What Is "LEAN" or "AGILE" Business Analysis?

Understanding How Lean Principles Affect Your Requirements Discovery Process in Standard or Agile Software Development

Created byTom and Angela Hathaway

Last updated 12/2023

English

What you'll learn

Learn how lean principles affect business analysis and the requirements definition process
Explain what lean requirements such as Features, User Stories, Epics, Scenarios, etc. look like in a lean and agile world
Apply lean principles to known business analysis techniques

Course content

4 sections • 20 lectures • 46m total length

Welcome to the Course2:06
Get to know your instructor and learn what topics will be covered in this overview.
Four Philosophies Dominate Current IT Development3:31
A brief look at modern software development methods, their primary focus and methodologies.
Potential Wastes in Business Analysis and Requirements Discovery3:17
Traditional Business Analysis contains a lot of waste. The lecture will show you the 9 most common wastes.
Six Lean Principles to Combat Waste in Business Analysis3:38
Lean or Agile Business Analysis is about combating waste. After this lecture you know which changes are necessary for your to your current Business Analysis Process to eliminate waste and optimally support new software development methods.
The Shift Focus from Project to Product in Lean and Agile1:24
The importance of understanding the difference between project and product is at the heart of understanding how business analysis must change to support Lean and Agile software development.

Requirements Constructs in an Agile, Lean Environment5:11
Software developers need requirements differently than in the past. This lecture explains the new forms that IT requirements have in a lean and agile environment?
Product Backlogs and Other Requirements Repositories and Kanban Boards3:55
To communicate requirements to software developers, we still need to document them somehow and somewhere. However, the “traditional BRD" does not work in the lean and agile world. You probably know what I mean with "traditional BRD": Pages and Pages of documents with lots of sections which scream “Fill me or the document isn’t complete!”. This lecture shows what requirements repositories look like in a lean and agile world.
Manage (or Groom) and Seed Product Backlogs2:00
A Product Backlog needs grooming. What does this mean and what tools and techniques can you use to do it?
Know When to Do What in a Lean and Agile World1:50
The biggest difference between lean and traditional business analysis is the timing of the activities. Whereas conventionally business analysis has been primarily conducted at the start of a project, it is now an ongoing process throughout the product life cycle.

Create and Use a Product Vision (Next Big Thing)1:39
Learn the five fundamental questions that a Product Vision Statement answers.
Define a Minimum Viable (Buyable) Product
One critical component to the success of agile, continuous integration, and continuous delivery software development is defining a Minimum Viable Product.
Lean Requirements Communication Techniques3:29
Learn how to make the best use of other people's time as well as your own.
Lean Problem Analysis Reveals Business Needs1:30
What differentiates great business analysts is an artistic ability to comprehend a problem that has not yet been solved and guide stakeholders to define the right solution that would provide significant value to the end customer.
Write SMART Features, Requirements, User Stories, and Epics3:02
Apply the SMART acronym to lean and agile software requirements constructs.
Use Cynefin to Manage Uncertainty3:38
Cynefin is an amazing new technique that belongs in every business analyst's tool box. The Cynefin framework exists to help us realize that all requirements are not created equal and to help us understand that different situations might require different responses to successfully navigate them.
Right-Size Epics, Features, User Stories, and Requirements0:56
In today's software development environment, good User Stories tend to be small. They typically represent at a few person-weeks worth of work. Typically, a Product Owner or the business side teams will make Features, Epics, and User Stories ready for developers.
Develop, Present, and Analyze Visual Models0:58
A picture still says more than a thousand words. But for the models to be "lean", they need the right level of detail for a given target audience.
Acceptance or Business-Facing Testing1:08
Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) are increasingly popular development methods for agile teams. Automating Acceptance Testing is a prerequisite for successful implementation of Continuous Delivery.

Requirements

No tools or knowledge required
Interest in Business Analysis for Information Technology (IT) and Software Requirements Definition / Analysis

Description

Take the Path to LEAN Business Analysis (as it relates to Information Technology)

In today’s world, you and your organization must be responsive, flexible, and make things happen quickly. You must do more with less – and faster. You no longer have business as usual, so why do business analysis as usual?

With the widespread adoption of Agile, software development has gone through some serious remodeling. Agile teams build robust products incrementally and iteratively, requiring fast feedback from the business community to define ongoing work. As a result, the process of defining IT requirements is evolving rapidly. Backlogs replace requirements definition documents. User Stories, Epics and Features replace requirement statements. Scenarios and Examples replace test cases. The timing of business analysis activities is shifting like sand.

This course is a brief overview of how you can reduce waste in Business Analysis practices to optimally support the new lean and agile software development world. You will learn about topics such as:

· The purpose of a product roadmap and a prioritized product backlog

· The concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

· Agile and Lean thinking applied to requirements discovery, analysis, and acceptance testing

· Lean requirement constructs such as Features, User Stories, Epics, Scenarios, Examples, etc.

· The importance of feedback from your customers to improve the product

Who this course is for:

Business Analysts
Product Owners
Subject Matter Experts
Project Managers
Managers of all levels
Business Architects
CIO
Anyone interested in Business Analysis for IT projects

What Is "LEAN" or "AGILE" Business Analysis?

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

How Do Lean Principles Affect the Business Analysis Process?5 lectures • 14min

Lean Requirements Are the Prime Deliverable of Lean Business Analysis4 lectures • 13min

What Lean Techniques Does the One Wearing the BA Hat Need?9 lectures • 16min

Wrap-up2 lectures • 3min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: