Instructor: Razvan Radulian

Applying Enterprise Business Architecture

Posted on October 17, 2020 by -

Part 1: Business Architecture Organizational Maturity & Roles

Organizational and individual expectations will be set for the workshop. The roles and competencies relevant to the business architecture activities will be discussed. Is your organization ready to support the effort?

  1. What to Expect
  2. Enterprise Support
  3. Business Architecture Maturity Levels
  4. Business Architecture Capabilities
  5. Business Analyst and Architect Synergy
  6. What Do Architects Do
  7. More Advanced Competencies

Activity: Competency Assessment

Part 2: Understand the Enterprise & Business Architecture Key Concepts

The value proposition for building a business architecture and industry best practices will be introduced. This information can also be used to sell the business architecture concept to the enterprise.

  1. The Shift: Strategic to Tactical
  2. Part of the Enterprise Architecture
  3. Benefits of Aligning Architectures
  4. What is Business Architecture
  5. Capture the Knowledge in Blueprints
  6. Build Relationship Maps for Decision Making
  7. Outcome Driven Business Architecture
  8. Why Have a Business Architecture?

Activity: Tactical or Strategic, Selling the Business Architecture

Part 3: Bodies of Knowledge and Frameworks

There are many frameworks that exist that can provide guidance for building the business architecture. But what is out there, what are the benefits and challenges of each and how do I know which combination is right for me? We will provide you with guidance to help you make that decision.

  1. Frameworks Overview
  2. Zachman Framework
  3. TOGAF®
  4. DODAF
  5. FEA
  6. Relevant Bodies of Knowledge
  7. BABOK®
  8. BIZBOK®

Activity: Which Framework to Apply

Part 4: Common Architectural Building Blocks

There are some common elements to business architectures regardless of the framework that should be considered. We will step through those elements or building blocks.

  1. Architecture Requirements
  2. Architecture Boundaries
  3. Applying the Context Diagram and Solution Views
  4. Architecture Structure
  5. Which Components, Relationships and Views
  6. Modeling Hints and Tips
  7. Notations and Modeling Languages
  8. BIZBOK®

Activity: Stakeholder Views, Building Blocks Reality Check, Name Two Quiz

Part 5: Set the Stage: Understand the Business

Understanding the business is critical to the business architecture’s success. This needed business information can be presented in different ways. We will look at a few of the most common ways this information is or can be captured and used to build your business architecture.

  1. Needed Inputs to the Business Architecture
  2. Business Model Canvas and Benefits of Asking Business Model Questions
  3. Strategy and Benefits of Asking Strategy Questions
  4. Balanced Scorecard
  5. Business Operating Model
  6. Identifying Business Scenarios
  7. Assess Maturity and Capabilities

Activity: Applying Business Model & Business Operating Model, True or False Quiz

Part 6: Create a Roadmap

There is a general approach to creating a business architecture that we will logically step through, but many elements should still be considered to tailor the approach. We will look at both so you can develop your own roadmap to success.

  1. Architecture Development
  2. Define Boundaries and Analyze Stakeholders
  3. Select Components, Frameworks and Notations
  4. Identify Elicitation, Analysis Techniques and Tools
  5. Why Approaches Vary
  6. Create a Business Case
  7. Present to Management
  8. Presenting Complex Content

Activity: Agenda for Future State Model, Challenge Scenario, Prepare for Building

Part 7: Build the Knowledgebase

  1. Leverage What You Have – Existing Assets
  2. Adding More Models and Maps
  3. Organizational Model
  4. Functional Decomposition Model
  5. Swim Lane and Value Streams
  6. Business Capabilities and Services
  7. Relationship and Alignment Maps

Activity: List Business Capabilities, Which Maps, Pick One Quiz

Part 8: Use the Business Architecture

  1. Business Architecture Engagement Model
  2. Sell to the Enterprise
  3. Adoption Assessment and Organizational Acceptance
  4. Get Others to Leverage the Business Architecture
  5. Quickly Build Trust with Stakeholders
  6. Be an Advisor, Find Opportunities
  7. Connect to Tactical Projects
  8. Reusing Organizational Assets

Activity: Reuse Examples, Lessons Learned

Business Analysis in Agile Projects (ICP-APO)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by -

Part 1: Getting Started

As we get started we will get to know each other and understand the objectives of the course. We will introduce the importance of Conversation in the Agile environment and how the Conversation can be managed for better communication and results. We will model the creation of Working Agreements that contribute to building trust on a team.

