BUSINESS ANALYST

Help business to solve a particular problem

Business Analyst - Proactive, analytical reasoning, listener, self starter

Stakeholder - anyone related with the project

Stakeholder - Name, Job role, concerns of them, Level of engagement

OPTIONS ANALYSIS:
Option A B C
Features ***** ** ***
Cost $$$$ $ $$$
Complexity No High Low
Etc
Ideally we will go for option C

GATHER REQUIREMENTS:
Fix Meeting date

Prepare for the meeting

1. What is the objective

2. What is the issue
3. What is the change requirement
4. Changes you have tried in the past
5. How many years he current process is running
6. Who are your customers
7. Explain the process from start to finish

GATHERING INFO THROUGH

1. Brainstorming
2. Interview
3. Workshop
4. Survey

WHAT IS AGILE:
It is an iterative time boxed approach for managing projects which helps to deliver quickly and often,
focus on customer value and continuous improvement. Agile is flexible, embraces change faster and
high customer value with high customer interaction.
SOME BASIC INFO ON AGILE
Agile manifesto in 2001 and orginated from US and Japan
Some of the Agile methodologies are
1. SCRUM
2. KANBAN
3. SCRUMBAN
4. Rapid Application Development
5. Feature Driven Development
6. Adaptive Software Development
7. Agile Unified Process
8. Extreme Programming

AGILE PRINCIPLES
1. Customer Satisfaction
2. Welcome change
3. Working Software is delivered quickly
4. Close daily cooperation
5. Co location
6. Working software
7. Sustainable Development
8. Simplicity
9. Good Design

AGILE ROLE
1. Scrum Master – Agile expert, facilitate agile rituals, support team members, ensure team
meets objectives and goals and remove roadblocks
2. Product Owner – Customer, business focussed, helps prioritize, key decision maker and
provides strategic decisions
3. Delivery Team – those actively involved in the project

AGILE CONCEPTS
Sprint – is a fixed period of time, in which the work is done. It takes 1 – 4 weeks, repitative cycles
and time boxed.

User Stories – are similar to tasks but is derived from requirements. Focus on what the customer
wants, tell a story in a precise manner . User stories should be specific, measurable, attainable and
time bound. It should clearly assigned to someone.
Ex- create an option to register with FB

Story Points – is s measure of complexity assigned to each story. Used in sprint planning. Follow
some type of scale to measure. It should be simple and team should agree on the points.

Epics – are User Stories which are very big and cannot be completed in a single sprint
Product Backlog – is the list of all the User Stories required to complete the project. It is owned by
the Product owner, it needs to be regularly updated and is the living document.
Sprint Backlog – is the subset of the product backlog. It is the group of User stories which is
expected to be completed in a particular sprint. Helps in Spring planning.

Minimum Viable Project – Minimum amount of work, the agile team needs to deliver to meet the
basic project requirement. Should have must haves, quick delivery and should be simple. The MVP
tells not to build a rocket if all we need is a paper plane.

AGILE ARTICRAFTS
Agile Kanban Board – Physical or digital (Jira/ Trello) board which helps the Agile team to keep
track of the project status and next steps. It consists of three columns : To Do, Doing and Done
The board indicates the status of the project. Helps in planning and ccordination and shows progress

Velocity Chart – is the visual representation of the team speed of execution and how fast the work
is getting done.
In Agile Velocity = sum of Story points of the User Stories delivered in a Sprint

Burn down Chart – How much work is done and what is remaining

AGILE RITUALS
Standups – short daily Informal meetings for not more than 15 mins. Information sharing. Scrum
Master to coordinate the meeting

Sprint Planning – Agile team plans for the next sprint and decides on the User stories to be taken
up and addressed. All to contribute
Backlog Grooming - process of cleaning, prioritising and organising the backlog

Retrospectives – For continuous improvement. Occur after each sprint. Discuss on what went
wrong, went well and what to do differently.

