Do You Know the Difference Between Business Analyst and Agile Business Analyst?

Often  I have been asked how the role from the BA would change in an agile environment? Software development teams changing the structure of a Waterfall approach to an Agile technique often have issues in clearly characterizing roles and obligations of the team member. This is particularly valid for the role of BA, as agile teams include an entrepreneur who assumes a more involved role than in a Waterfall procedure. 

Despite the fact, there is an entrepreneur working closely with a development team playing a product owner role, the role of a Business Analyst is extremely important in organizing the business needs and making the roadmap for the team. Business Analysts serve a critical role in understanding the problem domain and diving into the root cause of the business need or the problem. Business Analysts have to adapt to the new procedure and understand not just the template of the artifacts that should be created but the spirit of the agile methodology. This will help the team dynamics and will help avoid client stories written like functional requirements.

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The following point tries to compare how the role of Business Analyst changes in an agile environment.

Business Analysis

Here is how the role of Business Analyst changes in an agile environment.

• Requirements are documented being used Cases, Business Requirements, Functional requirements, UI Specifications, Business Rules. 

• Focuses on completeness of requirement and spends time in guaranteeing the requirement is unambiguous and has all the details. 

• Focuses on getting a ‘sign off’ on the requirements.

• Frequently there is a divider between the BA/Business and the Development group. 

• Tends to dictate solutions.

• Long turnaround. 

• Concentrate on what the necessities report said. At the end of the day, the output is a well written thorough requirements document.

• Concentrate on being quite certain in the requirements. 

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Agile Business analysis

• Requirements are documented in Epics, User Stories, and optionally Business (or Essential) Use cases. 

• Focuses on understanding the problem and being the domain expert with the goal that she/he can answer questions from the development team swiftly and decisively. 

• Focuses on ensuring the requirements meet the present business needs, regardless of whether it requires updating them. 

• Agile BA/Product Owner is a part of the team.

• Needs to stay in the problem domain, leaving the development team ‘space’ to explore different solutions.

• Quick turnaround. 

• Concentrate on the functionality of the developed software. In different words, the output is the software that meets business needs. 

• Needs the ability to look at the big picture but also needs the capacity to break the big picture into little pieces, so the development team can execute on it in multi-week intervals. 

• Leave room for negotiation as long as the problem is solved.

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Role of an Agile Business Analyst

The Role of an Agile Business Analyst is a critical role in an Agile group. Great Agile teams require strong teams who work admirably together. The most emphasis in terms of roles within the team is essentially based on the developers and testers. Shockingly the business analyst role is the one that is generally ignored and this regularly prompts enormous issues with the group. Our Agile team is one of the fortunate ones, and I wouldn’t give up our business analyst without a serious fight. The role of a business analyst is huge. Here are just a few of the advantages they help bring to the table: 

• The BA gives clarification as far as requirements that help the team understand what should be assembled and how it needs to work. 

• The BA unites the team and forces cooperation to ensure success.

• The BA is the SME on how the product works and has a significant understanding of system complexity.

• The BA understands the cross-dependencies with different products or systems that it interfaces with 

• The BA provides organization regarding the accounts and how they are separated into little pieces 

• The BA plays out a ton of research and offers that knowledge with the Agile group 

• The BA goes about as the voice of the team when working with other Agile teams  within the organization

Conclusion

Business Analysis is used to recognize and articulate the need for change in how organizations function, and to promote that modification. As business analysts, we identify and define the solutions that will maximize the value delivered by a company to its stakeholders.

I hope that by now you have had an overview of Business Analysis. Before you enroll in ZaranTech’s certification course on Agile Business Analysis do check out this demo video: