Financial Services London - Are all us BA_PMs obsolete? What next?

[northernladuk]

They viewed the BAs role as junior/bottom of the ladder

Yep. Seems fair enough to me.

[eek]

A company i used to work for exactly had this kind of stuff. They viewed the BAs role as junior/bottom of the ladder and PM (Product Managers)/PO (Product Owners) are at the top. They see a BA natural progression is to get promoted to a PM/PO.

Indeed, the market has shifted a bit. in an agile world, BA role still exist but merely just an entry position. However, for a non-agile world (in particular in FS) BAs are still regarded as the top of the class.

That's because in a non-agile world there's no concept of 'Products' hence no requirement for PM (Product Manager)/PO - but rather they focus on 'Projects' instead, therefore in those environments they have BAs/PM < Project Managers

In an agile world - the BA isn't important ??????

I'm sorry but on any project I'm working on all members in a scrum team are equally important and the BA is at least as important as the Product owner. The product owner wants the product to be as good as possible, the BA needs to ensure it actually meets the business's requirements.

[Paralytic]

In an agile world - the BA isn't important ??????

I'm sorry but on any project I'm working on all members in a scrum team are equally important and the BA is at least as important as the Product owner. The product owner wants the product to be as good as possible, the BA needs to ensure it actually meets the business's requirements.

If your scrum team has a dedicated BA, then you're not doing scrum. A scrum team has a Scrum Master, PO and team members.

That BA role sounds like a proxy Product Owner - I've seen that often as companies transaction to agile: The PO is a business stakeholder who has the PO role added to their bucket of things to do, but does not have time to do it. Company has moved from waterfall, so assigns the BA to work with the PO to define the user stories.

It can work, but unless there are tight controls in place, with the PO fully embedded within the team, then in can result in the PO saying "that's not what I wanted" down the line. I've seen it done where the PO wants to sign off the user stories before they are allowed into sprint planning. Its a half-way house between waterfall and agile.

[ladymuck]

In an agile world - the BA isn't important ??????

I'm sorry but on any project I'm working on all members in a scrum team are equally important and the BA is at least as important as the Product owner. The product owner wants the product to be as good as possible, the BA needs to ensure it actually meets the business's requirements.

I agree with this. The BA at ClientCo for the project I am on was excellent and my role as PO was made a lot easier through her work.

Sadly internal politics put the project on hold after Christmas and the consultancy she's with redeployed her elsewhere. I actually worry about the success of the project without her, or someone of her calibre, on it.

[BritishLad88]

If your scrum team has a dedicated BA, then you're not doing scrum. A scrum team has a Scrum Master, PO and team members.

completely concur!

however, scrum is only one of many methodologies within agile. don't forget kanban, lean, scrumfall, kanfall, scrumban, ......

[BritishLad88]

In an agile world - the BA isn't important ??????

I'm sorry but on any project I'm working on all members in a scrum team are equally important and the BA is at least as important as the Product owner. The product owner wants the product to be as good as possible, the BA needs to ensure it actually meets the business's requirements.

exactly, try telling my old company that.

[eek]

I agree with this. The BA at ClientCo for the project I am on was excellent and my role as PO was made a lot easier through her work.

Sadly internal politics put the project on hold after Christmas and the consultancy she's with redeployed her elsewhere. I actually worry about the success of the project without her, or someone of her calibre, on it.

Yep - product owners rarely dive into the detail to find out exactly how the current process works and all the if buts and maybes that occur within it.

In the ideal world you want Functional Consultants on the team (i.e. knows the configuration side of the product and knows how that business sector works) without that you need BAs with sector knowledge.

Although it might be that I'm used to multiple team projects where I would expect the Product Owner and Solution architect to be part time across multiple teams to ensure the final delivered project is complete. But that's because I like small teams of 4-6 people rather than large teams performing multiple tasks at the same time.

But hey I only used to delivery multi-million pound projects across europe so what do I know.

[eek]

If your scrum team has a dedicated BA, then you're not doing scrum. A scrum team has a Scrum Master, PO and team members.

That BA role sounds like a proxy Product Owner - I've seen that often as companies transaction to agile: The PO is a business stakeholder who has the PO role added to their bucket of things to do, but does not have time to do it. Company has moved from waterfall, so assigns the BA to work with the PO to define the user stories.

It can work, but unless there are tight controls in place, with the PO fully embedded within the team, then in can result in the PO saying "that's not what I wanted" down the line. I've seen it done where the PO wants to sign off the user stories before they are allowed into sprint planning. Its a half-way house between waterfall and agile.

If the PO isn't paying daily attention to the deliverables that's their fault.