  1. Introductions
  2. Course Objectives
  3. Impact of other Domains on Agile Beginnings
  4. The Agile Conversation
  5. Working Agreements

Part 2: Agile Overview

You’ve heard it all before: “Agile means developing software without any documentation. Agile means developers decide on a product’s features. Agile is the same thing as Scrum.” Perhaps you’ve heard the most misleading concept of all: “Agile means we don’t do business analysis anymore.” Nothing could be more false.

Learn what Agile really is, what the variations and hybrids of Agile are, and how business analysis is critical to project success.

  1. Lean Beginnings
  2. Why Agile?
  3. Agile Manifesto & Principles
  4. Agile Practices

Part 3: Building an Agile Team

In Agile the Business Analyst has various possible roles from Voice of the Customer or Product Owner, member of the Customer side team, or member of the Development side team. In this section, we will explore how to create an effective Agile team with an Agile mindset and then see how the Business Analyst fits into this team framework and provides value.

  1. The Team as a System
  2. The Business Analyst

Part 4: Project Initiation

Agile follows an Adaptive, Just-in-Time planning model. In this section, we will learn how Adaptive Planning can better meet the customer’s needs and provide them more value with fewer resources by only elaborating requirements Just-in-Time.

  1. Five Levels of Planning
  2. Vision
  3. Themes & Roadmap
  4. User Roles and Personas

Part 5: Backlog Planning

The Agile vehicle of communicating requirements is the User Story. The Business Analyst is central in the process of writing and elaborating User Stories. This section will help the Business Analyst learn about User Stories and how to write and elaborate good User Stories.

  1. The Product Backlog
  2. Writing User Stories
  3. Guidelines for Good Stories
  4. Acceptance Criteria

Part 6: Managing the Backlog

After User Stories are written, they need to be prioritized and estimated. As part of the Customer side team, the BA has a major role in prioritization. As a member of the Development side team, the BA will contribute to User Story estimation. Both of these come with low cost, low waste techniques that allow us to do this quickly and get on to the important work of implementing requirements.

  1. Prioritization
  2. Estimating

Part 7: Release Planning

The Business needs to know when they will receive product deliverables. In this section, the Business Analyst will learn how milestones are set and how deliverables will be slated for a release with high confidence in meeting dates.

Part 8: Backlog Refinement

Backlog Refinement is where the Business Analyst is really worth their weight in gold. User Stories represent very thin statements of Customer wants and needs but they don’t contain the details until the development team is close to working on them. As the time to work on them approaches, the details need to be filled in and the Business Analyst is the central figure in requirements elaboration.

  1. Agile Documentation
  2. Requirements Elaboration

Part 9: The Iteration

When Requirements are ready to go – ready to go does not mean mountains of documentation. Much of the details are maintained as tacit knowledge with the Business Analyst and the others who have been involved with the Conversation. Continued collaboration is essential to turning what we’ve learned about the needs of the customer into working software. The Business Analyst is always there involved in answering real-time questions from the team.

  1. Iteration Planning
  2. Iteration Execution

Part 10: Inspect and Adapt

Agile is an Empirical Process for developing complex software. Essential to an Empirical Process is feedback loops. Feedback loops can be both formal and more informal. In this section, we will learn about the formal feedback loops that are built into the end-of-iteration timeframe for driving continuous improvement back into the process.

  1. The Iteration Review
  2. The Demo
  3. The Retrospective

Part 11: Agile Adoption

So you want to drive these concepts into your organization as you leave the class and go back to your work. This section will help you do that effectively.