Accessorizing Your BA Toolbelt
Greg Swearingen, PSPO1
Senior Business Analyst/Consultant, QuickSolutions
Carole Schwarz
IT Process Management/Requirements Capability, Nationwide Insurance
Reshma Pathare, CBAP, CSM, PMP, CSQA
Business Consultant, Nationwide Insurance
Faye Thompson, JD, PSMI
Senior Agile Consultant, CareWorks Tech
Facilitator: Carol C. Fleming, CBAP
VP of Technology – IIBA Columbus Chapter
Senior Business Analyst, Smart IT
BAPDD2013
Accessorizing Your BA Toolbelt
BAPDD2013
Purpose of session is to present and discuss
tools used to assist with business analysis
activities:
• Greg – Wireframing with PowerPoint and
Balsamiq
• Carole – IBM Rational Requirements
Composer (RRC) and Rational Team Concert
(RTC)
• Reshma – Trello
• Faye – JIRA and SharePoint
BAPDD2013
Wireframing
Overview
Wireframing
BAPDD2013
What is wireframing?
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Wireframing
BAPDD2013
Responsive…
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Wireframing
• A quick sketch
• A visual
representation
of the written
requirements
BAPDD2013
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Wireframing
All you need with
PowerPoint
• A collection of icons
For this wireframe
• PowerPoint text boxes
• Balsamiq icons
• Andreas Wulf’s free
Windows 8 icons
• Christian Naths’ free
Redacted font set
• Paint.Net free graphics
tool
BAPDD2013
Home
Menu
Search
Company Name
Page Title
Jkjsdkjd
Dksjdfksjfsj
skdjfdksjds
Jkjsdkjd
Dksjdfksjfsj
skdjfdksjds
Jkjsd kjd
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;ldjslkjdf s sdjfjskdjf ;sdjf sfjs fj sfjs dkjf
sk sdjfklsjf s jflksj flskj djj slklj df @twitter
Wireframing
Considerations
• High Fidelity vs. Low Fidelity
BAPDD2013
Wireframing
High Fidelity
BAPDD2013
Wireframing
Low Fidelity
BAPDD2013
Wireframing
Considerations
• High Fidelity vs. Low Fidelity
• Your Team
• ROI
BAPDD2013
Wireframing
PowerPoint
• Easy to use
PowerStory adds to PowerPoint
• Use case story boarding
Balsmiq
• Dynamic icons
BAPDD2013
BAPDD2013
Rational Requirements
Composer Overview
Rational Requirements Composer
BAPDD2013
-Nationwide Insurance Implementation
The Question: How do we improve requirements quality?
Requirements Management
Traceability
Impact Analysis
Scope Management
Dependencies
Build to Run Transition
Requirements Development
Elicitation Techniques
Elaboration
Validation Techniques
Prioritization
Reuse from Run to Plan/Build
Rational Requirements Composer
Benefits: Improved Requirements traceability
BAPDD2013
Rational Requirements Composer
Benefits: Enables a Business and Application/Asset view of
requirements
BAPDD2013
Rational Requirements Composer
Benefits: Reuse
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Rational Requirements Composer
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Benefits: Consistency across Business Units and Enterprise
Bonus: Analysts can move across business units without major on boarding
Rational Requirements Composer
BAPDD2013
Benefits: Connects business requirements to agile design
requirements
Bonus: RTC is tightly integrated, and part of the Rational ALM solution
• RRC/RTC is tightly integrated
Rational Requirements Composer
Summary of Capabilities
• Traceability backwards and forwards
– out-of-the box links or create your own
• Business Process Diagrams
– link from Activity/Step to Use Case or Story
• Wireframes
– any type of image file
• Storyboarding
– Progressive UI development
• Reviews/Approval process
• Suspicious Links notification
BAPDD2013
Rational Team Concert
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•
•
•
Application Release Management
Iterations, Plans, Builds, Releases
Burnup and Burndown, Velocity
Captures the work associated with
requirements, development and test
• Supports Agile-based practices as well as
Waterfall and Iterative
• New Integrations allows for Continuous
Release & support for DevOps
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Trello
Overview
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Trello - Board
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Trello - Adding a Card
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• Trello - Adding details to a card
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• Trello - Managing the Board
Trello – Pros and Cons
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Pros:
• Free! Free !! Free!!!
• Open to members and non-members
• Private or Public Boards (limited to a group of members or
anyone)
• Natural user interface with Kanban-like ‘look-and-feel’
• Ease of use, visibility and tracking, collaborative (i.e. Keyboard
shortcuts, color-coded lists, assign multiple users to cards)
• Available on iPhone / Android / Windows
• Developer API
• Secure SSL/HTTPS connection
• Google Drive / Dropbox/Local pc
• Add-on features like Calendar view of cards , convert Email into
card
Trello – Pros and Cons
BAPDD2013
Cons:
• Cards/tasks cannot be assigned to multiple
Boards / Projects
• Limited email integration
• Limited number of labels
• No tagging capability
• Difficult to move/copy etc. multiple cards
• No due dates per tasks, only per card
• Checklist are not easily visible inside cards
Trello – Business A/C
BAPDD2013
• $25 per month or $200 per year per organization
• Google Apps integration (email / drive / calendar /
docs / sheets / slides).
