories
whenever possible

INVEST
Negotiable
• Stories are concepts not contracts
• Can and should be revised or rewritten
up until they are planned in a sprint

INVEST
Valuable
• Should deliver value to the end user,
customers, and/or stakeholders
• Why else would a story matter?

INVEST
Estimable
• The story provides the Team with enough
information to approximate size
• By understanding size, we can then plan

INVEST
Sized appropriately (Small)
• Ideally can be completed in one iteration
• Small for near-term work
• Larger for work further out is ok, realizing
further decomposition will be needed later

INVEST
Testable
• Acceptance criteria establishes common
expectations across team members and
stakeholders
• Critical to understand not just what will be
tested, but also how it will be tested

OTHER KINDS OF STORIES
Technical Foundation:
“As a developer, I need to upgrade the database
software so we are running on the correct
supported version”
Research (Spike):
“As lead architect, I need to research and
evaluate COTS products that are compatible
with our current system’s architecture so we can
reduce the risk of future issues with integration”

OTHER KINDS OF STORIES
Design:
“As a UI/UX engineer, I need to create the initial
design for the account management screens so
that I can begin to gather customer feedback”
Other possible types of work items:
Defects, maintenance, training, documentation,
development infrastructure, automation, etc.

STORY WRITING
• 15 minutes
• Write stories
– From the perspective
of your personas
– Leverage/adjust your
roadmap for value
– Remember the
template:
As a <user>, I need to <do something>, so
that I can <accomplish some goal>

PRODUCT BACKLOG
• An ordered list of work items needed to deliver the
desired product, features, or system
• The Product Owner decides the order with input from
the development team and stakeholders
• Always ready, never done, ever evolving
• Modelled in greater detail and smaller size at the top
• Maximizing value to the customer is the objective

PRODUCT BACKLOG (FLAT)

PRODUCT BACKLOG (ICEBERG)

USER STORY MAPPING
• Organizes and prioritizes user stories in two
dimensions
• Provides a useful tool for the entire team to
understand the big picture
• Can be useful when building a feature-rich product
based on business processes, workflow, or tasking
• Attributed to Jeff Patton -
www.AgileProductDesign.com

STORY MAPPING
time
necessity
Activities
Tasks

STORY MAPPING

PRIORITIZING
What is value to the customer?
–Financial
–Business
–Reduced cost to develop and support
–Innovation
–Risk reduction
–Market factors
–Compliance
–Deadline

SIMPLE VALUE EFFORT MATRIX

PRIORITIZING
Business
Value
Cost Impact
Risk
Removed
Total
Story A 7 4 8 9 7
Story B 10 2 5 6 5.75
Story C 2 6 3 5 4
Story D 4 10 6 2 5.5
Decision Matrix
- Good for teams
supporting
disparate
customers
- Incorporates
multiple factors
- Scored as a
group

KANO ANALYSIS

PRODUCT EVOLUTION

EVALUATE YOUR STORIES
• 5 minutes
• Kano Analysis
–Must have
–Satisfier
–Delighter
• Label your story cards
• Ask around

FACTORS TO CONSIDER
• Minimally Marketable Feature (MMF)
• Minimum viable product (MVP)
• Earned Business Value (EBV)
• Risk
• Architecture and infrastructure
• Dependencies and integrations
• Constraints: Schedule & Costs

DEFINITION OF DONE
• What do we mean by “potentially shippable”
• When is the team finished with a story? A
feature? A release?
• Evolves over time
• Suited to the team’s unique environment
• Incremental maturity
• Helps to ensure quality is “built in”

ESTIMATION
How long is this going to take?

ESTIMATION
“Estimation is the process of finding an
approximation, which is a value that is
usable for some purpose even if input
data may be incomplete, uncertain, or
unstable”
• Too many variables
• Too much unknown
• Too far in the future
• Individual biases

ESTIMATES BECOME PROMISES
• Estimates drive expectations
–Customers
–Stakeholders
–Business
• Estimation may add value … But, is
only valuable within a threshold of
risk and cone of uncertainty

REMEMBER THE TRIANGLES

AGILE ESTIMATION
• Story estimates are abstract - not time based
• Derived from other “known” factors:
– Effort
– Complexity
– Uncertainty
• Informed by past performance
• Originate from those who will do the work
• Best to be roughly right than precisely wrong!

