Week 4-6 : Newbie swotting as a Business Analyst
Read my previous post : Week 1-3 Newbie swotting as a Business Analyst. Read here
Hello friends! ☕️
It’s already mid-January and it has been 15 days passed the new year. Week 4 and 5 was X’mas week, so there’s no learning update for that. I am pretty excited to be back to work, not going to lie because the new team I am in has a whole different level of energy.
Like going back to Hogwarts, there’s alot to revise and to learn! Now that we are back, week #6 seems pretty intense compared to the first 3 weeks in December. It’s like a bullet train, we hopped on and hopped off from one tasks to another whilst also absorbing all new informations from the training. So here’s my takeaways for this week.
Agile 101 squeezed in an hour session was intense! 😓
Yep, we did that. We covered quite extensive information about Agile processes and techniques. In this blog post, you can find :
What is Agile process
3 key areas of a business analyst in Agile process :
Model
Method
Artefacts
Other activities that were covered in Week #6
Let’s delve in…
What is Agile process?
Agile development process provides solution to the increase in uncertainty and unpredictability within the industry by promoting faster delivery of well-designed products with self-organisig teams. - Krasamo.com
This process consisting of plan > design > develop > test > deploy > review > launch. This repeats itself in sprints.
Further resources, check out Krasamo.com
#Process
There are few main process that Business Analyst will need to familiarise with :
The Opportunities
Opportunities identified (Objective & Key Results (OKR))
Objective = What is the goal?
Key Results = How do you measure the goals?
Opportunities Sized
Method used to quantify potential impact of an initiative ahead of making decision to invest in it.
We usually use this in the measure of the key result
Used to prioritise and deprioritise an opportunity when comparing against all potential initiatives.
Effective way is to use a single North Star metric to assess all opportunities.
There are example of metrics we can use (to be discussed in the next section)
Discovery
A phase where we’ll discover and find answers to :
Why we building this?
Who are we building this for?
What value will it provide them?
When (high level) do we expect to deliver this?
Design
Activities that involved in this include defining the design of the new product. This is where we elaborate the business rules using User Story Maps (to be discussed in Method section later).
Planning
Pre-planning is where we’ll manage backlog and Business Analyst and team will consistently updating the backlog to ensure it is up to date.
At this stage, we will use ‘estimation’ to estimate the effort, complexity, dependencies, the amount of work and any risk or uncertainty.
Large development teams generate too much complexity for an empirical process to be usefu - The Scrum Guide. More about team size complexity on Agile QA
Delivery
On day to day, as a business analyst, one will be required to facilitate the team ceremonies like the following :
Kickoff - A ‘feature kick-off’ session when we are setting the context and updating the team about product’s feature.
Sprint showcase/ review - To demonstrate outcome at the end of the sprint. We gather information/ feedback on the work’s done (reference)
Sprint retrospective - It’s regular session where team reflects on the sprint’s performance and identifies areas for improvement. (reference)
Sprint planning - Session to discuss goal for the sprint together with the whole team.
Test & Learn
We manage quality of product through developing solutions quickly and adapting. For instance from test > adapt > change > learn > improve.
Test fast to learn fast. This is how team can de-risk project in the early stages.
This means, we will need to come up with a simple solutions as a proof of concept using Minimum Viable Product (MVP) ~ will be discussed in the method section.
Iterate
All of the above process when combined it is called as iteration and this will be repeated till the product is completely developed.
Knowledge Area Integrations
Through out the whole process and iteration, a business analyst will be expected to gather information, managing the documentation involved in ceremonies and making sure all artefacts are in placed and well-organised.
All BA that I have spoken to described their roles as “the hub of information and the glue that keep the team together”
#Three (3) Key Areas of Business Analyst
There 3 key areas of business analyst, which I’ve divided into model, method and artfiacts.
#1 Model
Communication & Team Complexity
Communication effectiveness is key to ensure a successful stakeholder management. Stakeholders in this context include the development team, the partners across domain and leadership team. Which is why it is important for BA to understand the team size complexity.
Illustration : Group Size and complexity
Leadership model - Although it is part of the many hats of a Business Analys, as a new BA (Associate level), it is not something that was stressed out for us to perform during this initial stage. However, there is basic expectation of ability to learn to take care to get to know people in terms of their individual needs and perspective.
#2 Method
Metrics. Few common examples of metrics to use are as below :
Revenue
Enrollment e.g user sign ups
Activation
Referrals
Engagement (how user interact with our product)
User satisfaction (NPS)
User Stories Mapping. What is visualised in the user story will help us define the following : (reference)
Epics - Overview stories or steps in the user stories. It is usually a high level view of a product feature.
User stories - It’s the goal from user’s perspective. It’s an outcome that developmet team aims to provide to users. It is also the smallest piece of work in an Agile framework with the purpose of articulating the values we will deliver to user (customer).
Task - The steps and activities that needs to happen to achieve the goal.
Writing user stories is written from user’s perspective. (Reference)
“As a [persona type - this is the WHO], I want to [action - this is the WHAT] so that [benefit - this is the WHY]
Acceptance Criteria are then being written as a detailed scope of requirements that must be satisfied for a product, user story or increment of work. It must be consise, clear, testable, focused on delivery, focus on ‘what’ features are and not ‘how’, and it includes functional and non-functional use cases.
Estimating
There are few estimating techniques that’re use at pre-planning process (refer Process section). In Agile, we use estimation over dates because dates don’t account the non-project related work that unavoidable in our daily activities like emails, meetings and other activities that team might involve in.
Important to note that, in Agile, Agile story points estimation is just an estimation and not a blood-oath!
Types of estimation :
T-shirt sizing
Story points
Dog sizes
Planning poker
Meetings & Events (The ceremonies in Agile)
Kick off
Backlog refinement
Planning meeting
Daily stand up
Sprint planning
Sprint review
Retro
Prioritisation - MOSCOW method is usually used to help assess the work so that team can decide wether to prioritise/ deprioritise the task they are doing.
Metrics
Few common examples of metrics to use are as below :
Revenue
Enrollment e.g user sign ups
Activation
Referrals
Engagement (how user interact with our product)
User satisfaction (NPS)
#3 Artefacts
All activities within processes will definitely generate artefacts. On high level view, those artefacts are :
OKR documents
Team charter
Project calendar
Backlog | Product backlog | Sprint backlog
Lesson learned
User story
Other activities for this week :
Meet up with senior product manager to understand an overview of product strategy and vision - it is helpful for a new BA to understand the bigger picture and connect the impact of the development work for product’s branding
Case study exercise - applying theories learned in the last 5 weeks into a sample case study. We were asked to use the above theories and applied them for car manufacturing initiative (I’ll be sharing my work on that in a separate post).
Read this article on medium : https://medium.com/@wawahalim
