The Power of the Agile Business Analyst

30 achievable ways in which Agile business analysts can increase the relevance, quality, and overall business value of your Agile projects.

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If the goal of an Agile project is to deliver the highest business value solution possible, why is the business user the least supported member of the Agile team? It's good to be an Agile developer. The Agile community provides Agile developers with countless supporting resources including books, websites, forums, and conferences where Agile development issues can be raised, discussed, and jointly addressed by the group. The interesting thing is that, where Agile approaches go to great lengths to provide developers with the foundation they need to deliver high-value software solutions, there is relatively little equivalent support provided for the business users. In most Agile methods, the business user is solely responsible for the identification, requirements gathering, clarification, and assignment of priorities for their requested system capabilities. Agile development teams rely on business users having sufficient knowledge, vision, objectivity, and time to ensure that these capabilities provide the best possible solution for the organization. But is this really the case?
The Power of the Agile Business Analyst: 30 surprising ways a business analyst can add value to your Agile development team challenges whether Agile projects are truly positioned to deliver the highest-value business solutions without offering business users the equivalent level of support, validation, and collaboration that is provided for the Agile development team. To address this challenge, The Power of the Agile Business Analyst proposes including an Agile business analyst on the development team to provide business users with the support they need, as well as a valuable resource to assist the Agile developers in their analysis, design, testing, and implementation work throughout the project.