Agile methods are gaining in popularity and are steadily being adopted by more and more organisations.

However most agile methods provide very little guidance on how requirements are to be gathered and managed and who should be responsible for this activity. Many organisations struggle to define the role of the Business Analyst in agile methods and in some extreme cases the need for the Business Analyst role is challenged. The reality is that effectively including the Business Analyst role as part of an agile team greatly reduces project risk.

In this session we provide an overview of agile methods from the perspective of the Business Analyst and identify some of the challenges involved in agile. Real world issues that arise when using agile requirements techniques are identified and examined. Finally we present a number of proven methods for successfully incorporating the Business Analyst role into an agile project environment.

 Learning Objectives

• Explore how Agile methods impact on the traditional role of the business analyst
• Understand some of the common requirements related issues that occur on Agile projects
• Review a number of proven techniques for successfully incorporating the Business Analyst role into agile projects