Success with Requirements™

In this issue:

Agile Requirements Public Training Offering (and Discount)

IIBA BABOK® Agile Extension Update

Purposeful Business Analysis Learning

Upcoming Events

Archive Issues

Agile Requirements Public Training Offering (and Discount)

We’re pleased to present a public training course: “Agile Requirements: Collaborating to Define and Confirm Needs” (September 20-21, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA).

This course helps you build your skills for defining small, valuable, well-delineated product requirements for delivery. You’ll learn how to use collaborative techniques to build a shared understanding of product needs and then slice them into well-understood, valuable chunks for development. 

This course is for you if you’re involved in eliciting, analyzing, developing, verifying, or validating product needs. It’s valuable for product owners and champions, customers, scrum masters/project leaders/facilitators, business analysts, testers, developers, user experience/usability experts, and subject matter experts.

Course overview, objectives, and outline (IIBA Endorsed, 14 CDUs) are here. Register via Maxtrain, our partner in this public offering.

For an early bird discount of 10% now through September 4, use code AGILE10EG1210 when you register. See you there!

IIBA BABOK® Agile Extension Update

I’m a volunteer helping to create the agile extension to the IIBA BABOK.

Here’s an update:

We finalized our team structure, rules of engagement, and communication pattern (we’re using Basecamp to manage our backlog and internal communication).

We’re using agile planning, with two-week sprints and a four-month release plan.

Kevin Brennan (VP of the IIBA Business Analysis Body of Knowledge) is our Product Owner, and David Morris (who works for New Zealand Telecom) is our Scrum Master.

In April we finalized a template for structuring the extension text and our release plan.

The Introduction section of the extension has undergone our internal review and will be released soon to the external community for review.

Several knowledge areas have kicked off, including Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring, Enterprise Analysis, and Elicitation.

Work on the Glossary is progressing in parallel.

I’ve paired with Sue Block (from Vanguard Group) to work on the Enterprise Analysis (EA) knowledge area. First, we created a mind map and table representing our analysis of the ways teams can adapt agile to the EA. Now we are taking a first cut at possible content changes.

Some of us on the team are also attending Agile 2010 in August. We’re planning several activities to engage and introduce the broader agile community to this work and seek input and involvement.

Want to discuss and learn about agile business analysis? A discussion group has formed to exchange information about agile analysis topics and also provide feedback and comments on early drafts of the agile extension work. You can join the Yahoo group by following this link.

Purposeful Business Analysis Learning

Why am I confessing a less-than-stellar experience from my early career days? Well, I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Bridging the Gap’s Laura Brandenburg. We discussed professional development and learning. Laura’s questions were thought provoking and gave me an opportunity to reflect on how I learn.

You can read the interview here.

And speaking of learning, I recommend you also check out Laura’s latest eBook publication, “The Promotable Business Analyst.” Read a review by The Business Analyst Mentor’s Alex Papworth here.

Upcoming Events

1. Ellen will present a workshop, and Mary and Ellen will co-present an invited tutorial, at Agile 2010, August 9-12, Orlando, Florida, USA.
   
   
2. Ellen will deliver a public offering, “Agile Requirements: Collaborating to Define and Confirm Needs,” on September 20-21 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Use the early bird discount code AGILE10EG1210 to get 10% off, now through September 3.
   
   
3. Ellen will present and participate on a panel on Agile Day at the JAX London Conference (Java, Enterprise Architecture, Agile, and Cloud) on September 27 in London, UK.
   
   
4. Ellen will present a workshop and talk at the Business Analysis/Business Process Management Conference London, September 27-29 in London, UK. Get a £200 discount by telling them you are Ellen’s colleague.
   
   
5. Ellen will present an “In the Brain” talk on agile at Skills Matter in London, UK, September 30.
   
   
6. Ellen will present and deliver tutorials at JAOO 2010 the week of October 5, 2010, in Aarhus, Denmark.
   
   
7. Ellen and Mary will present at the first IIBA Conference, “Building Business Capability” October 18–21 in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
   
   
8. Ellen will chair the Agile Summit at Project World/World Congress for BAs on November 8 in Orlando, Florida, USA. Ellen will also present later in the week.
   
   
9. Mary will deliver a full-day workshop and presentation at Project World/World Congress for BAs.
   
   
10. Ellen will deliver a full-day tutorial on agile requirements, along with a presentation, at Agile Practices East the week of November 15 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

Archive Issues

Visit our archives to read prior Success with Requirements issues. Sample topics include studying for the BABOK or your CBAP exam; Dealing with difficult behavior in your workshops; and more.

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