product needs Archives - EBG Consulting

Cure Your Agile Planning and Analysis Blues: The Top 9 Pain Points

If you’re on a team that’s transitioning to lean/agile, have you experienced troubling truths, baffling barriers, and veritable vexations around planning and analysis? We work with many lean/agile teams, and we’ve noted certain recurring planning and analysis pain points.

Mary Gorman and I shared our top observations in a recent webinar. Our hostess, Maureen McVey, IIBA’s Head of Learning and Development, prompted us to begin by sharing why we wrote the book Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis and then explaining the essential practices you can learn by reading the book.

Software That Matters: A Review of Gojko Adzic’s Impact Mapping

Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects, by Gojko Adzic, explains how to use an efficient visual modeling technique to ensure that project partners build the right products—or, as the author says, products that have impact. Impact mapping, the subject of this lithe, approachable book, is an adaptation of visual mapping techniques (effect mapping).

Using “Given-When-Then” to Discover and Validate Requirements

By Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener

In our book Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis we discuss the usefulness of the “Given-When-Then” technique to explore (discover) and confirm (validate) product options. Here we summarize the technique*, brainchild of Dan North.

What it Is

Given-When-Then (GWT) is a structured format for expressing scenarios with example data, including pre- and post-conditions.

Usefulness

GWT helps project stakeholders (business, customer and technology partners) communicate using business domain language. You can use GWT to explore product options and confirm selected options and confirm selected options, in a concrete, tangible way. Often called “specification by example,” GWT provides living documentation for your delivered product. It simultaneously specifies requirements while identifying acceptance tests, thereby streamlining discovery and delivery.

A Quick Dip into our new book – Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning & Analysis

How do you rapidly discover product needs and create a practical plan for delivering high-value products? How do the people on your product development team collaborate as partners to explore and evaluate which work to deliver next? How do you confirm that you’re building the right product in the first place? How do you incorporate Agile/Lean practices into your daily work?

Our newly released book, Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis (two years in the writing) addresses these tough questions.

Here’s a quick tour of the big concepts.

Experiencing Agile: 6 Agile Planning and Analysis Practices to Try

What practices can you adopt to help your team experience Agile?

This question was raised by a listener to the podcast we recorded on agile analysis practices with BA coach Yamo. (Find the podcast here.) The specific question that Katie Metcalf asked us was this:

“What Agile techniques would you suggest introducing to a software development team that is currently not using the Agile approach but would like to get a flavor for the methodology?”

Power Up Your Agile Planning & Analysis

I’m pleased to share my podcast with Jochen (Joe) Krebs*, Founder of Agile NYC. The podcast was recorded on October 11, 2011, just before my presentation to the Agile NYC group.

The presentation, entitled, Power Up Your Agile Planning and Analysis:

Deliver Value via Structured Conversations describes how product stakeholders partner to develop a shared understanding of the product needs. I discuss how the partners gain a focused yet holistic understanding of the highest-value requirements and plan the project so that the delivery team builds the right product, at the right time.

Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration

I’m thrilled to be collaborating with Janet Gregory, co-author with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing, on a workshop entitled “Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration” at Agile 2011 Conference and STARWEST.

I believe that there is a lot of cross-fertilization benefit to be gained when people with skills in different disciplines collaborate closely toward shared ends. This is very true for the disciplines of testing and business analysis. The tester mind-set is crucial for verifying requirements. The business analysis mind-set is crucial for validating requirements.

The Product Partnership: Using Structured Conversations to Deliver Value

In a prior blog post, you learned about the in-progress book Mary Gorman and I are writing. We are thrilled to have our workshop proposal for the Agile 2011 Conference accepted. The workshop will incorporates elements of our book. Here’s our YouTube video on The Product Partnership submission.

Are Your Software Development Practices Jumping the Shark?

By Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman In September 1977, the TV sitcom Happy Days had über-hip Fonzie, clad in leather jacket and swimshorts, water ski over a shark to prove his mettle—and at that moment even diehard fans knew that the show was past its prime. They were right. After that episode, ratings plummeted, and the…

Ways to Understanding Product Functionality in the Absence of Documentation

Have you been in a situation where there’s no documentation, yet you’re expected to understand functionality? Trial transactions and observing behavior is one answer. But understanding context is also important. Sue Burk suggests creative solutions in her expert response.

Posts tagged product needs

Cure Your Agile Planning and Analysis Blues: The Top 9 Pain Points

Software That Matters: A Review of Gojko Adzic’s Impact Mapping

Using “Given-When-Then” to Discover and Validate Requirements

What it Is

Usefulness

A Quick Dip into our new book – Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning & Analysis

Experiencing Agile: 6 Agile Planning and Analysis Practices to Try

Power Up Your Agile Planning & Analysis

Agile Requirements Exploration with Tester Collaboration

The Product Partnership: Using Structured Conversations to Deliver Value

Are Your Software Development Practices Jumping the Shark?

Ways to Understanding Product Functionality in the Absence of Documentation

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