You Will Learn How To:

• Establish the Product Owner role in Scrum teams by harnessing the experience of senior personnel to become a better Agile business analyst
• Create a Business Value Model to better understand requirements
• Quantify cost/benefit analysis to create a rational build order
• Create a Release Train using Minimal Marketable Features (MMFs)
• Measure and report project progress to various stakeholders.

Workshop Activities Include:

• Defining the "Definition of Done"
• Performing an Envisioning Workshop
• Writing valuable Agile User Stories
• Specifying by example
• Developing a Release Train
• Implementing Communities of Practice

Agile and Scrum for the Business Analyst: Overview

• Analyzing Agile values and principles
• Identifying Scrum roles
• Determining Scrum ceremonies
• Assessing Scrum artifacts

Introducing the Role of the Product Owner in Scrum

Dissecting the responsibilities of the Product Owner

• Working with Returns on Investments (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Managing the Product Backlog
• Evaluating value in order to determine the release schedule

Establishing Sprint focus

• Separating the Product Backlog from Sprint Backlog
• Prioritizing Product Backlog Items (PBI)
• Aborting the Sprint
• Managing cadence within the Sprint
• Driving a consensus for "Definition of Done"

Shaping the View of the Product Owner for a Specific Effort

Developing teams

• Collaborating with a single team
• Scaling to a multi-team environment

Identifying stakeholders

• Recognizing stakeholders as customers
• Managing the expectations of stakeholders

Analyzing the Business Value Model

Comparing stakeholders

• Distinguishing customers from other stakeholders
• Choosing the appropriate value
• Differentiating between stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management

Adhering to the Agile Process

• Chartering the project
• Facilitating release planning meetings
• Eliciting and analyzing requirements
• Enabling requirements clarification
• Specifying Stories by example

Determining the Build Order

Increasing value with new techniques

• Contrasting PBI build order with "critical path"
• Comparing with GANTT and PERT charts

Synthesizing the PBI hierarchy

• Categorizing each item as a Story, Epic or Minimal Marketable Feature (MMF)
• Decomposing MMFs into Stories and Epics
• Gauging the build order volatility

Building the Release Train

Analyzing cost

• Quantifying the cost/benefit analysis at the Epic level
• Applying Agile Earned Value Management (EVM)

Managing expectations with Minimal Market Features

• Creating the precedence graph
• Counting architectural elements as costs
• Dealing with Technical Debt
• Growing business value with MMFs

Reporting Project Status

Communicating with stakeholders

• Implementing information radiators
• Delivering value
• Projecting team build rate

Facilitating ceremonies

• Illustrating burndowns and estimates
• Managing Scrum project planning, tracking and rates of execution (velocity)

Driving Organizational Change with Agile Business Analysis Methodologies

Applying continuous improvement

• Synchronizing multiple teams
• Evolving the Definition of Done
• Reducing documents to be "barely sufficient"

Involving external resources

• Creating Communities of Practice
• Empowering the Project Management Office (PMO) as a change agency