Module 1 · Agile Business Analysis
Agile and the business analyst
How agile teams work, the Scrum roles and events, and where a business analyst adds value when there's no big requirements document to write.
About 20 minutes
The problem
Kolanut Distribution sells drinks, snacks and household goods to 90 retail customers across Nigeria. Its 39 kiosk customers are a headache: they order small amounts, about once every three weeks, and only when a sales rep visits or phones. Since the January price rise they've been buying fewer packs. The commercial director has approved a mobile ordering app for kiosk owners, to be built by a small in-house team working in Scrum.
You've been hired as the team's business analyst. On your first day the developer asks, "So, are you writing the requirements document?" The honest answer is no. Agile teams don't work from a 60-page specification signed off before anything is built. But they need a BA more than ever, just doing different things.
The concept
What agile means
Agile is a way of building things in small, usable increments, getting feedback early, and changing the plan as you learn. The Agile Manifesto (2001) values:
- individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
- working software over comprehensive documentation;
- customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
- responding to change over following a plan.
The things on the right still matter; the things on the left matter more.
Scrum in one table
Scrum is the most widely used agile framework. Work happens in sprints of usually two weeks, each producing a usable increment.
| Element | What it is |
|---|---|
| Product owner | owns the product backlog and decides what's built next, for maximum value |
| Scrum master | helps the team work well and removes obstacles |
| Developers | everyone who builds and tests the increment |
| Product backlog | the ordered list of everything that might be built |
| Sprint planning | the team chooses a sprint goal and the backlog items to deliver it |
| Daily scrum | 15 minutes each day to plan the next 24 hours |
| Refinement | ongoing work to make upcoming backlog items clear, small and estimated |
| Sprint review | the team shows what it built; stakeholders give feedback |
| Retrospective | the team improves how it works |
Scrum has no "business analyst" role. A BA is usually one of the developers in the broad sense, or works closely with the product owner, and sometimes is the product owner.
What the BA does in an agile team
- Understands the problem and the users before and during delivery.
- Shapes the backlog: story maps, user stories, splitting, acceptance criteria.
- Runs refinement, so items are ready before sprint planning.
- Answers questions during the sprint and checks work against the criteria.
- Measures outcomes: is the product changing behaviour, not just shipping features?
Example
The BA's week during a sprint on the kiosk app:
| Day | Activity |
|---|---|
| Monday | Sprint planning: explains the top stories and their acceptance criteria |
| Daily | Daily scrum: answers questions on "Minimum order value rule" |
| Tuesday | Calls three kiosk owners about how they'd want to pay |
| Wednesday | Refinement: splits "Pay by card" into smaller stories with the team |
| Thursday | Checks finished stories against their acceptance criteria |
| Friday (end of sprint) | Sprint review: shows a sales rep the "kiosks that haven't ordered" list and records feedback |
Notice how much of the week is spent with users and the team, and how little writing long documents.
Walkthrough
- Download the sales dataset and look at how often kiosks order compared with wholesalers. It's the business problem the app is meant to solve.
- Download the agile dataset (
backlog.csvandsprints.csv): the team's board, exported after six sprints. You'll use it throughout the course. - Read
sprints.csv. Each sprint has a goal, committed points and a status. - For each Scrum event, write what the BA contributes (the task below).
Practice
Practice
Sales data: on average, how many days pass between one order day and the next for Kiosk customers? (Use the gap between each customer's consecutive order dates, ignoring same-day lines.) One decimal place.
Task
6 minFor each of the five Scrum events, write what the BA contributes on the kiosk app team. One line per event in the form Event: contribution: sprint planning, daily scrum, refinement, sprint review and retrospective.
Your work is checked for
- Sprint planning line
- Daily scrum line
- Refinement line
- Sprint review line
- Retrospective line
- Mentions users or stakeholders at least once
Check your understanding
Answer every question to check.