Requirements.net is home of the industry consortium for business analysis. Through focus on requirements definition, visualization, and management, the companies behind Requirements.net are driven to share and sponsor best practices and technologies to improve industry requirements practices.
Join Matt Morgan and Keith Barrett in this special edition podcast as they lead a 60 minute panel discussion on the results of The State of Business Analysis in Agile IT Projects survey. Over 300 companies participated in this 2010 survey and the role of business analyst was identified as key to enabling successful Agile projects. However, the transition to Agile is not without pitfalls. Business Analysts must learn to visually define requirements, they must improve stakeholder validation and review of user stories, and they must shift requirements practices to incrementally define requirements concurrently with development to ensure success.
Panel discussion members:
Mark Sarbiewski, Sr. Director of Products at HP Software: Mark oversees WW application product marketing at HP Software, including products such as HP Quality Center, HP Performance Center, HP Application Security Center.
Martin Crisp, Chief Technology Officer at Blueprint: Martin manages distributed Agile application development for Blueprint’s requirements definition and visualization product line.
Murat Aksu, Consulting Alliances, Capgemini: Murat has oversees Capgemini consulting efforts related to the deployment of application lifecycle management solution from HP Software and is the co-author of the 2010-2011 Capgemini World Quality Report.
Requirements.net in partnership with the Phoenix Chapter of the IIBA and Capgemini have published the results of a survey completed by over 300 participants on the state of business analysis in today’s Agile IT projects.
Summary
The survey found that Agile is prevalent and growing within the enterprise. All of the participants surveyed were using an Agile development methodology within their organization. A majority of participants (57%) were using agile for 10-25% of their projects, with 25% using agile for 25-50% of projects, and 18% almost exclusively using agile, for 75-100% of projects. Time to market and resource utilization were the most oft-cited reasons for moving to agile, while participants cited quicker realization of vision and promoting transparency as the most common benefits as a result of the move to agile.
Key Findings:
Collaboration between business and IT stakeholders is an important element of successful Agile projects and requirements are a critical control point in any Agile project lifecycle. Challenges to collaboration are increasing, with participants naming six core areas of landscape complexity that include large project team sizes, domain complexity, rigid interdepartmental relationships, global geographic distribution, technical complexity, and contractural departmental SLAs. These landscape barriers hamper stakeholder collaboration and can challenge the deployment of Agile methodologies.
Survey participants indicate that requirements for Agile projects should be “immediately consumable? by IT project teams, with 72% of companies surveyed indicating that requirements should consist of process flows (or visual use cases) or visual story boards in lieu of textual lists and paragraphs. Requirements that include visual assets (such as data, business process diagrams, use cases, user interface mockups) require less interpretation from project teams and are more accurately leveraged for project direction and have a positive impact on project success.
Requirements uncertainty is the number one constraint for planning the size and scale of Agile sprints. Ambiguous requirements assets, often without stakeholder validation and signoff, can cause significant project delays.
The majority of participants (56%) indicate that business involvement is the most critical functional characteristic of successful agile project teams. Business involvement includes participating in up-front requirements validation and signoff, involvement in sprint validation, and providing overall subject matter expertise.
I am pleased to announce the opening of the IIBA Phoenix Chapter and Requirements.net Joint Survey for the Agile Business Analyst.
Agile development represents a significant opportunity for improved business and IT alignment. The agile manifesto calls for highly iterative development builds, rapid requirements definition (through visual stories), and iterative testing to ensure quality across the development lifecycle. As business analysts, the opportunity represents the reality of a changing industry landscape, where we must re-tool our approaches and skill-sets to respond to this new world reality.This joint survey represents a collaboration between the IIBA Phoenix Chapter and Requirements.net to identify the true trends experienced by BAs in their teams, departments, and in their companies. The actual questions asked in this survey were collected by the IIBA Phoenix chapter members in a joint session held last month.The responses to this survey will be revealed at a special edition IIBA session in Phoenix on May 11th - details as follows:
The IIBA Phoenix Chapter Meeting on the 11th.