Demo Sessions – Status update, Gather Feedback and Inputs for planning

AGILE TOOLS
1. Trello – Minimalistic, easy to use and value driven
2. Jira Software – automatic graphs and charts
3. Microsoft planner – tracks teams progress and status
4. Slack – Communication and collaboration tool
5. Microsoft Teams – Document sharing, chatting, decision making
6. Hassl – shares files, tick off tasks, shoot instant messages

AGILE vs WATERFALL APPROACH

Agile is iterative, time boxed, simple, flexible and budget fiexd and no phases and combines
tasks.
Waterfall is sequential and breaks down work into phases and you only move from one
phase to another once the previous phase is completed. Scope is fixed. Budget and timeline
can vary. Have hard stage gates.

PREPARING A BUSINESS CASE IN BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Business Case Name

Prepared by
Date

Contents

Executive Summary – Project name, description, objectives, deliverables, business needs (why doing
the project, outcome)
Scope – Inclusion and exclusion
Plan – Methodology, milestones, timeline, assumptions, constraints, dependencies
Project Cost – resourcing, licensing, training, change management, total project cost
Business Value – Business value, RoI
Governance – Project team, board, stakeholders, sponsor
Support Model
Quality Assurance

BUSINESS PLAN / BUSINESS CASE (PPT) – (People, Process & Tools – 3 components of
Business)
1. Agenda – Company introduction, our team, problem and solution, Revenue and
budget, company growth
2. Business Process – strategise, create, execute and evaluate
3. Process Chart – Get order, calculation, production and delivery
4. Our Strategy
5. Design Process – analysis and assessment, creative web planning, milestone
determination, execution of work
6. Tips for business growth
7. SWOT Analysis – Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats
8. Sales strategy
9. Market research strategy
10. Organisation Chart
11. Our Services
 12. Business Risks – This is important slide in the PPT
13. Market strategy
14. Business problems
15. Customer Expects – Easy to use, less expensive, high quality, support
16. Success Key elements
17. Mind Mapping
18. Business ideas
19. Problem Vs Solutions
20. Project Gantt Chart

MIND MAPPING
Is the process of mapping in a diagram all the thought one has in the mind. Bubbl is one of
the tool used for mind mapping.
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JIRA SOFTWARE
JIRA is used to
1. manage agile and scrum projects
2. automatically generate burndown charts & velocity charts
3. write and assign user stories
4. Sprint planning and coordination
5. Build digital Kanban board
6. Monitor, track and assess the project status
7. Work with team members and stakeholders

Jira was developed in 2002 and written in Java. Operating system is Cross platform. It is
mainly used for bug tracking, project management software.

REALWORLD EXAMPLES OF AGILE IN ACTION

1. Transferwise
2. Gumboard - online platform that facilitates the sale of products by creators directly
to consumers. This is a truly fascinating and fully Agile company. The customer (in
this case content creators), are the forefront of all decisions made around product
development and prioritization -as it should be!
3. Trello

BUSINESS ANALYSIS TOOLKIT

1. Zoom : online meetings and collaborations
To touch base with PM and other stakeholders
Run requirement gathering session
Plan virtual workshop
Meet with external parties and vendors
Meet with project team
Map workflow and process
When working remotely or working from home

MICROSOFT TEAMS & PLANNER

Create to do lists, understand issues and risks, document items
Planning- Tasks, Projects
It can be used as Agile Kanban Board
Product Roadmap
Resource management

TRELLO
Manage their Agile Projects
Perform Sprint Planning
Conduct Retrospectives
Build the Agile Kanban Board
Create to do lists for themselves
Work collaboratively on tasks with other team members
Assign tasks to other team members
Control, monitor and track project tasks
For Product Roadmaps
For Timelines and deliverables
To assess team workload
To identify and document project risks
To identify and document project issues
To document goals & objectives
To document benefits
Trello is a digital productivity tool