• Administrative controls Choose email domains,
restrict board visibility, organization admins to
manage organization boards
• Bulk data export
• Observers - board members that can view the board,
vote, and comment, but are not able to edit, move, or
create cards
• Better member control and visibility - more insight
into member activity, like de-activating members who
leave the org.
BAPDD2013
JIRA
JIRA - Overview
BAPDD2013
• Suite of tools for capturing, managing and
tracking work from idea to Production
• Track team activity against planned work
• Easy to set up and use, so entire team
(including Product Owners and Users) have
continual insight into status
• Fits into most budgets
• Plug-in system, so you pay for the functionality
that you use
JIRA – Work Tracking
BAPDD2013
•Allows all Team
Members and Users to
add bugs/stories/
enhancement requests
on the fly
•Track all related
information, including
points estimates,
detailed requirements,
supporting
documentation via
attachment, feature
identification
JIRA Agile – Backlog Management
BAPDD2013
• fka GreenHopper
• Drag-and-drop
stories/tasks/ bugs in
priority order of
customer value
JIRA Agile – Kanban
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• Slide cards to indicate
status
• Creates BVC that is
instantly updatable
JIRA Agile - Kanban
BAPDD2013
• Set WIP constraints to
focus team efforts
• Another visual
indicator of impacts to
schedule
JIRA Agile - Burndown
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• Calculates Burndown
and Velocity
• Allows for visual
display of scope
changes that impacted
development pace
JIRA Agile – Additional Metrics
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JIRA – Other Considerations
• Workflows
• Ease of use, visibility and tracking, collaborative
• Assign Issue Keys for traceability
• Mobile site makes available anywhere
• Developer API, with numerous existing plug-ins
• Affordability
www.atlassian.com
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BAPDD2013
SharePoint
SharePoint - Overview
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• Team collaboration tools easily built into a
single site, including intranet portals, file
management, social networks, websites, sitewide search, and business intelligence
• Closely integrated with Office
– Interface is familiar
– Easily use in conjunction with other Office
applications
SharePoint – Group/Project Sites
BAPDD2013
• Create single project site
• Knowledge Sharing
• Calendar/schedule
• Announcements
SharePoint – Document Repository
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Permissions-based
repository which allows
for versioning and
document preservation
SharePoint – Other Considerations
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• Ease of use for new users
• Highly customizable
• Accessible remotely with appropriate setup
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Resources & Tools
Resources & Tools
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• Wireframes Magazine -- wireframes.linowski.ca
• Smashing Magazine -- www.smashingmagazine.com
• Help Authoring Tools and Techniques forum -http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/HATT/info
• Christian Naths’ free Redacted font -https://github.com/christiannaths/Redacted-Font -Redacted Font sdf df ddfsdfs ddfds
• PowerStory -- http://power-story.com
• Balsamiq -- http://www.balsamiq.com
• Trello – www.trello.com (there is also a blog and a strong
user community that provides answers to FAQs etc and a
forum to post your questions and get responses
Resources & Tools
BAPDD2013
• Andreas Wulf’s free icons for PowerPoint http://designmodo.com/windows-8-wireframe/
• Cucumber - http://www.cukes.info
• Cucumber on GitHub https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber
• Axiom open source - build custom projects
• MS Team Foundation Server (TFS) plug in for
Excel can help with requirements traceability; can
view all team members' activities in one place
Resources & Tools
• Red Mine - requirements plug-ins for
storyboards; issue tracker
• Basecamp/Highrise/Campfire –
http://37signals.com/
• Pivotal Tracker - agile PM tool; iteration
manager - track stories thru development
process
• Mind Mapping - iThoughts HD for Apple;
MindJet; Xmind;
BAPDD2013
Resources & Tools
•
•
•
•
http://www.modernanalyst.com/
Mingle - www.thoughtworks.com
Rally Software - http://www.rallydev.com/
Prezzi - http://prezi.com/
BAPDD2013
BAPDD2013
Questions/
Comments
Accessorizing Your BA Toolbelt
Panelists
Reshma Pathare, CBAP, CSM, PMP, CSQA
Business Consultant
rpathare@cohaa.org
Carole Schwarz
IT Process Management - Requirements Capability
schwarc6@nationwide.com
Greg Swearingen, PSPO1
Senior Business Analyst / Consultant
gregs@gergman.com
Faye Thompson, JD, PSMI
Senior Agile Consultant
fthompson@cohaa.org
BAPDD2013