Business Analysis & Product Management in Agile

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast, Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, talks to Kent McDonald, Steve Adolph and Ryland Leyton about the state of business analysis and product management in agile product development. They were participants in a weekend workshop where the Agile Alliance and the International Institute of Business Analysis were collaborating to produce a revised version of the Agile Extension to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge. Why listen to this podcast: - Analysis skills are necessary for successful product development - We don’t question and challenge the rationale and strategic alignment of projects enough, which results in lots of waste from doing the wrong projects or building the wrong features in a project - The best return on investment that you can get is to stop wasting your money - Value is hard to define but crucial to identify; the definition of value will be different in every context - Agile methods provide for learning and rapid feedback, which enables us to optimize value and ensure strategic alignment in product development - User stories are conversation placeholders, not orders to be fulfilled Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: bit.ly/2e32o5X - 6m 20s Analysis skills reside in many different roles and doing analysis in agile development is far less prescriptive that has been the case. - 6m 44s You need to have a very comprehensive toolkit and have the ability to relate the tool needed to the context of the work being done. - 9m 13s Advanced organisations are changing when they utilise analysis skills to determine which initiatives should be worked on and how they align with organisation strategy; being able to review these decisions even after an initiative has started, stopping development work when it is no longer valuable. More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ. bit.ly/2e32o5X You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/2cMnjfW