(BA001X) The Practical Guide to Business Analysis and Planning for the Business Analyst and Product Owner (Agile and Legacy Tools)
Our foundational course. Take this course if you are responsible for business analysis or planning activities in a software development organization, whether as a Business Analyst, Product Owner, Proxy PO, or as part of another function, such as UX. The course covers all the key tools and competencies of business analysis and planning – with one full day on legacy BA techniques that add value to both waterfall and agile projects, as well as an entire day on agile analysis and planning tools. Like all our courses, training is interspersed with coaching during practical team workshops on a live project or case study.
Available on demand
Location: Live Online Event or In-Person at your Location
Duration: 2 days
Presented in English by Howard Podeswa
Learning Objectives
What is this training about and why is it important?
Most large companies and organizations now realize they need to include strong business analysis and planning competencies, whether they are an agile organization, or one that follows a traditional, waterfall approach to planning. For example, the Business Analysis Benchmark has found that an agile organization can expect to more than double its success rates by advancing from the lowest to highest requirements maturity levels. The challenge for practitioners is to be fluent in both legacy and agile analysis tools – and know when and how to use them and weave them together across an agile product development lifecycle. This course demonstrates how to do that – with a full day on foundational legacy practices and another devoted to agile techniques.
What you will learn and how you can apply it
Elicit and analyze requirements using classic and agile techniques
Decompose business goals and objectives into requirements
Write effective, “SMART” requirements
Specify user requirements through a use-case model and specifications
Specify business rules with Decision Tables
Understand how analysis and planning practices change in transition from Waterfall agile to agile development
Have a high-level understanding of Scrum, Kanban and hybrid planning approaches
Understand essential agile concepts and tools: Sprints, Sprint Goals, the DoD, Acceptance Criteria, Spikes, DoR
Decompose Product-level Epics down to Team-Level User Stories
Optimize the work of the team by prioritizing work of highest value based on value to customer, cost of delay, Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
Create a Product/Release Roadmap
Write effective “INVEST” Stories
Write Story Acceptance criteria using ATDD/BDD
Split large work items into small Stories
Course Topics Include:
Part 1: BA Classic
• Understanding Goals, Objectives, Requirements Types, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements NFRs
• Defining SMART objectives and requirements
• Milestone chart, constraints, assumptions
• Elicitation techniques
• Root-cause analysis
• Cause-effect graphing
• Use-case analysis
• Business rules analysis
Part 2: Agile Business Analysis and Planning
• Understanding key agile concepts: Scrum, Kanban, hybrids
• Agile Manifesto and its impact on analysis and planning
• Understanding what changes in the transition from waterfall to agile analysis and planning
• Overview of key agile approaches and techniques: CI/CD, Kanban, Scrum, Sprint, Product Backlog, Stories, DoD, PO, BA
• Strategic Planning and Analysis
> Assessing value and priority of Work Items using Cost of Delay, WSJF
> Categorizing work items as epics, features and Stories
> Creating the Product Roadmap
• What is an epic vs. feature vs. story?
• Specifying feature acceptance criteria
• Understanding the Lean Startup approach, when to use it and why it works
• Forming Leap of Faith MVP Hypotheses
• Defining Actionable Metrics
• Using Story Maps to plan MVPs and Sprints for the upcoming quarter
• Writing effective Stories that follows 3 C’s and INVEST guidelines
• Using a Definition of Ready for greater efficiency during Sprint Planning and implementation
• Specifying Stories using the Connextra template
• Specifying story acceptance criteria with ATDD/BDD
• Splitting Stories
Audience
Entry-level IT Business Analysts, POs, Proxy POs and their managers
Leaders in business analysis, product and project management, and agile methodologies
Seasoned professionals requiring upskilling for an agile analysis or planning role
Systems Analysts and programmers interested in expanding their role into the business area