WEBINAR – Save Time Through Collaborative Requirements Management
July 19, 2012 (10am Los Angeles / 5pm GMT)
Business Analysts are faced with an information overload problem. You spend hours circulating, editing and tracking changes to requirements stored in hard to track documents. It takes crazy heroics and is a nightmare to manage using Word, Excel and email. And still, teams often get out of sync on what they are supposed to build and why.
To get in sync, companies are adopting social technologies. But social for social’s sake has limited business value. It can create noise or distraction if not done purposefully around the requirements. Tools allow teams a new way of working that helps us collaborate in the context of our projects, by:
- Capturing decisions
- Understanding goals
- Increasing visibility
- Recognizing impacts
Join this webinar and learn how to save time and work more efficiently. We’ll examine how the BA can better interact with requirements by applying social collaboration to the requirements lifecycle, creating deeper engagement across teams and delivering successful projects.
** Bonus: All Attendees will receive a PDFof Jama Software’s, “Top Five Frustrations of Requirements Docs & Tips to Avoid Them.
SPEAKER: Derwyn Harris, Senior Solutions Architect, Jama Software
PDUs: 1
COST: Free
Managing Security Requirements in Agile Projects
Addressing security requirements from the early phases of software development is the most cost-effective way of preventing security defects. Most security requirements fall under the scope of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs).
As many practitioners have discovered, addressing security and other NFRs in agile projects is challenging for two reasons:
- Mapping NFRs to feature-driven user stories is not trivial.
- Security controls suffer from lack of visibility. Agile processes tend to bias development teams towards building features that visibly enhance the customer’s experience or fix defects.
This article goes into a bit more detail than usual….and could really help you see how you could do this in your projects.
Click here for full InfoQ article.
WEBINAR – How Business Analysis is Essential to Agile Success (6/27)
June 27, 2012, at 2 p.m. ET
Myths abound regarding the role of business analysis in Agile projects. Some people believe analysis is ignored, deferred, or even unnecessary. Others think business analysis occurs spontaneously inside a delivery cycle, without planning or pre-work. Still, others assume that if you’re doing Agile, you don’t need requirements or documentation.
In truth and in practice, business analysis—focused, structured, and disciplined—is essential for successful Agile product delivery, whether your team is small or large, distributed or co-located.
In this web seminar Agile business analysis expert Mary Gorman makes the case that business analysis is your key for:
- Discovering product options
- Collaborating to create Agile plans
- Conversing daily about what to deliver
- Adapting your product with each delivery cycle to respond to changes in business needs
- Maintaining a constant flow of business value
Join in as Mary debunks the myths and reveals the realities surrounding Agile business analysis and how it is actually crucial to your product and team’s success.
Register here
SPEAKER:Mary Gorman, CBAP, CSM, VP of Quality and Delivery,EBG Consulting. Mary Gorman, CBAP, CSM, is VP of quality and delivery at EBG Consulting, who’s experts help you deliver high-value products that delight your customers. Mary works with global clients, speaks at industry conferences, and writes on requirements topics for the business analysis community. In addition to serving on the IIBA® Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® Committee for four years, Mary helped create the first certification exam for the Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®). View EBG’s articles, blog, free eNewsletter, and useful practitioner resources on EBG’s website. Her book, Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis, co-authored by Ellen Gottesdiener, will be available in August 2012.
RECORDING – Scaled Agile Framework – Q&A RoundTable with Dean Leffingwell
Listen to a great Q&A Session on the Scaled Agile Framework™ answered by the Scaled Agile Partner team of Dean Leffingwell, Drew Jemilo and Colin O’Neill who are the founders of SAFe. They have been using the framework to scale Agile at clients like BMC, John Deer -while leveraging Scrum, Kanban and XP practices. They explain how you too can leverage SAFe at your organizatino as well.
Questions discussed include:
- Provide an example of how Agile was successfully scaled, size of org, and keys to your success
- Pricing models prevalent in the industry of large Agile transformations
- How to use estimations to build up roadmaps
- Delivering on time without imposing due dates on teams
- Managing teams that are not co-located or even in the same timezone (offshore resources)
- How SAFe enhances quality
- How can scaled Agile be used effectiely with limited resources
- What is the role of PMO and Project Manager in the Scaled Agile Framework?
