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Business Analyst

Keynotes

K4 Lean Software Delivery: Synchronizing Cadence with Context
Mik Kersten, Tasktop
Thu, 06/06/2013 - 12:45pm

Daily, we are told that adopting agile, PaaS, DevOps, crowdsourced testing, or any of the myriad of current buzzwords will help us deliver better software faster. However, for the majority of software development organizations, naïve agile transformations that don’t look beyond the needs of developers will fail to produce the promised results.

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Tutorials

MC Requirements Engineering: A Practicum
Erik van Veenendaal, Improve Quality Services BV
Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Identifying, documenting, and communicating software requirements are key to all successful IT projects. Common problems in requirements engineering are “How do we discover the real requirements?”, “How do we  document requirements?”, and “How do user stories fit into requirements?” Erik van Veenendaal answers these questions and more while helping you improve your skills in requirements engineering for both traditional and agile projects. With practical case studies and hands-on exercises, Erik illustrates requirements issues and solutions.

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MH Tuning and Improving Your Agility
David Hussman, DevJam
Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Are you using agile practices but struggling? If so, you are not alone. Experienced agile practitioners know that some practices are more difficult than others, and most need tuning over time. If you are looking for ways to get more value or improve your skills, this session will pass your acceptance tests. David Hussman shares his coaching tools for improving and tuning practices including product planning, roadmapping, story writing, planning sessions, and stand up meetings.

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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.

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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.

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TR Getting the Right Requirements—The First Time
Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild
Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

One group—customers, users, and business—need a software system to help them work more efficiently or make more money, but they don’t know how to build it. Another group—software developers and testers—know how to build the system, but they don’t know what it is supposed to do. Bridging this gap is where requirements—the work products describing the system accurately and concisely while at the same time not missing important customer and user needs—are essential.

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Concurrent Sessions

BW2 Building Customer Feedback Loops: Learn Quicker, Design Smarter
Sherif Mansour, Atlassian
Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:15am

Listening to your customers is critical to developing better software. Their feedback enables you to stay in sync with customer expectations, to make changes before those changes become costly, and to pivot if necessary. Sharif shares five practical tips for building, capturing, and scaling feedback loops, providing real examples of what his team has learned.

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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.

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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?

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AT6 Agile Requirements Is Not an Oxymoron
Paul Reed, EBG Consulting
Thu, 06/06/2013 - 2:15pm

Misconceptions abound about the way requirements fit—or don’t fit—into agile projects. Is “agile requirements” an oxymoron—two contradictory terms joined together? How is it possible for requirements to be agile? Do agile projects even need requirements? In reality, requirements are the basis for planning, analyzing, developing, and delivering agile projects. Paul Reed shares the value of requirements analysis on agile projects, the ways requirements form the basis for agile planning, and explains how effective agile teams collaborate to develop requirements.

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AT10 The Business Analyst’s Critical Role in Agile Projects
Mark Layton, Platinum Edge, Inc.
Thu, 06/06/2013 - 3:45pm

Are you a business analyst, wondering how you fit into agile projects? Are you a ScrumMaster who wants to work with business analysts for a stronger project team? Are you a product owner who needs to supercharge your product backlog? Mark Layton introduces you to the critical role of the business analyst on agile projects. Get the essential information business analysts need to know to be successful members of an agile project team. Learn how business analysts can use their product knowledge and requirements translation skills to support product owners and stakeholders.

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BT11 Building Quality In
Dawn Haynes, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Thu, 06/06/2013 - 3:45pm

Have you ever delivered software to testing only to receive unexpected feedback regarding quality issues of interoperability, reliability, usability, or testability? Or worse, delivered to customers a product that fully met its specifications but generated complaints and calls for urgent fixes? Substantial time and effort can be saved by understanding—before coding begins—the important quality factors a software system must have. Join Dawn Haynes to explore quick and effective ideas for defining quality factors for your software.

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