Speaking Session “Sprints, Stories, and Visual Requirements”
This session will reveal real-world survey results from a special joint-effort between Requirements.net and the Phoenix IIBA chapter on the impact of Agile for requirements authors and business analysts. We will discuss the types of Agile projects most commonly being deployed in IT, how requirements have shifted from paragraph-based documents to story-centric flow direction, and how business analysts can be a key lynch pin to drive success of an Agile IT shop. We will talk about the “Just enough” principal and how to know what level of detail is required at each stage of an agile project. The presentation for this session will be based on an internet survey emailed to over 25,000 business analysts by Requirements.net on Agile development.
The Survey will be open through the end of April, and we will be providing free copies of the Cap Gemini World Quality Report and the Blueprint whitepaper of Agile Requirements in Application Modernization to all who take a moment to complete the survey.Special thanks to Douglas Holly, VP of Programs for the IIBA Phoenix Chapter for his leadership on this initiative.
Posted March 12th, 2010 by Judith Zimmerman2 Comments »
IT systems are being stretched, well beyond what they were originally designed for, to support the increasing demands of today’s rapidly changing business. Many of these applications were built years – sometimes decades – ago, with rudimentary development processes on forgotten technologies and yet the business depends on them, often being business-critical. These applications are costing more and more to maintain every year and continued reliance on them is exposing the business to ever increasing risk. Modernizing these systems is no longer a choice, but represents the most complex, challenging, and risky development projects in the portfolio.
Barbara Carkenord, President of B2T Training and industry veteran, joins Matt and Keith in this episode of the Requirements Unplugged Podcast to share her experiences and thoughts on how requirements definition and business analysis is crucial to the success of any application modernization initiative.
Posted March 2nd, 2010 by Judith ZimmermanNo Comments »
We learned today that Requirements.net consortium member Blueprint has announced that its solution for requirements definition and visualization was honored as a finalist in the “Best Software Development Solution” category for the 2010 CODiE awards.
On the surface, this could be regarded as “just another good software company winning just another industry award.” However, it’s more significant than that.First off, the CODiE awards are a big deal. More than 785 individual software solutions were evaluated through an extensive review process. The evaluation was performed by industry leading subject matter experts, analysts, journalists, and other IT professionals. These evaluation were hands-on, meaning that all of the considered solutions were independently tested.
Of these, only three vendors were named finalists in the “Best Software Development Solution” category.What’s significant here is that over the past 10 years, no business analyst/requirements definition focused vendor of any kind has ever been recognized. The winners have always been development or test-centric platforms and tools. Past winners in the CODiE “Best Software Development Solution” category have included: Borland development products, BEA development products, Infragistics NetAdvantage, Host Front from Seagull, IBM Rational IDE products, and NetBeans 4.1 from Sun Microsystems, etc.Of course, Blueprint is focused squarely on the business analyst. Being named a finalist in this category is not simply an honor for a single company, but rather a recognition that the role of the business analyst has become fully integral to software development success.Business analyst empowerment has become the next major area of SDLC optimization, and is dramatically more important today than just a few short years ago. As IT projects become more complex — and the integration between silos of application software become the paramount goal within the Global 2000 — ensuring requirements are right is a strategic beachhead for business and IT alignment.So to all of the business analysts out there, congratulations!
Posted February 7th, 2010 by Tony HigginsNo Comments »
With the rapid pace of business change and the massive sums being expended in software maintenance, modernizing business applications is no longer a choice – it must happen. You won’t want to miss the latest episode of the popular “Requirements Unplugged” podcast where industry luminary Kathleen (Kitty) Hass discusses the importance of having a business perspective when modernizing applications and how the business analyst it pivotal to the success of these initiatives.
Posted January 11th, 2010 by Tony HigginsNo Comments »
A very Happy New Year to everyone. 2009 was a stellar year for requirements.net and all indications are that 2010 will be even more exciting. We’re fortunate at Requirements Unplugged to have such a tremendous base of listeners and want to thank you for all your feedback, comments, and suggestions for topics that came in during the past year. We look forward to your active participation again in 2010 and would appreciate it if you could take a moment to rate our show and/or leave comments in iTunes to show your support!
