Agile + DevOps West 2019 - Business Analyst - Requirements

For many agile practitioners, software metrics beyond a burndown chart are little understood or, perhaps, very scary because poor metrics can be worse than no metrics. In this enlightening session, Larry Maccherone explores how you and your organization can use metrics to bring management and lean/agile teams closer rather than allowing metrics to become a wedge that drives them into conflict. Larry covers the entire lifecycle of the metrics process—from metric selection to reporting data. Join Larry to gain an understanding of a wide range of concepts including common (101-level) metrics...

What do users really need? Do they really know what they need? Although developers and testers are expected to implement stories and requirements that add real value, users often describe wants rather than needs and ask for features rather than solutions. Rob Sabourin shares his experiences applying task analysis using the “critical incident method” to better understand user processes and determine needs and desired solutions. Rob does not ask “what the system should do for the user” but rather, learns “what the user does with the system.” The critical incident task analysis method is a...

Do your metrics track what matters most to your organization, or do they merely quantify your adherence to a process? Is that process a good proxy for real results? In your environment? How do you know? Discover where to look for elusive, real outcomes. Join Cheryl Hammond to learn how to study indicators for your important metrics so you can recognize them when you encounter them in the wild. Understand how to monitor the health and relevance of your outcomes, and commit to the constant care needed to keep them vibrant. You'll take back a renewed appreciation for the beauty of a wild,...

Are you curious about design thinking? Hungry to experience it for yourself? Don’t just watch from the sidelines—come give it a try! This is a hands-on, experimental session that will be a fun and engaging experience with design thinking tools. You’ll learn some of the core values of design thinking, including how human-centered design, empathy for the people you are designing for, and feedback from users are fundamental to good design. You'll learn that experimentation and prototyping are not simply a way to validate your idea, but an integral part of your innovation process....

Many agile teams rework previously deployed stories, even after plenty of in-sprint testing. Even well-groomed, refined stories, framed with typical, alternate, and error scenarios and gracefully described in well-formed Gherkin, continue to encounter all sorts of bugs. Software engineering consultant Rob Sabourin sees rework in over 20 percent of deployed stories, but he can show you how agile teams can drive rework down dramatically, often achieving near-zero rework after a story is done. Rob teaches teams to identify and implement relevant testing activities above and beyond those...