If you are a current or recovering Business Analyst, you may remember Scott Ambler's assertion in his essay " Rethinking the Role of Business Analyst :" A business analyst (BA) is a poor substitute for developers who have both ready access to actual stakeholders and agile modeling skills. Remember, BA is also the abbreviation for band-aid. Image courtesy of target.com I have friends who switched to Curad for their fabric bandage needs, they were so annoyed by Ambler's witticism, even though Curad never had the mysterious tiny round bandages that don't do anything, but you feel incomplete without them. In the past, business analysts were always first to go, when a company decided to institute an "agile" policy where everyone on all teams would get called a "developer," supposedly because everyone on the team could do everything needed, but generally because everyone on the team was, in fact, a developer. Often times, the next step ...
Non-zealot reflections on real life agile leadership, management and analysis practices.