Business Analysis Agility: Solve the Real Problem, Deliver Real Value, First Edition

Business Analysis Agility: Solve the Real Problem, Deliver Real Value, First Edition

by James Robertson, Suzanne Robertson
Released November 2018
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780134847146

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Book description

Understand and Solve Your Customers' Real Problems with Agile Business Analysis

To deliver real value, you must understand what your customers truly value, and solve the problems they really need solved. Business analysis can help you do this—and it's as crucial in agile environments now as it always has been. In Business Analysis Agility, leading experts James Robertson and Suzanne Robertson show how to perform business analysis in an agile way: trying new things, adapting to changes and discoveries, staying flexible, and being quick. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience of hundreds of projects and organizations, the Robertsons help you prioritize relentlessly, focus investments on delivering value, and learn in ways that improve your results.

  • Uncover the real customer problems hidden behind assumptions and conventional solutions
  • Hypothesize potential solutions and quickly test them with safe-to-fail probes
  • Understand how people, hardware, software, organizations, and other components come together in an optimal customer experience
  • Write stories that help you find solutions that deliver more value to customers and the business
  • Think about problems and projects in more agile, nimble, and open-minded ways

The Robertsons' approach to analytical thinking will be valuable to anyone who wants to build better software in agile environments: analysts, developers, team leads, project managers, software architects, and other team members and stakeholders at all levels of experience.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents at a Glance
  5. Contents
  6. Foreword
  7. Preface
    1. What This Book Will Do for You
    2. Who Is This Book For?
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. About the Authors
  10. Contents at a Glance
  11. Contents
  12. 1 Agile Business Analysis
    1. Why Is This “agile”?
    2. Möbius Strip
    3. Why Are We Concerned with Business Analysis?
    4. Bernie’s Books—An Example in Agile Business Analysis
    5. Analytical Thinking
    6. Bernie’s Business Goals
    7. Customer Segments
    8. Value Proposition
    9. How Can I Solve the Problem?
    10. Safe-to-Fail Probes
    11. Investigate the Solution Space
    12. Designing the Solution
    13. Opportunities
    14. Write and Manage Stories
    15. agile Business Analysis
    16. Business Analysis for Traditional or Sequential Projects
    17. The Changing Emphasis of Business Analysis
  13. 2 Do You Know What Your Customers Value?
    1. Problem Versus Solution
    2. Identify the Customer Segments
    3. Prioritize the Customer Segments
    4. Value Propositions
    5. Talking to the Customers
    6. What Impact Will Your Solution Have?
    7. Business Value
    8. Is It Risky to Deliver the Value?
    9. The Moving Target
    10. Wrong Until Right
    11. Summary
  14. 3 Are You Solving the Right Problem?
    1. The Problem
    2. Are You Solving the Right Problem?
    3. The Customer’s Needs
    4. Talking to the Customers
    5. Uncovering the Essence of the Problem
    6. Referred Pain
    7. Disguised Problems
    8. The Real Scope of the Problem
    9. Are You Solving the Problem That You Want to Solve?
    10. Now You Need a Solution
    11. Options for Solutions
    12. How Might We?
    13. Techniques for Generating Ideas
    14. Personas
    15. Portraying Your Solutions
    16. Safe-to-Fail Probes
    17. Outcome and Impact
    18. Systems Thinking
    19. Choosing the Best Option
    20. Summary
  15. 4 Investigate the Solution Space
    1. Why Are We Investigating?
    2. Defining the Scope of the Solution Space
    3. Business Events
    4. Scoping by Business Event
    5. Finding All the Stakeholders
    6. Investigating the Business Events
    7. Using Models for Your Investigation
    8. Live Modeling
    9. Business Rules
    10. Why Don’t I Skip Analysis and Just Write Stories?
    11. Contextual Inquiries
    12. Creative Observation
    13. Consider the Culture
    14. Summary
  16. 5 Designing the Business Solution
    1. Designing
    2. Useful, Usable, Used
    3. What Is Design?
    4. Good Design
    5. What Are You Designing?
    6. Designing the Information
    7. Designing the Interaction
    8. UX Design
    9. Designing Convenience
    10. Incremental, Iterative, and Evolutionary Design
    11. Enabling Technology
    12. Recording Your Design
  17. 6 Writing the Right Stories
    1. Business Events
    2. Writing Stories
    3. Story Maps
    4. Functional Stories
    5. Developing the Map
    6. Enhancing Your Stories
    7. Prioritizing the Map
    8. Kanban
    9. Minimum Viable Product
    10. Quality Needs
    11. Qualities: What Do They Look Like?
    12. Qualities at the Product Level
    13. Fit Criteria for Quality Needs
    14. The Volere Template
    15. Exceptions and Alternatives
    16. Stories and Development Cycles
    17. Summary
  18. 7 Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick
    1. Jack Be Nimble
    2. Wicked Problems and Gordian Knots
    3. Jack Be Quick
    4. Jack and Jacqueline Jump over the Candlestick
    5. Agile Business Analysis and Iterative Development Cycles
    6. And Jill Came Tumbling After
    7. Knowledge Artifacts
    8. Jack Sprat Could Eat No Fat
    9. Traditional Business Analysis
    10. The Requirements Document
    11. They Have Licked the Platter Clean
  19. Glossary
  20. Bibliography
  21. Index

Product information

  • Title: Business Analysis Agility: Solve the Real Problem, Deliver Real Value, First Edition
  • Author(s): James Robertson, Suzanne Robertson
  • Release date: November 2018
  • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
  • ISBN: 9780134847146