1. The Rope Approach
Intertwined Project Navigation
A Team of “1”
Heartland IIBA Presenter:
Samuel Osborne
June 21, 2016

2. The Agenda
• Session Description
• The Opportunity
• Learning Objectives
• The Concept
• The Behavior
• Business Case Development
• Business Analyst artifacts
• Intertwined Activities
• The Results
• The Conclusion

3. Session Description
Breaking News!
• BAs, PMs, QA Analysts, and Developers work
together to improve each others’ artifacts!
– While each has her/his own artifacts, and only
one is ‘officially’ a QA Analyst, each brings specific
insights to the project and enable improvement of
each others’ artifacts.
– So…. Let’s
– Plan, Do, Check, Improve!

4. The Opportunity
To leverage the knowledge, experience, and
perspectives of each of the leads and deliver
more complete, better quality artifacts,
products, and services
BA
PM
DEV
QA

5. Learning Objectives
• You will have learned
– An integrated approach to navigating your
projects to improve
• Business Case artifacts
• Analysis artifacts
• Coordination artifacts
• Downstream artifacts

6. The Concept
https://www.google.com/#q=picture%20of%20colored%20cable%20in
tertwined

7. The Behavior

8. Business Case
• Perform analysis and generate raw case
content
• Review case content with stakeholders
• Write the Business Case
• Present the Business Case
• Acquire Approval
• Proceed to Gate 1

9. Requirement Planning, Elicitation,
Documentation, Ratification
• All leads join the project, each representing their
unique stakes in the project
• The Lead Business Analyst drives, while others
come along for the ride
• While riding, PM, QA Lead, Dev Lead assess and
validates requirements, in effect, QAing the
requirements (Business, Functional, Non-
Functional, Implementation) as they are written

10. Development and QA Plan/Design
• All leads continue to work the project, each
representing their unique stakes in the project
• The Lead Developer drives, while others continue
the ride along, however
• The QA Lead is planning while continuing to
assess the requirement artifacts, and adds
assessment of Development artifacts
• The Dev Lead continues to assess and validate
requirements while using them to build
Development artifacts, and QAing the QA
artifacts as they are written

11. PM
• The PM uses BA, Developer, and QA analyst
artifacts to build out the project plan
• The PM assesses artifacts while building out
project plan
• The BA, Developer, and QA Analysts ‘QA’ the
project plan and the other artifacts

12. Business Case
• Business Driven/Focused
• Expertise/Experience Enhanced
• Strategy Bounded

13. Business Analyst Artifacts
• Plan
– Who will be needed to do what is to be done
– What will be done, when, how, by whom, AND
how much is enough
• Do
– Document the Requirements, Rules, Assumptions,
Constraints
• Business
• System
• Environment
• Check
• Improve

14. All Artifacts
• Plan
– Who will be needed to do what is to be done
– What will be done, when, how, by whom, AND how much
is enough
• Do
– Document the requirements, rules, assumptions,
constraints
• Business
• System
• Environment
• Check
– Review documented Requirements, Rules, Assumptions, Constraints
against
• Business Case
• System Design Docs
• Environment Models, Documentation
• Improve
– All processes and their components

15. Intertwined Activities
• Project Management
– Project Plan
– Implementation Plan
• Analysis
– Requirements Planning
– Elicitation/Documentation/Coordination/UAT
• Development
– Design
– Build
– Unit/Integration
– Code Review
• Test
– Test Planning
– Functional/System
– UAT
• Implementation

16. Results
• Better artifact quality
• Faster artifact delivery
• Improved process(es)
• Improved knowledge/knowledge sharing
• Better products and services

17. Conclusion
• Initiate BA, PM, Dev, and QA activities earlier
• All: ‘QA’ all artifacts
– Business Case
– Project Plan
– Requirement/Business Rule Plan(s)
– Requirements/Business Rules
– Development Plan
– Development Design/Code Reviews
– QA Plan
– Test Cases
– Implementation Plan
• Get IMPROVED artifacts, processes, products