Agility is now an inherent skill in the business world. The business analyst needs to adapt his approach to be more easily able to embrace new challenges. What is agility and how can you improve yours?
Alternative project management
“Agile methods” refer to a set of project management practices. Unlike traditional design and production methods (such as the so-called “cascade” method), the agile approach is more pragmatic. According to Jeanne-Estelle Thébault, project manager at LGS, “agility is much more than just a method, it’s a mindset. The agile mentality is based on values to be embodied individually and as a team.”
Being courageous
Courage in carrying out projects means daring to raise a misunderstanding, a problem, and deciding to say things transparently at all times. This allows for better visibility – so errors are quickly identified and corrected. “The culture of problem denial is catastrophic,” the manager says. “Not only does the problem obviously not disappear, but it gets worse…”
Cultivating simplicity
Agile thinking assumes that it is counter-productive to foresee all the details that come into the design of a product, because the unexpected is inevitable and quickly makes many developments obsolete and unusable. “It’s still a challenge for many business analysts, accustomed to producing and mastering predictive and ultra-detailed documentation,” explains Mrs. Thébault.
Learning to be flexible
The agile approach favours a work in progress (access to an operational service, to a key functionality of the product being developed, for example) over exhaustive documents ahead of realization. “The business analyst should expect changes to be made during the process, aiming for efficiency in productivity and rapid development of a project,” adds the specialist.
Improving your agility also means knowing how to accept the possibility of changing behaviours that cause a lot of unnecessary work (developing functionalities that will never be used, for example), frustrations and additional costs.
Developing your ability to collaborate
“Working together means becoming more agile,” points out Jeanne-Estelle Thébault. The agile approach gives more importance to individuals and their interactions than to processes and tools. The agile business analyst therefore puts the emphasis on team cohesion as well as on continuous communication between the company and the customer. It works in this way to allow for better responsiveness to its requests and to more easily adapt to new needs during the process.
“An agile analyst is also an individual who is trained in change management, and who learns to develop his emotional intelligence,” concludes the project manager.