Karl Wiegers, one of the most respected visionaries in the requirements gathering profession, has contributed an interesting article to SearchSoftwareQuality on the connection of business analyst efforts in an AGILE world. In this article, he discussed the need for a tight connection between BAs and developers in the iterative development cycles.
An excerpt from the article:
Agile development emphasizes a close collaborative partnership between customer (or, more broadly, stakeholder) representatives and the developers. This is a powerful success enabler for any project. The question, then, is who should perform the central roles in this partnership. For more than 20 years I have advocated a model in which one or more analysts work with one or more key user representatives called “product champions.” The product champion concept relates to the “on-site customer” concept in agile development.
It is hard not to agree with this assessment. In my experience, it seems the use of BTDs, or Big Thick Documents, are quickly being replaced by visual prototyping of the use cases, interfaces, and data elements — these elements need to be revised quickly to keep pace of the rapid nature of AGILE.
To read the full article, click here. (Free registration required.)
