Where Do BAs Live in the Agile Ecosystem?

“Where do Business Analysts live in the Agile ecosystem?”, or some variant of this question, is probably the one I am most often asked in my consultancy engagements. It pops up at different times in different places in different Agile adoption initiatives. But almost invariably it will be asked.

Why? Well for a start, the Agile model is supposedly business value-driven. Traditionally, this is the province of Business Analysts. Yet, as a recent book has noted, in the early days at least there seemed to be only two roles: the programmer and the customer (1). In Scrum there are only three roles: the Scrum Master, the Product Owner and the Development Team. Where, oh where then, does the Business Analyst fit in? This is an especially sharp question if BA is your job title, of course, but it is also one of general importance.

The Product Owner Myth

Perhaps we should start with the guess that many people make at the beginning: “The Product Owner is a Business Analyst”. If this means the Product Owner is someone who – at some level – performs business analysis as an activity, I have no objection. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. That responsibility cannot be executed without a pretty deep understanding of the customers “business model”. But if they are referring to the Business Analyst as a job description then I begin to worry. It is often a clue that the Product Owner role has been misunderstood, and/or that the there is some idea that the Development Team should be getting requirements from someone other than the customer (i.e., by some intermediate professional).

Read more at http://blog.learningtree.com/uk/where-do-bas-live-in-the-agile-ecosystem/