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Tag: Agile Business Analysis course in India

How Companies Apply Agile Methodologies and Practices in Business?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Agile methodologies and practices have transcended the software development industry to impact almost all business sectors. The idea is to become an agile organization that’s quick in responding to marketplace and environmental changes.

Agile creates innovative, multidisciplinary, and cross-functional teams which encourage growth, boost self-organization, increase employee engagement, and break organizational barriers to nurture communication and collaboration.

While strategy analysis helps business analysts to identify and meet the strategic and vital needs of the organization, Agile methodologies and practices facilitate quick response to changes. Thus, both strategy analysis and Agile practices go hand in hand to help companies flourish.

Applying Agile Behaviour and Practices

The individuals making up the business team adapting to new mindsets and behaviors is the key to implement Agile practices. In addition, companies must advocate a supportive environment that allows individuals to respond better to change and increase business value.

Scheduling Daily 15-minute Stand-Ups

A great alternative to lengthy staff meetings, organizing 10-15 minute stand-ups daily helps in staying up-to-date with the team’s tasks and efforts. In addition, it encourages an atmosphere of transparency and accountability where team members answer three questions:

  • What have I done since the last stand-up?
  • What will I do today?
  • What challenges do I face?

Breaking Down Projects Into Iterations

Project management has become a critical aspect of most businesses. But in reality, most companies run into a crisis when the project becomes too large and complex to handle. The Agile methodology stresses breaking down the project into achievable chunks for better project management. Known as “iterations” or “sprints” in software development, dividing the work into measurable pieces helps estimate the project duration and reduces the employees’ stress.

Creating a Transparent Backlog of Prioritised Tasks

In Scrum, a product backlog is an orderly list of all that is needed for a product’s improvement. It’s part of the product development process where new elements can be added and reprioritized. Maintaining a transparent backlog gives an overview of the team’s work division and helps monitor both the short and long-term progress.

Partnering with End-Users for Continuous Feedback

Waiting until the end of a process to show your work to clients results in a significant waste of time and resources. What if the client is not satisfied with your work? You would have to go back and start from scratch, which is no less than a nightmare for the team. However, Agile methodology emphasizes constant feedback on the go. Hence, you can rectify mistakes at early stages, save time, and ensure that the project is heading in the right direction.

Tasks and Duties of an Agile Business Analyst

Agile business analyst coursRegardless of the business analyst certification, an Agile business analyst course must be prepared to fulfill the following responsibilities:

  • Focusing on understanding business problems
  • Ensuring that requirements align with current business needs
  • Being an expert in the business domain to be able to answer questions from the development team
  • Delivering products frequently and within the shortest timescale possible

How To Look for Business Analytics Courses in India?

If you’re looking for business analytics courses in India, there are quite a few courses available online. Among these, Imarticus offers a Post Graduate Program for Agile Business Analysts. It’s a comprehensive 6-month business analyst certification program to help individuals prepare for the responsibilities of being an Agile Business Analyst. The course is packed with hands-on training and multiple case studies to prepare professionals who can confidently face the competitive business world.

Refine Your Product Backlog Continuously to Improve Flow

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

 

As you might already know, product Backlog is simply a list of everything you have to do to complete your project. It helps you find all your requirements for the product at a single source. This article discusses how we can improve the product flow by continuously refining your product backlog.

The Refinement Process

We can improve our product flow by merely comparing the estimates using time-dependent sizing. But, most of the product backlog items (PBI) won’t be clear enough for such an analysis.

One strategy to approach this issue of poorly PBIs is to spend more time on it and refine them as you go. This process will take time, but the total time taken for the project will be significantly reduced. It also leads you towards better reliability and velocity.

In the early days of Scrum, the sprint begins with a time-boxed planning meeting. Such planning meetings would usually go long and frustrate the team members attempting to estimate PBIs. The results were overly vague product backlogs. To eliminate this issue, the Scrum guide now specifies that along with the planning meeting, a continuous refinement process should take place. 

Benefits of Continuous Refinement

This refinement process involves estimation and addition of details to the PBI. By doing it continuously, the team will be able to deliver more consistent and improve the quality of their job. It can also reduce the duration of the planning meeting at the start of the sprint. The regular refinement process allows the team to deal with the estimation process in small pieces.  By improving the productivity of the team, the refinement improves the product flow. 

However, the refinement process will not solve all the difficulties. You still have to discover alternatives and problems during the implementation. But with the Refinement process, the questions will be smaller and much easier to find an answer. 

How to Carry Out Refinement?

The major challenge in implementing this practice is to have a refinement process that doesn’t tie up the whole team in meetings. The solution suggested by the Scrum Guide is to limit the refinement to 10 percent of the team capacity. In that way, we can complete the refinement of a 4-week sprint in 2 days. The refinement meetings should be short and time-boxed, and the number of backlog items covered in each session shouldn’t be the main focus. In most scenarios, the longer refinement process will result in a shorter planning meeting. 

In ideal cases, all team members are supposed to be a part of the refinement conversations. Dividing the team excessively will result in missing out important questions and insights. Also, be sure to have an estimation of every backlog item you cover at the end of each session.

Agile planning is all about striking a perfect balance between precision and accuracy. So, your backlog doesn’t need to be consisting of the full specification of every item. Although, it is important to have in-depth knowledge about each of them. Spending little more time of ensuring that everyone in your team really understands the backlog will help you deliver more value in a shorter time period.