Role of the Business/System Analyst

[Jeanne Hallock]

First let me start off with that my role at my company is UI designer/user
experience specialist for a 'silo'ed group with an additional UX group that
governs across a large enterprise company. We are, from Nielsen's writing,
10-14 years a way from being a truly user-centered development group. I have
worked previously in a dot-com environment, which was an agile shop.

In a couple project groups, one of our business representatives is trying to
push our group to be even "more" agile than we have been. We are in an
enterprise agile situation, so we have never done what I would call real
agile.

What it comes down to is that the business representatives don't want to sit
and have business requirements pulled out of them over hours' worth of
meetings over the 3 week iteration period before the next iteration. They
want to be able to say we need this kind of thing, give minimal requirements
and let the team figure out what that means and come back and ask questions
if we need to.

Our business analysts are completely freaked out and are trying to talk them
out of it. In my attempt/research on the web what the role of the analyst is
in agile to help them calm down some, what I have found is pretty much my
role, the user experience specialist, is being assigned to the business
analyst. I understand that in agile everyone is supposed to do every job to
some extent and in a more team-environment I have seen that it works well.
So, I don't have a problem with that exactly.

But in the enterprise situation office politics take a heavy toll in many
areas. In our case the analysts play a major role politically in the vision
and lifecycle process. They are the 'scopers' or the gatekeepers. They often
mold and push business towards or away functionality based on judements of
value or team cost such that they determine what functionality will really
be developed and to what extent.

What I have been reading online basically puts one of us out of business
because their agile documentation puts them in user representative role. So
what should the role of the analyst in agile when you have a usability/ux
person in the mix? How are other companies, especially at the enterprise
level handling it?

Thanks in advance,
Jeanne Hallock
 

[chris morris-7]

"What it comes down to is that the business representatives don't want to
sit and have business requirements pulled out of them over hours' worth of
meetings over the 3 week iteration period before the next iteration. They
want to be able to say we need this kind of thing, give minimal requirements
and let the team figure out what that means and come back and ask questions
if we need to."
If the meetings that were happening previously weren't really adding value,
then they probably needed to go. If that means there's not as much work for
the existing employees, then what they doing before I guess was just waste.
Obviously, that sucks for the people who have nothing to do now, and shame
on the business for not coping with that well.

If the now defunct meetings _were_ adding value, then the same employees
should have the same amount of work to do, it just may be a little more
chaotic since they'll need to go track down the biz reps to get answers to
their questions.

my 2 cents


On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Jeanne Hallock
<jeanneh@...>wrote:

>
>
>  First let me start off with that my role at my company is UI
> designer/user experience specialist for a 'silo'ed group with an additional
> UX group that governs across a large enterprise company. We are, from
> Nielsen's writing, 10-14 years a way from being a truly user-centered
> development group. I have worked previously in a dot-com environment, which
> was an agile shop.
>
> In a couple project groups, one of our business representatives is trying
> to push our group to be even "more" agile than we have been. We are in an
> enterprise agile situation, so we have never done what I would call real
> agile.
>
> What it comes down to is that the business representatives don't want to
> sit and have business requirements pulled out of them over hours' worth of
> meetings over the 3 week iteration period before the next iteration. They
> want to be able to say we need this kind of thing, give minimal requirements
> and let the team figure out what that means and come back and ask questions
> if we need to.
>
> Our business analysts are completely freaked out and are trying to talk
> them out of it. In my attempt/research on the web what the role of the
> analyst is in agile to help them calm down some, what I have found is pretty
> much my role, the user experience specialist, is being assigned to the
> business analyst. I understand that in agile everyone is supposed to do
> every job to some extent and in a more team-environment I have seen that it
> works well. So, I don't have a problem with that exactly.
>
> But in the enterprise situation office politics take a heavy toll in many
> areas. In our case the analysts play a major role politically in the vision
> and lifecycle process. They are the 'scopers' or the gatekeepers. They
> often mold and push business towards or away functionality based on
> judements of value or team cost such that they determine what functionality
> will really be developed and to what extent.
>
> What I have been reading online basically puts one of us out of business
> because their agile documentation puts them in user representative role. So
> what should the role of the analyst in agile when you have a usability/ux
> person in the mix? How are other companies, especially at the enterprise
> level handling it?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jeanne Hallock
>
>
>  
>

--
Chris
http://clabs.org