The Power of the Agile Business Analyst: 30 Surprising Ways a Business Analyst Can Add Value to Your Agile Development Team

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CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS AGILE?

1

‘Agile’ is a collective term for methodologies (and

practices) that have emerged over the past two decades to

increase the relevance, quality, flexibility, and business

value of software solutions. These adaptive management

approaches are specifically intended to address the

problems that have historically plagued software

development and service delivery activities in the IT

industry, including budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-

quality outputs, and dissatisfied users.

Although there is a broad range of Agile methodologies in

the IT industry – from software development and project

delivery approaches to strategies for software maintenance

– all Agile methodologies share the same basic objectives:

• To replace upfront planning with incremental planning

that adapts to the most current information available

(‘Apply, Inspect, Adapt’).

• To minimize the impact of changing requirements by

providing a low overhead structure to accommodate

variations to the originally identified requirements

throughout the project.

• To build in quality upfront and then relentlessly

confirm the integrity of the solution throughout the

process.

1

For those who follow this author’s writing, some of the introductory material from

Everything You Want to Know about Agile: How to get Agile results in a less-than-Agile

organization, Jamie Lynn Cooke, IT Governance Publishing (2012) has been adapted for

use in this book, serving the same purpose as in the original.

1: What is Agile?

23

• To address technical risks as early in the process as

possible to reduce the potential for cost and time

blowouts as the project progresses.

• To entrust and

empower staff to

continuously deliver

high business-value

outputs.

• To provide frequent

and continuous

business value to the

organization by focusing staff on regularly delivering

the highest-priority features in the solution as fully

functional, fully tested, production-ready capabilities.

• To encourage ongoing communication between the

business areas and project team members to increase

the relevance, usability, quality, and acceptance of

delivered solutions.

The last two bullet points in this list cannot be emphasized

enough. Where traditional waterfall software development

projects focus on using extensive upfront documentation to

detail user requirements before development work can even

begin, Agile approaches rely on shared communication

between the development team and the business users

throughout the project, with the business users' highest

priority requested features regularly presented to them as

fully functional software to confirm whether or not the

delivered solution meets their requirements.

Some of the most common Agile methodologies (also

referred to as ‘Agile Methods’) include:

• iterative strategies for managing software development

projects, such as Scrum, Dynamic Systems

Agile methodologies are

common-sense approaches for

applying the finite resources of

an organization to

continuously deliver low risk,

high business-value software

solutions

1: What is Agile?

24

Development Method (DSDM), Feature-Driven

Development (FDD

TM

), the Agile Unified Process

(AUP), and Lean Development

• strategies for optimizing software development work,

such as eXtreme Programming (XP

TM

) and the

Rational Unified Process (RUP)

• strategies for managing software maintenance and

support activities, such as Kanban.

These Agile methodologies have been (and continue to be)

successfully used by thousands of organizations

worldwide

2

, most notably in the United States and Europe.

Some of the more prominent organizations using Agile

methodologies include Nokia Siemens Networks

3

, Yahoo!

4

,

Google

5

, Microsoft

®6

, BT

7

, Bankwest

8

, SunCorp

9

, and

Wells Fargo

10

.

2

As evidenced by the number of signatories to the Agile Manifesto (Agilemanifesto.org)

as at June 2013

.

3

NokiaSiemens and Agile Development, Haapio P, JAOO (2008):

http://jaoo.dk/file?path=/jaoo-aarhus-

2008/slides//PetriHaapio_CanAGLobalCompany.pdf.

4

Lessons from a Yahoo Scrum Rollout, Mackie K (2008):

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/02/lessons-from-a-yahoo-scrum-rollout.aspx

.

5 Scaling Scrum & Distributed Teams – Scrum Tuning: Lessons Learned at Google,

Sutherland J (2006): youtube.com/watch?v=WUQfuhdOZ8s

.

6

Microsoft Lauds Scrum Method for Software Projects, Taft D K (2005):

eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Microsoft-Lauds-Scrum-Method-for-Software-Projects/

.

7

Agile Coaching in British Telecom, Meadows L and Hanly S (2006):

Agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/144-Agile-coaching-in-british-

telecom.

1: What is Agile?

25

8

Bankwest goes Agile: project time slashed, Braue D (2010): zdnet.com/bankwest-goes-

Agile-project-time-slashed-1339306091/.

9

Suncorp goes Agile for 19k desktop integration project (2008):

itnews.com.au/News/130927,suncorp-goes-Agile-for-19k-desktop-integration-

project.aspx.

10

Is Agile Development Only for Nerds?, Matta E (2008):

http://radiowalker.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/is-Agile-development-only-for-nerds/

.