Business Analysis

Tutorials

TG SOLD OUT! User Stories: Across the Seven Product Dimensions

Paul Reed, EBG Consulting

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 8:30am

User stories are a powerful technique agile teams used to communicate requirements. Yet all too often, the stories are poorly written or even incomprehensible. Some stories are too big and overlap across delivery cycles. Others are too small and don’t deliver sufficient details for developers. Join Paul Reed to learn the Seven Product Dimensions—the 7 D’s—which yield “just right” stories that users and product owners can write and developers can understand. Explore and experience the Seven Dimensions: user, interface, action, data, control, quality, and environment.

TH The Flow of the Agile Business Analyst

Steve Adolph, WSA Consulting

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 8:30am

The business analyst (BA) role seems conspicuously absent from most agile methods. Does agile make the BA role obsolete? Certainly not! But how does a BA exploit the short cycle times and collaborative nature of agile methods? Drawing from the principles of lean product development flow, Steve Adolph introduces five principles for the agile BA—Open the Channels, Chart the Flow, Generate Flow, Lean Out the Flow, and Bridge the Flow. As a communicator, the BA must Open the Channels and Chart the Flow to align all stakeholders.

Concurrent Sessions

BW6 Find Requirements Defects to Build Better Software

John Terzakis, Intel

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 2:15pm

Requirements defects are often the source of the majority of all software defects. Discovering and correcting a defect during testing is typically twenty-five times more expensive than correcting it during the requirements definition phase. Identifying and removing defects early in the software development lifecycle provides many benefits including reduced rework costs, less wasted effort, and greater team productivity. This translates into software projects that deliver the committed functionality on schedule, within budget, and with higher levels of customer satisfaction.

BT10 A UX Strategy for Persona Research

Nellie LeMonier, Perforce Software, Inc.

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 3:45pm

Research into your users’ personas can provide deep insights into their needs and validate your product design. This research doesn’t have to take months; it can often be done in two weeks, during sprint 0. Unfortunately, many companies using agile methods don’t invest in personas and a UX strategy because they think they have no time or believe they already know enough about their users. We typically spend months to years developing a software product. Don’t we owe it to our users and ourselves to devote some time to researching and understanding them?