Business Analyst

Tutorials

MB Software Requirements Fundamentals for BAs, Testers, and Developers NEW

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

You deal with software requirements all the time. Whether you are a developer in an agile environment, an analyst who identifies and documents requirements for plan-driven development, a software designer who studies requirements as the basis for agile development, a tester who employs or often must discover requirements as the foundation of test cases, or a technical user who describes your needs to development, you need the right approaches and skills to develop and interpret software requirements.

MD Specification by Example: Mastering Agile Testing

Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep up with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall verification process―finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace a “test last” mentality with “specification by example.” Practice “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins. Learn to switch from tests as verification to tests as specification and guide development with concrete examples written in the language of your business.

ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking—and More NEW

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and, instead, focus only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into test-driven thinking that is meaningful to testers, developers, product owners, and others. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing.

MI CANCELLED - Seven Principles of Impossible Thinking

Presentation Cancelled

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

This Tutorial has been cancelled.

MM The Role of the Agile Business Analyst

Steve Adolph, Blue Agility

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 1:00pm

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.

MO It’s All About Me™: Owning Your Behavior, Improving Your Team NEW

Doc List, Doc List Enterprises

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 1:00pm

Successful high-performing teams have many common attributes. One is their ability to function together collaboratively. In order to collaborate well, they must communicate effectively and get beyond some of the members' personal biases and quirks. In this interactive workshop, Doc List shares common problems with behavior, motivation, emotions, and interpretation that frequently get in the way. Participate in exercises that lead you to understand―and sometimes expose―your own blind spots and limitations.

TB Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence NEW

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Every hour of every day in every country where business is conducted, the same scene plays out―dozens of well-paid people sitting in a conference room being bored senseless. Death by a thousand slides. This mind numbing, soul crushing, grotesquely expensive experience ends here and now! James Whittaker reveals the secrets to conceiving, building, and delivering a great presentation. Whatever your level of presentation skills, this tutorial will hone them. Learn how to build a compelling story from the ground up. Receive advice on how to remember and recall that story as you deliver it.

TC Eight Steps to Kanban

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Transitioning to agile can be difficult—and often downright wrenching—for teams, so many organizations are turning to kanban instead. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual evolution to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Ken Pugh shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization.

TF Risk Management: Project Management for Grown-Ups NEW

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Many organizations are childlike. They blithely plan the project as if nothing will go wrong. And then, when something does go wrong, they are shocked and dismayed. Risk management is not just worrying about your project, and it is not about running away from risk. Risk management for software projects is all about when you make decisions and when you take action. How do you deal with uncertainty? When do you decide to deal with a risk while it is still just a risk, and when do you decide to wait to see if the risk does turn into a problem and manage it then?

TL Get the Requirements Right―the First Time NEW

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 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.

TM Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities NEW

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Innovation is a word frequently tossed around in organizations today. The standard cliché is “Do more with less.” People and teams want to be innovative but often struggle with how to define, prioritize, implement, and track their innovation efforts. Jennifer Bonine shares the Innovation Types model to give you new tools to evolve and expand your innovation capabilities. Find out if your innovation ideas and efforts match your team and company goals. Learn how to classify your innovation and improvement efforts as core (to the business) or context (essential but non-revenue generating).

TO Security Testing for Test Professionals

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Your organization is doing well with functional, usability, and performance testing. However, you know that software security is a key part of software assurance and compliance strategy for protecting applications and critical data. Left undiscovered, security-related defects can wreak havoc in a system when malicious invaders attack. If you don’t know where to start with security testing and don’t know what you are—or should be—looking for, this tutorial is for you.

TS Specifying Non-Functional Requirements NEW

John Terzakis, Intel

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Non-functional requirements present unique challenges for authors, reviewers, and testers. Non-functional requirements often begin as vague concepts such as “the software must be easy to install” or “the software must be intuitive and respond quickly.” As written, these requirements are not testable. Definitions of easy, intuitive, and quickly are open to interpretation and dependent on the reader’s experiences. In order to be testable, non-functional requirements must be quantifiable and measurable.

Concurrent Sessions

BW2 Requirements Are Requirements—or Maybe Not

Robin Goldsmith, Go Pro Management, Inc.

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 11:30am

Many people talk about requirements. They use identical terms and think they have a common understanding. Yet, one says user stories are requirements; another claims user stories must be combined with requirements; and yet another has a different approach. These “experts” seem unaware of the critical inconsistencies of their positions. No wonder getting requirements right remains a major challenge for many projects.

