From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Agile principles 9–12 from a business analyst perspective

From the course: Agile Requirements Foundations

Agile principles 9–12 from a business analyst perspective

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- OK, so we've seen Agile principles one through eight, but we still have four more to go. So, number nine: continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. BAs work with the development team to understand technical risks, architecture, and technical depth. The BA boosts technical excellence by helping the development team understand the product vision and roadmap. In turn, the development team helps the BA and product owner with prioritization, by communicating technical risks and helping the team understand how decisions impact value to the customer. Next, number 10: simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential. Wait a minute, what does that say? Yep, maximize what's not done. BAs ensure that many backlog items actually never get done. Why? Because the BA and product owner are working together to make sure only the most important things get done. They evaluate backlog items to make sure they align with the vision and the future. BAs refine the backlog to shift the team's focus to the highest priority items. BAs need to have a ruthless focus on value and analyze items submitted to the backlog for their contribution to value. This principle also applies to the work of BAs in terms of what gets documented. Lightweight documentation and models are key parts of the principles for BAs. Only do enough work to meet the purpose and add value to the team. This may mean taking a photo of a drawing on a whiteboard, rather than recreating it in a modeling tool. And number 11: the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. The BA has a big part in prioritizing what the team works on. To do this well, BAs must identify and act on changing requirements. Requirements emerge and evolve as the team learns. Architectures, requirements, and designs change. These changes cannot be predicted. The team needs to work hard to discover them from building, experimenting, and getting feedback. And last, number 12: at regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. BAs participate in the team's retrospectives. Frequent retrospectives drive continuous improvement and change the way the team works, to maximize value to the users and the organization. As BAs, it also helps to look at our own work and retrospect with ourselves on what went well and what we can do to improve things for the next iteration. For example, did we, as a team, engage in deep dialog and discovery of requirements? Did I do lightweight modeling and did it help the dialog with the team? Was I focused on value to the customer? So, now we have covered all 12 principles. The principles give BAs guidance on how to demonstrate the Agile values. Remember, Agile is more about these principles than any tool, methodology, ceremony, or technique. You can bring a little agility to any project environment.

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