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© 2014 BA Convention

Sneha Prabhu

Namitha Anand

Scaling Agile Analysis

is like teaching an elephant to dance

© 2014 BA Convention 2

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Agenda

• Analysis in Agile

• Scaling in Agile

• What happens to Agility when we scale?

• Scaling business analysis


Analysis in agile




Agile Principles

Source: AgileManifesto.org




Typical Agile Team

Continuous Integration

Code Repository Cruise Installables




Development Process




Analysis in Agile - Principles

• Welcome change

• Evolutionary Design

• ROI based planning

• Scope management

• Cross-functional role representation

• Face-to-face communication


Scaling in Agile




Defining Scale

• Lots of functionality in a short timeline

• Many stakeholders

• Multiple delivery teams

• Lot of integration points

• Distributed delivery teams

• Operations and support functions

• Overall rhythm and momentum




A real life analysis scaling problem

Our learning is based on working on a large scale agile project that

had the following characteristics:

• Largest online retailer of train tickets in the UK

• 250 member team with planned rotation. Single code base

• Distributed across London, Bangalore, Pune

• Productize the solution, to allow multiple tenancy

• Cross-channel sales capabilities

Goal: Replace a legacy system with a new platform that provides the

capability to add new features quickly while the product needed to

continue with planned revenue generation




Scaling without adapting


Code Repository Cruise Installables

Story Lists

What Happens to Agility when we scale? Cannot teach an elephant to dance without a shared vision




What happens to Agility when we scale?

Team organization

Unmanageable team size

Ad-hoc overlap of responsibilities

Loss of ownership


Components Dependency issues

Deployment Overheads

Maintenance of different product versions





Planning

Aggregation of work across streams

Depth of knowledge and Involvement in dev process

Scope creep and/or system gaps

Communication

During release initiation meetings, virtual conferencing leads to

inefficiencies

Frequent face-to-face communication adds to project expenses




Multiple teams


Scaling Business Analysis




Planning: Across multiple teams




Planning: Rollups

Ver. 1 Ver. 2 Ver. 3

Inputs

– g

round u

p

Inputs

– g

round u

p

External

Dependency Legend: Internal

Requirement




Planning: what worked for us

CONCEPT TRIAGE

PIPELINE TEAM

SYSTEMICO MODEL




To recap…

Concept Triage Pipeline team Systemico

Model

What ? Present the

business case

Dedicated team Prioritize value

How ? Like you pitch to

a VC

Work with

portfolio

manager

User goal & User

engagement

Ideas gets

questioned &

sized

Immediate high

level estimates

Additional

dimensions

Too much focus

on cost

Pre-solved

features to the

dev teams

Matured

products ?




Execution: what worked for us

BA Standups

Release Kick off / Feature Kick off

BA Showcase




Sustaining: What worked for us

JOHN’S BUCKET SWAT TEAMS

REPORTING

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44

Ar cleMigra on

Toolsgeneral

URLMigra on

UserFunnel

HomePage

LegalAdvice

Subscribe

Performance

Legisla on

Benchmarking

Recruiter

Addar clestoFavouriteitems

CustomAddon

Authors

Educa onalusers

Insurance

SME

SavingSearches

Displayar clesfromTrackedTopics

Security

Analy cs

TopicMigra on

Liveflo

DPApreferences

Feedbackforms

ArchiveAr cle

Search

In-linestylesmigra on

Industries

SEO

EMTenhancements

UKBetaSite

StoryPoints

Features

FeatureCompletenesswithinMilestone3

Done

InProgress

Backlog





Team organization

Unmanageable team size

Ad hoc overlap of responsibilities

Loss of ownership


Components Dependency issues

Deployment Overheads

Maintenance of different product versions

Teams re-organized based on system

layers split or feature based split

Team composition

Support teams for NFRs, release mgmt.,

Prod & Operations support

Infrastructure & automation

Development practices – code

reviews, technical assurance,

refactoring work items, rigorous

test coverage





Planning

Aggregation of work across streams

Depth of knowledge & Involvement in dev process

Scope creep &/ system gaps

Communication

During release initiation meetings, virtual conferencing leads to inefficiencies

Frequent face-to-face communication adds to project expenses

Idea generation with

business case template

Concept Triage

Release Planning

Team Iterations

ID, DD/ inception

Planned travel for niche roles – program BA, Technical architects

before release planning

Cross team staffing across roles

F2F inceptions




Takeaways

• Shared vision and understanding across the program – Release Kick offs,

Feature kick offs

• Overall product stability with increased collaboration across dependent

features and external dependencies

• Immediate revenue generation from the revised product while having

stakeholders collaborating at a desirable level

• Team BAs and Development Managers – redundancies, developing fool-proof

solutions, removing bottlenecks, increased product understanding

• Data analysis benefits for studying industry trends & user dynamics

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