RELATIVE SIZING: DOG POINTS
• Golden Retriever
• Great Dane
• Border Collie
• Chihuahua
• Cocker Spaniel
• English Bulldog
• 2 minutes
• Order from
smallest to largest
• Compare your list
with your neighbor

RELATIVE SIZE
T-Shirt XS S M L XL XXL
Fibonacci 1 2, 3 5, 8 13, 20 40 100

SIZING TECHNIQUES
• Affinity Estimation – group stories of similar size and
then assign points
2 5 8 13 20 40

PLANNING POKER
• Product Owner tells the story
• Team briefly discusses
• Team members reveal their estimates all at once
• Discuss outliers
• Repeat until estimates converge

ESTIMATING WITH POINTS
• Don’t spend too much time on each story
• Estimate only as much as is needed for planning
• Large stories should be set aside to be broken down
• Estimates come from the team – resist individual
“anchoring”
• Only re-estimate when relative size of a story has
changed

VELOCITY AND CAPACITY
• Velocity
– The demonstrated
average number of points
completed in an iteration
• Capacity
– The maximum amount a
team can get done in an
iteration

ITERATION PLANNING
• Start at the top
• Identify specific tasks for each story
• Estimate tasks in ideal hours for each task
• Stop when capacity is reached
Hours In Sprint
Planned
Absent Allocation Buffer Capacity
Jim 80 16 100% 25% 48
Joe 80 0 100% 25% 60
Jane 80 0 50% 25% 30
Jenny 80 8 100% 25% 54
Jack 80 0 50% 25% 30
400 24 100% 25% 222

BACKLOG GROOMING
• At least once a sprint
• Consult with the customer
• Break down or split large stories
– Many ways to do this
• Give the team a preview, but not too far ahead
• Refine acceptance criteria and design tests
• Estimate size

SPRINT CADENCE
• Rhythm and ritual

BURNDOWN CHARTS
• Represent work remaining
– By Release (points) or iteration (hours)

LOTS OF OTHER METRICS
• Goal: Measure and communicate progress
through meaningful and highly visible means
• Force the right conversations early
• Help teams recognize their cadence
• Uncover risk and areas of opportunity
• Inform conversations… not replace them

RETROSPECTIVES
• The most powerful tool available to an Agile team
• Observe, inspect, and adapt:
– What worked well?
– What didn’t work well?
– What will we improve?
• Focus on the team, not the product
• Avoid dwelling on external factors

10
0
© Life Cycle Engineering 2014
PROJECT INITIATION
Decompose project requirements (scope) to
create the first iteration of the project
schedule, roadmap, and backlog
Form the cross-functional agile team(s) of
individuals with the roles and skills necessary to
deliver on the project’s requirements
Train the team, educate the customer,
and communicate expectations
Get started sprinting following the standard practices
to learn how to best adapt in the future
· Incorporate feedback from retrospectives
· Build “muscle memory” around good practices
· Establish common understanding of
Agile fundamentals
· Agree to a cadence
· Decide on initial technologies
· Identify and negotiate stakeholder
roles and responsibilities
· Agree to the metrics by which project
performance will be measured
· Establish the definition of done
· Set up visible progress indicators
Work
Breakdown
Structure
IMS /
Roadmap
Agile PM Tool
User StoriesUser Stories
Systems
Requirements
Document
(SRD)
Systems
Requirements
Document
(SRD)
PWS/CDRLPWS/CDRL
Product OwnerProduct Owner
TestersTestersDevelopersDevelopers
Scrum MasterScrum Master

10
1
KEEP THE AGILE CONVERSATION GOING
• Software engineering
practices
• Agile team dynamics
• Scaling up
• Contracting and
government
• Metrics
• Planning
• User story writing
• Testing/Quality
• Retrospectives
• Configuration management
• Release management
• Information assurance
• Fostering culture
• Organizational transition
• Change management
• Industry certifications
• Management and executive
sponsorship
• More than software

10
2
CONTINUOUS LEARNING
• Take a class
• Attend a conference
• Get certified
• Engage online

10
3
HELP FOR THE TRANSITION
Agile Coach
• Supports the successful introduction of Agile to your
organization and team
• Shares subject matter expertise and experience
• Helps avoid common mistakes and pitfalls that
hinder adoption and delay value
• Acts as a neutral and objective third party
• Is a supportive partner and mentor across the
organization

10
4
THANK YOU!
Please let me know how I can do better next time!
jpetite@lce.com
@JustinPetite

SCGMIS Agile Business Analysis Workshop July 2014

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