EXIN BCS Agile BA Professional cheat sheet

Agile BA value delivery: prioritize working software and customer collaboration over comprehensive documentation, but produce just enough documentation to support decisions and audit.

The Agile Manifesto's four values: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan.

Cynefin framework decision rule: in complex domains, probe-sense-respond; in complicated, sense-analyze-respond; in chaotic, act-sense-respond; in clear, sense-categorize-respond.

Agile BA mindset: embrace uncertainty, iterate for feedback, and treat requirements as hypotheses to be validated rather than fixed specifications.

Business analysis core concept model (BACCM) six concepts: change, need, solution, stakeholder, value, context - all interrelated and must be considered together.

Principle of 'just enough, just in time': elaborate requirements at the last responsible moment to avoid wasted effort and outdated detail.

Agile BA role spans analysis, facilitation, and product ownership support; the role is not a gatekeeper but a collaboration enabler.

Value stream thinking: map activities that deliver value to the customer; eliminate non-value-adding analysis artifacts.

Definition of Done and Definition of Ready are team agreements that shape when analysis is sufficient; they are not imposed by the BA alone.

Stakeholder analysis matrix: map power/interest; high power-high interest = manage closely; high power-low interest = keep satisfied; low power-high interest = keep informed; low power-low interest = monitor.

Agile team roles: Product Owner (value maximization and backlog ordering), Scrum Master (process facilitation and impediment removal), Development Team (cross-functional delivery).

Collaboration techniques: daily stand-up (15 min, three questions), retrospectives (inspect and adapt), and sprint reviews (demo to stakeholders for feedback).

Stakeholder engagement plan: identify stakeholders, analyze interests and influence, define engagement approach, and review regularly as the project evolves.

On agile teams, the BA often facilitates shared understanding using visual models, examples, and conversations rather than written handoffs.

Distributed team collaboration: use asynchronous communication for documentation and synchronous for complex problem-solving; maintain a single source of truth.

Conflict resolution: address task conflict constructively; personal conflict requires private conversation and focus on interests, not positions.

RACI is less common in agile; instead use clear ownership (Product Owner for what, team for how) and collaborative decision-making.

User story format: As a , I want , so that . It captures who, what, and why without prescribing implementation.

INVEST criteria for good stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.

Backlog refinement (grooming): ongoing activity to add detail, estimate, and reorder items; typically consumes up to 10% of team capacity.

Definition of Ready: a checklist ensuring a story is clear, testable, and sized for a sprint before it enters the sprint backlog.

Acceptance criteria define the boundaries of a story and are used to confirm completion; they can be written as rules or as Given-When-Then scenarios.

MoSCoW prioritization: Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have this time - used to manage scope within a timebox.

Story mapping: arrange stories along a user journey (horizontal) and by priority/release (vertical) to visualize product scope and slice releases.

Velocity is a planning tool based on past completed work; use it to forecast, not to compare teams or pressure performance.

Epics are large stories that can be decomposed into smaller stories; themes group related stories for a common goal.

Given-When-Then (Gherkin) scenario structure: Given a precondition, When an action occurs, Then an expected outcome - used for behavior-driven development.

Example mapping: a collaborative workshop to break a story into rules, examples, and questions; uses colored cards for rules (yellow), examples (green), questions (red), and the story (blue).

Impact mapping: a visual technique linking goals to actors, impacts, and deliverables; helps avoid output-focused delivery.

Minimum viable product (MVP) and minimum marketable feature (MMF): MVP validates learning with least effort; MMF delivers enough value for release.

Kano model classifies features as basic, performance, excitement, indifferent, or reverse; use it to prioritize customer satisfaction drivers.

Value stream mapping in agile: identify delays and handoffs in the analysis-to-delivery flow; aim to reduce batch size and lead time.

Prototyping and wireframing are used to elicit feedback early; low-fidelity prototypes reduce cost of change.

Decision tables and state diagrams are useful for complex business rules and lifecycle behavior; they complement user stories.

Story splitting patterns: split by workflow steps, business rules, data variations, or acceptance criteria to make stories small and valuable.