BW3 This Is Not Your Father's Career: Advice for the Modern Information Worker

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 11:30am

In an era where college dropouts run successful companies and creative entrepreneurs out-earn corporate vice presidents, working smart is clearly the new working hard. James Whittaker turns on their head the career rules that guided past generations and provides a new career manual for working smarter that speaks to the need for creativity, innovation, and insight. James teaches a set of skills designed for the modern era of working for companies, both big and small.

BW5 We Need It by the End of the Year: What's Your Estimate?

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 1:30pm

Letting good estimates made by smart people be overwhelmed by the strong desires of powerful people is a cardinal sin of project management. Accurate estimates are the foundation of all critical project decisions regarding staffing, functionality, delivery date, and budget. How do we properly estimate in a world where tradition declares that the deadline is set before the requirements are even known? Tim Lister offers practical advice on dealing with this thorny issue.

BW6 EARS: The Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax

John Terzakis, Intel

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 1:30pm

One key to specifying effective functional requirements is minimizing misinterpretation and ambiguity. By employing a consistent syntax in your requirements, you can improve readability and help ensure that everyone on the team understands exactly what to develop. John Terzakis provides examples of typical requirements and explains how to improve them using the Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax (EARS). EARS provides a simple yet powerful method of capturing the nuances of functional requirements. John explains that you need to identify two distinct types of requirements.

BW7 You Said What? Becoming Aware of the Things We Say

Doc List, Doc List Enterprises

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 1:30pm

Most of us take language for granted. We use words without thinking about how they may affect others and then are surprised at the reaction we get. Learn the importance of language in building and maintaining high performing agile teams. Become more aware of the words you choose and the impact of those words on your listeners. Doc List presents a series of exercises in a game show format. Participants attempt to identify loaded words in seemingly simple statements and questions. Some of the exercises are written; others are acted out in role play.

BW9 Gamification and Arbejdsglæde (Danish: Work Gladness/Joy)

Ryan Kleps, Boeing IT

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:45pm

You get paid for doing that? Is it possible to both work and have fun in a large corporate setting? Can joy be made part of the workplace? For the past few years Ryan Kleps and his colleagues have been conducting an informal social experiment using gamification (before they knew it had a name) in their corporate training modules to encourage participation, engagement, and enjoyment.

BW10 Non-Functional Requirements: Forgotten, Neglected, and Misunderstood

Paul Reed, EBG Consulting

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:45pm

Implementing non-functional requirements is essential to build the right product. Yet teams often struggle with when and how to discover, specify, and test these requirements. Many teams neglect non-functional requirements up front, considering them less important or unrelated to user requirements; other teams specify them incompletely or with untestable and non-measurable attributes.

BW11 You, Inc.: Building Your Personal Brand

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:45pm

Building the right personal brand is one of the most critical success factors in today’s workplace. Organizations develop a brand and image, but not many individuals think about their brand on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media outlets. Every person with career aspirations should be actively shaping their brand. As we interact with people, we want to influence them to support our efforts—approving projects, budgets, and funding; supporting our next career move; or recommending us for that promotion or raise we want.

BW13 Lean Software Development Is for Everyone

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 4:15pm

Lean software engineering emphasizes continuous delivery of high quality applications. Ken Pugh explains the principles and practices that form the basis of lean software development―concentrating on developing a continuous flow by eliminating delays and loopbacks; delivering quickly by developing in small batches; emphasizing high quality which decreases delays due to defect repair; making policies, process and progress transparent; optimizing the whole rather than individual steps; and becoming more efficient by decreasing waste.

BW14 Big Data Business Analytics: Get Ready for Tomorrow’s Projects

Candase Hokanson, Seilevel

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 4:15pm

Normal people don't look at data sets just for fun; they analyze them to make business decisions. More and more often, business analysts and product managers find themselves on strategic projects that require turning large—and often highly complex—data sets into meaningful information from which conclusive decisions and actions can be derived. In most IT organizations today, analysis of big data is a reality and will grow in significance as businesses look to better understand capturing, structuring, and learning from their data.

BT9 Product Management: Optimizing the What to Develop

Ernani Ferrari, Mondo Strategies

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 1:30pm

Most organizations struggle with the processes that define what software they should develop, when to do it, and how it will evolve over time—all parts of the product management role and activities. Because repeatable processes have not been established and organizations cope with conflicting priorities, teams stress needlessly over day-to-day decisions. Product management requires a fundamental company-wide understanding of its goals and opportunities coupled with the discipline to optimize development and maintenance efforts.