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What is BUSINESS Agility?
I've been to a few of the big business agility conferences in recent years. The conferences highlight the benefits and challenges of bringing agility into non-IT environments. One conference had a unique format that included several sets of 20-minute “TED style” talks...
4 Ways to Boost the Impact of Agile BAs
The Agile Business Analyst role is still murky for many organizations. But the lack of clarity is a blessing in disguise. It gives BAs an amazing opportunity to advocate for themselves and help leaders understand how to deploy BA skills to serve agile projects. If you...
4 Agile Metrics Every Business Analyst And Product Owner Should Care About
It is true that “working software is the primary measure of progress” in Agile, but that is not our only measure. The Agile Principles also call us to reflect on how to become more effective. As business analysts and product owners, we should care about metrics that...
4 Roadblocks That Prevent You From Delivering Value To Customers
Business analysts get cast in many roles on project teams, but one of their most important roles is a customer advocate. Great Business Analysts understand customer needs and provide the voice of the customer to inform priorities and decisions. When the customer is...
3 Business Analyst Skills that Add Value Every Day!
Delivering value to the organization and it's end users is job #1 for all stakeholders and project team members. We know this, but we struggle to apply it. We get wrapped up in the day to day roller coaster of project life. We dart from meeting to meeting and we put...
Are you Walking Dead with Documents?
Is project documentation wearing you down into a zombie-like state? Are you spending all your time updating requirements and managing sign-off instead of helping your team think strategically about the value you are providing to end-users and the organization? In a...
Feature Thinking Vs Value Thinking: What’s The Difference And Who Cares Anyway?
How do you start your requirements process? Many agile and traditional teams start their process by defining features. While I don't always disagree with this approach, it's a potentially dangerous and slippery slope if teams are not careful. The mindset or context...
Get Off The Documentation Hamster Wheel
Most teams spend too much time on documentation. When planning, elicitation, and analysis are done well, documentation becomes simple and speedy. I think most people agree in theory. They are hungry to reduce documentation and speed up their requirements process, but...
Avoid These 4 Things During Your Daily Stand Up
I typically use my blogs to offer tips and tricks for business analyst and product owner roles, but in recent months, I have been hearing about and seeing several BAs stepping into ScrumMaster/Iteration Lead roles. Is this a trend? Well, I won't go that far, but...
4 Habits Agile Teaches That We Can All Refocus on in 2016!
Agile was born out of a conversation about what works well in software development. It wasn’t meant to be a dramatically “new” way of working. In the context of requirements, embracing agile empowers teams to focus on business value, user experience, and empathy, and...
Hearing Crickets on Web Conference Calls? 3 Tips to Get People to Participate!
Dead air and chirping crickets--is that what you hear when someone asks a question during virtual meetings? It's frustrating for the facilitator and the participants! How do you get people to participate? How do you get what you need from shy (or multitasking!)...
Want Faster Requirements? Build Them Like a Snowman!
“Requirements take too long!” That’s the message I am hearing from organization leaders across the country. That sentiment leads directly to pressure on BAs to get requirements done faster. Unfortunately, the most common strategy to speed up requirements is actually...