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.

Download Report here.