Abstract: As a business analyst on an agile team, do you spend your time gathering decisions from stakeholders and passing them on to development teams? Are you tired of simply being a “proxy without power”? And product owners, you have the power to make decisions on behalf of stakeholders, but is that your only interaction with the team? How can you do more to boost your impact?
Be more than a proxy.
By definition, a proxy means doing a thing “by the authority to represent someone else.” BAs, product owners, and product managers can all act as proxies by representing their customers and other business units. But too often, they limit themselves to specifying requirements and/or answering business questions for the team.
In this workshop, Diane Zajac-Woodie shows you how to go beyond those tasks and become more than a proxy. Through some experiential exercises, you will feel the impact of fast, frequent feedback on results. Diane also teaches you how to capture requirements collaboratively, using an acceptance test format. You will get to practice describing the exact behaviors that you expect in a format that everyone understands.
Coupled with facilitation skills and simple tools like story maps, you can learn to foster a collaborative environment. Be inspired to embrace your role in an agile environment and leave with new techniques that ensure that you will be more than a proxy when you head back to work next week.
Learning Outcomes: - Experience the positive impact that fast, frequent feedback has on results
- Give some examples of how to use light-weight documentation
- Explain what a story map is and why they are useful
- Describe the timing of "just in time" requirements
- Name several benefits to writing requirements collaboratively
- Write requirements in a descriptive, collaborative format
- List at least 3 skills that are valuable on an agile team
