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What Does a BA Practice Look Like in Agile?

May 16, 2016

collaborationAn agile BA practice is part of, and an extension of, the Product Ownership Team. The BA practice helps the team build the RIGHT product and features, in the most valuable order, aligned to the organization and product strategy. BAs ensure the RIGHT features are built to meet needs and are not over-engineered.

BAs do this by facilitating dialog that gets to the details, while keeping the big picture in front of the team. BAs facilitate team dialog using artifacts that align with and support the Product Ownership function. The mindset with which the team views the artifacts is a significant difference between agile and traditional approaches.

Assets vs. Deliverables
In an agile practice, BA models (scope models, decision tables, process models, state diagrams, data models, etc) are treated like assets not deliverables. What does this mean? Here’s how I characterize this subtle, but important difference:

Deliverable mindset:

  • Deliverables require a formal review, re-write and sign-off before the project can move forward to the next phase.
  • Deliverables are rarely modified or reused after sign-off. They represent a fixed moment in the life of the solution and rarely align with the artifacts produced in other phases of the project.

Asset mindset:

  • Assets are only generated if they provide value to the team.
  • Assets describe the contextual attributes of the product or solution vs. a temporary document or contract of delivery.
  • Assets can be informal and are living, breathing, evolving models (visual, matrix, tables, diagrams, etc.).
  • Assets are used to create context, analyze the product, promote dialog, increase collaboration and make decisions.
  • Assets help teams move forward with a shared understanding of important aspects of the solution.

To be more agile, teams use analysis artifacts as assets to collaborate vs. deliverables to sign-off. Do you see the difference? How would shifting to an asset mindset change your daily BA/PO practice? This mindset shift  may seem subtle, but it’s critically important for boosting agility on all projects.