Business analysis techniques in an agile context
Domain 4 tests whether you can select and adapt business analysis techniques to an agile context: collaborative, timeboxed, and aimed at a decision. It rewards knowing why a technique fits a question, not reciting notation.
Selection and adaptation
Match the technique to the question and the audience. Discovery techniques include workshops, interviews, observation, and prototyping; strategy techniques include SWOT, CATWOE, and impact mapping; process techniques include as-is/to-be modelling, value stream mapping, and root-cause analysis; requirements techniques include story mapping, example mapping, decision tables, and state diagrams. Customer journey mapping reveals experience; personas build empathy. In agile, model to think and communicate, keep models alive, and stop when the decision is supported. A technique is not a deliverable.
Business case and value
Use a lightweight, benefits-led business case: options, costs, benefits, risks, timescales, and benefits realisation. Fund incrementally where possible; record assumptions and review points. Revisit it at increments rather than freezing it upfront.
Worked example
Operations reports late order handling and rework. The BA runs a value stream map with staff, then a 5 Whys session; the workshop is timeboxed to 90 minutes with visible actions. The map shows duplicate approvals; the root cause is a policy introduced for a risk that no longer exists. Outputs: a future-state map, three backlog items, and one policy decision. Reasoning: the value stream engaged process actors and exposed waste; root cause analysis prevented a 'train the user' fix; the models were working artefacts, not a document deliverable.
Traps
- Producing a heavyweight as-is model because the technique exists.
- Choosing BPMN with business stakeholders when a simple flow is enough.
- Running a technique without a clear question or decision.
- Treating models as deliverables rather than thinking tools.
- Skipping the business case because 'agile is incremental'.
- Confusing impact mapping (goals to deliverables) with story mapping (journey to slices).