The Agile BA: Must, Should or Could?

Presentation 1: Is a Business Analyst required on an agile team? – Andy Birds, The Co-operative Bank

Business Analysts in all industries are feeling the influence of the Agile methodologies. Business Analysts traditionally play an important role; they usually act as the link between business units and IT, helping to discover the user needs and the solution to address them. In Scrum, there is no Business Analyst role, so what happens to the Business Analysts?

Andy Birds is a Digital New Propositions Manager and Product Owner at The Co-operative Bank. Andy has experience in Finance and Retail businesses and is a Certified Scrum Product Owner, SAFe Agilist, PRINCE2 Practitioner, M_o_R Practitioner and an ITILv3 Expert, with over a decade of experience working with digital technology; he specialises in digital transformation. Andy describes himself as a "digital geek, customer experience designer, doer, digital product guy that brings strategy & execution together", he has a love of Post-it Notes & Sharpies.

Presentation 2: The Power of an Agile BA – Jon Kessel-Fell, Capgemini

The Power of an Agile BA

Jon Kessel-Fell has worked in the IT Development sector for almost 25 years, 7 of which have been in the world of Agile. This experience spans Investment, Retail and Online Banking, Business Intelligence and Government projects. He is a Certified Professional Agile Coach (ICP-ACC) and a Certified Professional Scrum Master (PSM I), as well as being a facilitator for Capgemini University and guest lecturer at UK Academic Universities. Jon has extensive hands-on experience of implementing and maintaining Agile Transformations in large scale organisations, through coaching in areas such as Agile, Agile@Scale, Scrum, Kanban, XP practices and Lean, through 1-2-1 to large scale virtual sessions across multinational locations.

Presentation 3: The Agile BA – Phran Ryder

Phran explores the role of the Business Analyst in Agile Projects.

Phran Ryder wrote his first program in 1978. Since then, efficient, value-adding software development has been central to his career. He used his first Agile Practice over 20 years before the Agile Manifesto was written. He wrote automated tests on Apple Lisa’s and Apple Macintoshes in 1986. He wrote his first automated test harness in 1992. His first Kaizen (the practice of continuous improvement) took place in a pub in 1993 – we called ourselves the purple underground. He wrote three unit test harnesses to allow his projects to use Test Driven Development (TDD). He founded the BCS OOPS NW in 1994 and was Chairman until the group became AgileNorth in 2003. He has been Chairman of AgileNorth since and last year Ivar Jacobson was Keynote speaker at the 10th AgileNorth conference. Now an ISEB-qualified BA and Consultant his very large, very unAgile organisation is starting to use SCRUM.

Presentation 4: Agile product development: small bets & scaled delivery - Ryan Hewitt & Suzanne Gough

Ryan and Suzanne talk about the role of BA's on two very different types of agile project:
1. Small bets (BBC Sport) - A hypothesis-driven team, delivering small bets early & often, using data to build, measure & learn.
2. Scaled delivery (iPlayer) - A cross-platform team, delivering strategic large-scale changes across multiple platforms.

Ryan Hewitt is a Senior Business Analyst working in BBC Sport, with over 9 years BA experience working in Waterfall, Scrum & Kanban teams in 4 countries. Ryan is specialised in app development, eCommerce, mobile web and IT compliance and has numerous Agile certifications (Certified ScrumMaster, Certified Scrum Product Owner, IT Enabled Change) & BA publications. Ryan blogs about business analysis and Agile at rthewitt.com

Suzanne Gough is an experienced Agile Business Analyst working in BBC iPlayer; with over 7 years BA experience working in Scrum & Kanban teams providing product delivery and management for global Media, FMCG and fashion brands online. Suzanne’s specialities include: User Experience, Website development & Agile Methodologies and she is a Certified Scrum Product Owner.

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