We get this new year off to great start with our first 2010 episode of the popular Requirements Unplugged podcast, this one focused on the theme of Application Modernization featuring Phyllis Carroll, a Requirement Analyst and president of the Rochester, New York chapter of the IIBA. The topic of Application Modernization has become one of the most requested on requirements.net as companies struggle to modernize their application inventories.Enjoy this episode and have a great 2010 !
Posted January 11th, 2010 by Matt MorganNo Comments »
Requirements.net consortium member Blueprint today announced the availability of Blueprint Requirements Center FP2, which delivers next-generation (bi-directional) requirements visualization for HP Quality Center 10.With the addition of Blueprint to any QC installation, HP Quality Center 10 users can define requirements visually, including using use cases, UI mockups, business rules, business process diagrams, glossaries, actors, and other rich definition assets. In addition, Blueprint adds rich simulation and automatic test generation to an HP QC install. Included in this new implementation is the ability to isolate and propagate changes to requirements assets.You can see an overview for the new solution at http://blueprintsys.com/hpqualitycenter.
About Requirements.net
Requirements.net is the industry's largest consortium for Requirements Definition, Requirements Visualization, and Requirements Management.
Posted November 4th, 2009 by Tony HigginsNo Comments »
Kathleen McGoey recognized with 2009 Requirements Lifecycle Award
Requirements.net, the industry’s largest consortium for the advancement of Business Analysis empowerment, today announced the winner of the inaugural Requirements Lifecycle Award. Kathleen McGoey, Director of Development Support Services at LexisNexis was honored with the award for her ongoing work in leading significant improvements in her organization’s software requirements practice.
The requirements improvement initiatives led by Kathleen McGoey focus on key client-facing, Web-based applications, back-office applications and other development initiatives. In order to be more responsive to customer needs, LexisNexis is transforming requirements definition and management, and implementing new processes. These include performance of visual requirements simulation for development cycles to ensure that all requirements are clearly understood before costly implementation commences.
McGoey has been able to achieve a commitment for continued improvement and investments in the practice across the company, and LexisNexis is moving toward establishing a center of excellence to continue that work. Specific, ongoing improvements under McGoey’s guidance include:
Definition and visualization of requirements through simulation, resulting in clearer requirements understanding.
Creating a single reference for development and test, providing all stakeholders, including the business client, with a single location to find the requirements information they need.
Standardizing project frameworks and roadmaps, allowing stakeholders to see historical, current, and planned work and quickly drill-down into the detailed requirements for any of it.
LexisNexis’ requirements process improvements are delivering significant business value, helping to build applications that are aligned with business and customer needs, and reducing costly rework cycles.
“We commend Kathleen on her remarkable continued work at LexisNexis to truly change the way requirements are defined, visualized and articulated throughout the organization,” said Andy Simon, Partner at Centerline Partners, and spokesperson for Requirements.net. “She is a great example for others, showcasing how organizations can work to significantly improve their requirements process and thereby drive better communication, understanding and efficiency among all stakeholders in the business.”
Posted September 25th, 2009 by Tony Higgins2 Comments »
The Global Business Analyst podcast series continues: Interview with Adam Kahn of BA Times
You don’t want to miss this podcast with Adam Kahn, one of the key people behind BA Times and the BA World events. With BA Times’ membership now over 28,000 Adam provides a unique perspective on the interests, issues, trends, and direction of the Business Analyst role and its evolution including the emergence of Requirements Center of Excellence.
Be sure to download and listen to this podcast today, or subscribe to “Requirements Unplugged” via iTunes.
About Requirements.net
Requirements.net is the industry's largest consortium for Requirements Definition, Requirements Visualization, and Requirements Management.
I am pleased to announce the opening of the IIBA Phoenix Chapter and Requirements.net Joint Survey for the Agile Business Analyst.
We learned today that Requirements.net consortium member 
