The Agile Business Analyst?

 Wow, I am truly amazed by all these people who can blog on a regular basis. Where do they find the time?  It's early morning here and I'm trying to squeeze this in before I head out. But enough about my laments. 

A year ago few people were talking about business analysis and agility in the same sentence other than to perhaps suggest these terms represent an oxymoron. A year later the level of conversation and the nature of the conversation about agility and business analysis has changed dramatically. At Agile 2009 I presented the talk  "The Agile Business Analyst" in which I claim agility did not make the BA role obsolete, and in fact creates a much more exciting and enjoyable job for the BA. The issue for BAs is how exactly does the BA role integrate into agile's software development centric practices. It does not help that most agile methods do not explicitly recognize the BA (or analyst role). In Scrum there is a seductive appeal to suggesting the BA is the product owner. While the product owner role may encompass some BA activities, the BA is not necessarily the product owner.

The role of the BA in an agile software development process is also complicated by the  potential impedance mismatch between the agile software development team and the less agile waterfall project governance practices the development organization may have in place. The BA role  How to integrate a traditional requirements work products and processes (e.g. use cases, signed off SRS) with an agile requirements work products and processes. The BA may find themselves in the role of trying to compensate for this mismatch.

What is encouraging is there is a critical mass of interest in the Agile BA topic. Here in Vancouver we started an informal joint IIBA-Agile group to explore the issue. During our first "fish bowl" meeting over 65 people showed up for what turned out to be an enthusiastic conversation. The IIBA itself is establishing an official working group to recommend agile business analysis practices for a future release of the IIBA Book of Knowledge. 

To me this reflects the continuing maturity of the agile movement, a new desire to reach out and explore, and grow.