IT Business Analysts: What They Do and How to Succeed
What you'll learn
- Define the capabilities and challenges of Lean and Agile software development philosophies
- Requirements gathering (elicitation) techniques for Lean, Agile, and Continuous Delivery software development environments
- Support Lean or Agile teams by communicating business needs and wants in formats that support modern Software
- Drill-down requirements, features, user stories, and functions to identify and write test scenarios in G-W-T (Given-When-Then) statements to facilitate testing
- Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) threaten waterfall and Agile software development approaches alike
Requirements
- No experience required
Description
Agile software development is a popular methodology for IT project management. It has proven to be effective, but it is typically difficult to implement within an organization that has already developed its own processes and procedures. Many of the techniques we have used in traditional (i.e., waterfall) approaches still provide value but they need to be adapted to a more lean approach.
Business analysts and product owners no longer have time to define the end solution in its full-blown glory before handing it over to the developers. Agile is by definition an iterative approach. To support it, we need to fine-tune our business analysis techniques to ensure we deliver user stories, features, and requirements that follow the lean principles. That means we need to express business needs:
at the last responsible moment to ensure the expressed needs are up-to-date in an everchanging business environment, and
with the required quality to minimize costly miscommunication errors that plague many software projects.
This overview describes methods for optimizing the process of extracting, discovering, communicating, and validating business needs for technological solutions. Readers who prefer a more detailed depiction are invited to consider our more in-depth treatment in our course “Agile Business Analysis: Getting / Writing Lean Requirements".
Who this course is for:
- Beginner Business Analysts, Product Owners, Product Managers and anyone tasked with discovering, defining, or communicating the characteristics expected of future digital solutions.
Instructor
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 10,387 Reviews
- 73,212 Students
- 17 Courses
Angela and Tom Hathaway of BA-EXPERTS (previously Hathaway & Associates, Inc. and Requirements Solutions Group, LLC) have been in business analysis and UX (User Experience) design for over 30 years. Their expertise spans information technology, methodologies, and innumerable applications in every industry for organizations from Mom-and-Pop shops to Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. In their writings and lectures they strive for enlightening while entertaining.
They have taught many thousands of students around the world and facilitated hundreds of requirements discovery sessions under a variety of acronyms (JAD, ASAP, JADr, JRP, etc). In recent years, they have focused their attention on human-machine communication, in particular how to improve the use of Chatbots.
Current and past customers include TIAA-CREF (Financial), Cathay Pacific, Emirates Airlines (Transportation), Manitoba Telecom Services (Telecommunications), Honeywell (Manufacturing), Starwood Hotels and Resorts (Hospitality), numerous government agencies, and a myriad of other organizations.
Tom and Angela's training, consulting, and mentoring efforts have saved their customers around the world millions of dollars. They can help your organization evolve and improve your conversational user interface, business analysis, and UX Design practices.