- and much more….
SPEAKERS: Dean Leffingwell – entrepreneur, executive, author and consulting methodologist who provides agile transformation consulting services to large software enterprises. Dean was the chief methodologist to Rally Software where he focused on the application of agile development methods to large scale software development. Dean also served as Sr. Vice President to Rational Software (now IBM’s Rational Division), where his responsibilities included development and commercialization of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), ClearQuest, RequisitePro and the company’s methodology and product training courses. Dean is the author of several books, Agile Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise ; Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises , and Managing Software Requirements: First and Second Editions.
Drew Jemilo has over 20 years of experience using Agile, Lean, and traditional methodologies in companies ranging from lean startups to global corporations. He has worked in the US and Europe applying technical and leadership experience in Agile program and portfolio management, change management, organizational design, coaching, and training. He has worked with Dean Leffingwell on a large global client to synchronize distributed teams in the US, India and Eastern and Western Europe, with a significant number of mostly independent, yet necessarily cooperative, Agile Release Trains.
Colin O’Neill has been a successful IT consultant for 26 years. He has led and coached numerous organizations in enterprise Agile and Unified Process (UP) systems development and integration efforts, business process re-engineering and improvement, requirements definition, data modeling, object modeling, enterprise architecture, risk management, quality assurance, testing, change & configuration management, system deployment, training, and mentoring. Colin has worked hands-on in every lifecycle phase and discipline. He is known for quickly increasing technical organization efficiency and speeding product delivery.
PDU: 1 *** PDU info is provided in recording ***
COST: Free
NEW RECORDING – Scaling Agile Requirements: User Stories to Agile Portfolio Management
In Dean Leffingwell’s recent webinar on scaling Lean|Agile development, he introduced the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) <click here for Dean’s recording>. SAFe is a public-facing set of practices which have been used to successfully scale Lean|Agile development to hundreds — and even thousands — of practitioners at companies like BMC Corporation and John Deere.
In this webinar, Drew Jemilo takes you further into the SAFe Enterprise Backlog Model. With more projects starting under Agile than Waterfall, you’ll be managing requirements to quickly and efficiently align strategic business objectives and customer needs with software delivery.
You will gain these valuable insights as we cover the following topics…
- What are best practices for writing team-based User Stories and non-functional Agile requirements?
- How do these scale to the program and portfolio levels?
- How can you work more strategically with upper management to achieve the highest business value for your company and customers?
SPEAKER: Drew Jemilo has over 20 years of experience using Agile, Lean, and traditional methodologies in companies ranging from lean startups to global corporations. He has worked in the US and Europe applying technical and leadership experience in Agile program and portfolio management, change management, organizational design, coaching, and training. He has worked with Dean Leffingwell on a large global client to synchronize distributed teams in the US, India and Eastern and Western Europe, with a significant number of mostly independent, yet necessarily cooperative, Agile Release Trains.
PDU: 1
COST: Free… *** PDU info is provided in the recording ***
** DOWNLOAD SLIDES here
Top 5 Whitepapers on Getting Control of Requirements
Forrester just released their Top 5 whitepapers on a “taking control of requirements”.
Wish someone would explain requirements management in plain English? Or how to avoid management swoop in at the 11th hour? We’ve compiled a list of our top resources, covering topics from understanding Agile planning to the top frustrations in project management (and how to solve them):
- Requirements Management 101. Wish someone would explain requirements management in plain English? Have stakeholders that could benefit from understanding the value at a high-level? Your executives might not care about CMMI, BABOK or the nitty gritty details of functional requirements, but they do care about delivering what was promised to customers on time. And, that’s requirements management. To make sure your projects run smoothly, make sure everyone on your team understands the basics. Read more
NEW RECORDING – Scaling Lean|Agile Development: Common Myths and Ideologies
Meet the Scaled Agile Framework™
by Dean Leffingwell
Are you tired of the myth that Scrum, XP and Kanban do not scale to the needs of the larger software enterprise? Are you tired of the ideologies that prevent your enterprise from even trying to apply them? If the answer to either of the above is yes, this presentation is for you.
