1. Making Business Analysts ready to take on the digital challenge
Fit for the future
Making Business Analysts ready to take on the digital challenge
Thank you for staying to the end of the seminars ….
I am Vicky Di Ciacca – one of the directors at Be Positive
What I am going to talk about tonight is one of the main challenges facing Business Analysts – both as individuals and across the industry
We are going to look at BA in an Agile delivery environment – which is probably the primary delivery framework for digital projects
We are going to look at why transitioning to Agile might be difficult and how to make that transition

2. About Be Positive 2 So… a little bit about Be Positive
We are Business Analysts – and between us have years and years of analysis experience.
We do Business Analysis, Teach BA, And help cust build their BA capability
We are passionate about BA and can sometimes get quite geeky about it
Believe that good BA underpins project success but not complacent and know that things are changing
We are based in Edinburgh but work across Scotland, the rest of the UK, the rest of Europe and have recently set up an office in Dublin 2

3. What is Business Analysis?
I know it’s late – but everyone Stand Up - remain standing if you have ever had the title BA or have iit now or have written requirements
BA is something that most of us have touched on at some point – writing requirements modelling processes
It might be something that we have done on route to a different role or where we are enjoying our careers
We know the role of the BA has changed as is changing but the core competencies are the same and the reasons why BAs are on projects remain the same.
And we do find that we often have to justify our existence but the three key benefits good analysis brings to projects are:
Quality – get it right rather than put it right, think about the grapg that steve showed earlier – cost of fixing errors
Better solutions – looking at the right solution because we understand the right problem, the underlying business need, and we uncover the important stuff – the high priority things that really matter
Risk reduction – Id risks early on, keep an audit trail of decisions, reduce the risk of delivering the wrong solution and can lead to more efficient testing 3

4. Sometimes it feels like ……..
I know it’s late – but everyone Stand Up - remain standing if you have ever had the title BA or have iit now or have written requirements
BA is something that most of us have touched on at some point – writing requirements modelling processes
It might be something that we have done on route to a different role or where we are enjoying our careers
We know the role of the BA has changed as is changing but the core competencies are the same and the reasons why BAs are on projects remain the same.
And we do find that we often have to justify our existence but the three key benefits good analysis brings to projects are:
Quality – get it right rather than put it right, think about the grapg that steve showed earlier – cost of fixing errors
Better solutions – looking at the right solution because we understand the right problem, the underlying business need, and we uncover the important stuff – the high priority things that really matter
Risk reduction – Id risks early on, keep an audit trail of decisions, reduce the risk of delivering the wrong solution and can lead to more efficient testing 3

5. What is Agile?
Show of hands – who knows about Agile? Who has worked on Agile, who’s knows about Agile ish……
Cannon ball / missile
It’s an approach that is iterative and incremental, rapidly delivers business value and requires collaboration and it’s the most popular choice for digital projects, enabling teams to test and learn from mistakes , deliver value quickly, and see quick results
Welcomes change, don’t do all the analysis up front,
This can be unnerving for BAS – it’s a very different approach to analysis. We are now going to hear from Gillian, one of our experienced BAs at B Pos about her experience of transitioning to agile. 4

6. MODELLING AND VISUALISATION
Using core BA Competencies
MODELLING AND VISUALISATION
COMMUNICATION
So you can see from G’s experience that there are lots of areas where BA skills are valuable
Communication – vital on a BA project – whenever I ask delegates on a training course to design their ideal BA, communication comes out as the top skill
Visibility – using or skills in modelling – from high level models such as the lean canvas in business case to detailed process and data models
And making sure we rae doing the right thing by linking the project back to the strategic vision, by constantly questioning why we are doing what we are doing.
LINKS ACROSS THE PROJECT 6

7. What’s so different about Agile for BAs
Analysis
Build
Design
Test
Implement
But there are differences
Heightened focus on business value rather than documenting things
Face to face communication becomes more important - there should be more of a feeling that we are all in it together
We iterate to get to a solution – it might not always work so we adjust the approach and we analyse and design at the same time
But why is this important
Investigation
Refinement
Consolidation 7

8. The Agile Lingo 7 But there are differences G talked about Lingo
We have to deal with user stories and epics
Show and tell and retrospectives
Requirements catalogues become product back logs
We have product owners, scrum masters, phrases such as the 3 amigos (business, dev, test) 7

9. Demand for Agile BAs
The role of the BA is changing and that’s because the nature of projects and organisations are changing
Obvious for the newer tech driven organisations
Increasingly true for the larger more traditional companies who in the past have mainly focused on process automation – now they are having to look at different models driven by the actions of competitors and disruptors in the industry.
And it’s been these large companies that have, particularly in the Scottish market, been the major employers of BA skills
We felt the pain recently when we were recruiting BAs to work on a customer assignment – agile was key and we really struggled to recruit Business Analysts 8

10. Addressing the skills gap
70/20/10
A model for skills development
So how do we fill the gap
At be pos, believe in 70/20/10 model for skills development
70 through experience – all our BAs get some experience on agile projects – some find they need to take a side step to develop these competencies – maybe stepping across from a lead role or focus more on test than analysis for a couple of projects or mak etheir first project in area where they have domain expertise
20 through peer support – formal and informal mentoring, internal special interest groups, and external groups – there are local BA meetups in Edinburgh and Glasgow and but also not BA focused groups - lean agile meet ups as well
10 – formal training and accreditation were we recommend the Agile BA training and accreditation from the Agile Project Management Group
Lets hear from Gillian again on how she bridged the gap 9

11. The Agile BA Summary
So Agile is important for BAs and BAs can add value to agile projects
We can
Tell the story and bring the change to life
We can facilitate faster decisions, we know the detail, or if we don’t we know who does – we are at the centre of communications
We deliver what the business need by questioning ‘why – and model that behaviour to the rest of the team so it becomes endemic
So it makes sense for BAs to develop those agile skills and meet the needs of the rapidly changing project world.
And I’m going to leave the last word to Gillian ……

12. Any Questions? info@be-positive.co.uk www.be-positive.co.uk
Thank you – and Gillian is here to answer any of the really difficult questions
+44 (0) 13