Developing complex software for enterprises using Agile development methodologies has presented some unique challenges, especially in the area of regression testing. This is particularly true in the Financial Services sector where extremely thorough and extensive regression is required and, in many cases, dictated by Compliance and Regulatory needs. For legacy applications that have been in […]
Tag: Requirements engineering
Ratio of Developers to Analysts in Agile
Conventional wisdom generally holds that the ratio of developers to analysts in an Agile framework is about 4:1 or 3:1. In essence, it says that 1 analyst can support the work of 3 or 4 full time developers working on a project. For Waterfall projects, this ratio is higher and typically in the range of […]
Seeing the Forest through all of the Trees
I recently had a conversation with a fellow business analyst, Susan, regarding process flows. At ArgonDigital, we like to keep process flows focused on what people are attempting to accomplish. In my experience, I find that most people (there are always exceptions), know that when they press a button that things happen in the system, […]
The Most Important Part of A User Story
The last couple of years has seen a wholesale shift in development methodologies among the Fortune 1000 companies from Waterfall to Agile. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Agile revolution that has been brewing in small companies, startups and web companies for the last decade and a half has finally arrived in […]
Agile Requirements Document
At ArgonDigital, on our Agile projects we have introduced a project artifact called the Agile Requirements Document or ARD that we create during the planning phase of a project. We have done this on several projects and have had good success with it. An ARD is conceptually similar in some ways to the classic Business […]
Finding Hidden Assumptions
I was recently lucky enough to attend ProductCamp Austin. If you are not familiar with ProductCamp, it is a free, collaborative “unconference” for product managers and other similar roles. I say “unconference”, because it is completely volunteer driven, and the campers (as attendees are called) vote on what sessions they want to see and attend. […]
What Models Should be Used to Create Requirements in an Agile Project?
This is a question that came up repeatedly in the classes I have taught these past few months. My answer is always the same: “Any and all models that are needed to define the problem space and derive the requirements.” The reaction to this is almost always identical: “But I thought we ONLY needed to create […]
Long Distance Agile – How Good Requirements Documentation Overcomes the Problems of Distance and Disconnected Agile Teams
In the last three months or so, I have been approached by a number of analysts and developers struggling with the problems of working on geographically dispersed Agile teams. In a majority of the situations, the team members are scattered in countries on different sides of the globe with a minimum of 6 hours or […]
An Exercise in Documenting Current State: Reddit and the Decision Tree
An exercise in documenting current state: reddit and the decision tree In an earlier post I detailed how you can use RML models to document the current state of your systems and processes by using a Business Data Diagram to illustrate the hierarchy and relationship of objects on the popular content website Reddit.com. In this […]
Arsonists in a Field of Straw Men: Elicitation from a Blank Slate
On a recent project, I was sitting in a room full of subject matter experts (SMEs), trying to document a business process using the trusty Process Flow model, when trouble struck. Before the meeting, the team was “lucky” enough to discover process flows for the very process we were focusing on; the only issue was […]
Welcoming Changing Requirements
The Agile Manifesto is based on twelve principles (I’ve highlighted a couple – 2 and 12 – that are of the most interest for this post): Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software Welcome changing requirements, even late in development Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) Working software is the principal […]
Requirements Elicitation Technique – Tools of the Trade
As a BA, I’m always looking for tools that can help me with my job…anything to make my life just a bit easier! I’m always curious about the latest requirement management tools that come out, and I love to play with new diagraming tools! But sometimes, it’s the low tech tools that can provide the […]