4 Ways to Boost the Impact of Agile BAs

The Agile Business Analyst role is still murky for many organizations. But the lack of clarity is a blessing in disguise. It gives BAs an amazing opportunity to advocate for […]
Businessman Midair in a Business Meeting --- Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

The Agile Business Analyst role is still murky for many organizations. But the lack of clarity is a blessing in disguise. It gives BAs an amazing opportunity to advocate for themselves and help leaders understand how to deploy BA skills to serve agile projects.

If you find yourself in the middle of this murky situation, here are four suggestions you can make to help your organization amp up the impact of their Agile BAs:   

1)  Create strong partnerships between BAs and Product Owners. The product owner’s job is HUGE and is often the key to efficient and value-filled delivery. In many cases, POs need support to be successful. That’s where the Agile BA comes in. They use their skills to help the Product Owner make decisions, analyze impacts and refine the backlog. 

2)  Encourage BAs to Get Visual. Agile BAs know how to get good conversations started. They use models and diagrams to ignite conversations that get the team thinking about user needs, organization strategies, alignment and priorities. Then, Agile BAs capture the memory of important conversations, so the team maintains a shared understanding of the context of their work. This context helps the team make good value-based decisions throughout the delivery process. 

3)  Let BAs turn technical items into value items. If your backlog is full of technical items, it’s difficult for product owners to prioritize because the end customer impact is unknown. Every backlog item impacts your end customer in some way. Many teams use Agile BAs to identify customer impact and rewrite backlog items from an external, “outside in” perspective. When the end customer impact is clearly defined prioritization is a breeze!

4) Give BAs permission to focus on the future.  Does your team analyze needs in the context of the current business model or do they focus on the product owner’s vision of the future? Effective Agile BAs use their analysis skills to keep the team focused on the future, not the past. They help the product owner refine the backlog with an eye towards the future state, instead of wasting time on irrelevant items that support the past or present.

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