by John Parker | Mar 14, 2014 | Business Analysis, Project Management, Uncategorized |
Normally, trends and projections come out in December or January. These are a little late, but at least they still make the first quarter in 2014. Here are my predictions of key trends that we will see affect business analysis and project management in 2014. 1. Agile Continues to Grow – Agile adoption will continue to grow. This will mean many changes in terms of how requirements are developed and managed. Requirement “shall” statements will be replaced with user stories. The three C’s model of users stories: Card, Confirmation, and Conversations will continue to grow. PMs and BAs will continue to redefine their roles in the agile world of self-managing teams and product backlogs. 2. Managing Data not Documents – As agile adoption continues, the need for large paper based requirement documents will go away. Requirements will be managed as data in a backlog, not as long paper-based business requirement documents (BRDs) or Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS). 3. Dual-Track Agile Takes Off – Agile will be difficult and a cultural challenge for many organizations where there are multiple teams and resources are not collocated. “User story hell” will become a reality for many organizations as teams continue to spend more and more time grooming the backlog. Many organizations will adopt dual-track agile or some variant to better manage discovery activities. This will enable lower costs as requirements will be validated using less expensive methods than code. 4. More Emphasis on Business Change – The BABOK Version 3 will be released sometime in 2014. There are big changes coming to the role of business analysis. The focus will be much...
by Jenny Boronyak | Mar 5, 2014 | Agile, Project Management, Uncategorized |
In our previous blog on Dual-Track Agile, John Parker described the benefits of this emerging concept. Dual-track agile is an approach to agile development in which project teams are constantly working on the discovery and delivery of solutions that will deliver business value and obtain user adoption. By following the principles of dual-track agile, project managers and their teams can eliminate a lot of frustration and costs in agile development. Below are the key guidelines to implementing dual-track agile in your projects. 1. Put together a proficient discovery team with expert capabilities who are able to blend entrepreneurial skills and research gathered from the market. Your team needs to have the following skills so they can thoroughly and effectively understand the problem, recommend the best solution, and align the project with business needs: User Experience/User-Centered Design Business Analysis Pricing and Financial Analysis Customer Discovery Impact/Gap Analysis Focus on Collaboration Experimentation Attitude 2. Have the discovery team working one or more months ahead of the development team. The discovery team should be constantly populating the backlog with validated ideas and user stories. 3. With the help of the discovery team, create an understanding of your customers’ core problem before gathering ideas/features. Do not start putting together a solution until you have a complete understanding of the problem. Use Root Cause Analysis techniques like Fishbone Diagrams or The Five Whys to dig deep into the source of the problem and set the context for the project. 4. Develop a shared vision by hosting a vision planning workshop. Invite the product owner, business stakeholders, technical subject matter experts (SMEs), user-centered designers, and...
by John Parker | Feb 21, 2014 | Agile, Business Analysis, Project Management, Uncategorized |
The questions below came from our latest webinar on KPIs for Agile Project Managers and Business Analysts. What are some leading BA KPIs? Stakeholder satisfaction by Feature (Satisfaction) Stakeholder activity by Feature (Engagement) Cycle time from ideation to Feature approval Business value per Feature (Value) Test coverage for Feature (Quality) Number of defects per Feature (Quality) Feature Completeness (Inspection or Peer Review) Is it common practice to have stakeholders sign off on KPIs prior to development? Yes, however, stakeholders should also be actively involved in their development. Getting stakeholder approval is key for all KPIs. What is a good way to minimize the time to get signoff on requirements WITHOUT getting poor/missing/misunderstood requirements? Optimally, requirements should be reviewed as they are being created. To do this requires an automated requirements tool such as Enfocus Requirements Suite™. Here are some specific recommendations: Break down the solution scope into separate independent components (Features). Validate each Feature and eliminate Features that provide little or no value. Define solution requirements only for validated features. Assign a BA and a Sponsor to each Feature Allow stakeholders to review and comment on each requirement as they are being developed using an automated tool such as Enfocus Requirements Suite.™ Obtain review and signoff on a Feature by Feature basis using stakeholders that are involved in that feature. This procedure can prevent a lot of noise. Measure the cycle time from Ideation to validation and validation to acceptance. Where can I get the benchmark for any metric? There are many benchmarking services, including: APQC The Hackett Group InfoTech Enfocus Requirements Suite™ (RequirementCoach™) Process Intelligence What tool was...
by Jenny Boronyak | Feb 11, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
User stories provide agile practitioners with great success because they help focus on the value being delivered to users. As Mike Cohn writes in his book, User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development: “Rather than allowing product backlog items to describe new features, issues to investigate, defects to be fixed, and so on, the product backlog must describe some item of value to a user or to the product owner.” And that’s why a key component to agile software development is effectively managing the user story backlog. Typically in an agile operation, an initial set of user stories is defined as part of the discovery process, and additional user stories are continuously added by the team as needed during delivery. Defining user stories is a convenient way of capturing requirements at a high level of detail while focusing on user goals—which is why they can be so successful at helping you determine what is valuable to your uers. Good user stories are much more than just statements. A good user story consists of three elements, commonly referred to as the three C’s: 1. Card The user story should be able to fit on a 3”x5” note card, efficiently capturing the most important information. While this “C” sometimes refers to an actual note card, we mean it to refer to the optimal size of a user story. As Jeffries writes, the card should not contain all information about the requirement, but rather just enough to be used in planning to identify the requirement and remind the project team of the story. Each user story should follow the standardized format of:...
by John Parker | Jan 29, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
The Standish Group 2013 CHAOS Manifesto Report titled “Think Big Act Small” presents two core concepts to achieve more successful projects. The first key is to break a project down into small independent components that can be managed and delivered separately. The second key is eliminating features that provide little or no business value. Let’s examine both of these. Breaking a Project Down It is important not to confuse breaking down projects as simply defining milestones, phases, critical paths, and activities. These are simply components of a single large project. It literally means breaking a project down into a series of independent smaller projects. Each smaller project is defined, developed, and delivered independently producing a valuable result. The Standish Group says “A large project has virtually no chance of coming in on time, on budget, and within scope, which is The Standish Group definition of a successful project.” The Standish Group reports that large projects are 10 times more likely to fail, meaning the project will be canceled or will not be used because it outlived its useful life prior to implementation. In contrast, small projects have more than a 70% chance of success. Breaking down a large project into a series of smaller projects does not require migrating to agile, although use of the agile methodology can help in this regard. Breaking one large project into five or ten smaller projects and delivering each one independently can greatly improve the likelihood of overall success. Breaking down a project is not always easy, but can be done. The writers of this CHAOS Manifesto Report state flatly that they have come...