In this presentation, Dean Leffingwell will finally dispel these myths and ideologies by describing the Scaled Agile Framework™, a public-facing set of practices which have been used to successfully scale Lean|Agile development to hundreds—and even thousands—of practitioners at companies like BMC Corporation, John Deere and others.
He’ll describe five key scaling mechanisms:
• SCALING VALUE: Not everything is a User Story
• SCALING DESIGN: Complex systems require intentional architecture.
• SCALING TEAM AND TIMEBOX: Aligning teams to a common mission with the Agile Release Train
• SCALING PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT: Addressing legacy mindsets
• SCALING LEADERSHIP: Your enterprise can be no leaner than your executives thinking.
However, since simply making Agile things bigger does not necessarily keep a system lean, Leffingwell will describe how the framework…
a) keeps work in process visible and limited,
b) keeps backlogs and queues short,
c) uses cadence and synchronization to manage variability and align teams to a common mission, and
d) applies system-level continuous integration to facilitate fast customer feedback.
SPEAKER: Dean Leffingwell is an entrepreneur, executive, author and consulting methodologist who provides agile transformation consulting services to large software enterprises. Dean was the chief methodologist to Rally Software where he focused on the application of agile development methods to large scale software development. Dean also served as Sr. Vice President to Rational Software (now IBM’s Rational Division), where his responsibilities included development and commercialization of the Rational Unified Process (RUP), ClearQuest, RequisitePro and the company’s methodology and product training courses. Dean is the author of several books, Agile Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise ; Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises , and Managing Software Requirements: First and Second Editions.
PDU: 1 *** PDU info is provided in the recording ***
COST: Free
To play recording Click Here
Estimating Non-Functional Requirements is like Taxes
Mike Cohn is asked frequently about the unique challenges of estimating non-functional requirements. This week his response to this popular question is a good one to share with you.
He reminds us that a non-functional requirement is a requirement that is more about the state of being of the system than about one specific thing the system does. And yes, they can be written as user stories.
Non-functional requirements often have to do with performance, correctness, maintainability, interoperability, portability, and so on. They are often called the “-ilities” of a system because so many end in “ility.”
The challenge with estimating non-functional requirements is that there are really two costs.
- The cost of initial compliance
- The cost of ongoing compliance.
To see these two costs at work – Let’s consider an example
WEBINAR – Sharing the Secret Sauce: Lessons from a Business Analysis Mentor (5/26)
May 26, 2011 (11 – 12pm EDT)
Many folks agree on the basic practices and techniques commonly used to analyze requirements. But what about the special ingredients needed to deliver valuable, holistic, timely requirements?
In this webinar, requirements expert Mary Gorman highlights lessons learned from 20 years of business analysis mentoring and shares practical ideas that will help you take your analysis skills to a higher level.
Presenter: Mary Gorman, CBAP, CSM, and VP of quality & delivery at EBG Consulting helps business and technical teams collaborate to deliver products your customers value and need. Read more
NEW WEBINAR RECORDING – Agile Requirements Management: When User Stories Are Not Enough
User Stories are all that is needed for requirements management on simple projects, or where requirements are not well understood. However, when dealing with complex software products that have significant existing functionality, or when regulations or customers mandate a requirements-driven development process, then User Stories are not enough.
Traditional requirements practices are good at managing dependencies, visualizing the big picture for the overall product, and analyzing the impact of changes. User Stories are good mechanisms for pull-based incremental development. This presentation, by Colin Doyle of MKS, will show how blending both practices so that high level requirements engineering drives the development and maintenance of the Agile product backlog can ensure success with complex software product development.
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Let’s Connect!
My Speaking Engagements …..
-Feb 28: PMI Agile CoP: Agile Estimation 102
-Apr 18: TOYOTA HQ: Start Using Agile|Lean in your Projects Today
-Nov 10: HOW TO PLAN, MANAGE, and TRACK ITERATIONS (ProjectTimes)
-Dec 16: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES DURING & AFTER AN ITERATION (ProjectTimes)
-Jan 13: AGILE REQUIREMENT GATHERING & DOCUMENTATION - BEYOND USER STORIES (ProjectTimes)
-Feb 10: DEALING WITH THE TOP 10 ISSUES IN AGILE ADOPTION (ProjectTimes)
Some Agile User-Groups and Links…
