What does it mean to be an Agile Business Analyst ?

Explore what it means to be an Agile Business Analyst

There has been a great debate about whether agile approaches recognize the role of business analysts. The most popular agile methods like Scrum DO NOT have an explicit role defined as a business analyst. What Scrum provides is the product owner role. As per Scrum, the Scrum team should be a cross-functional team having the capability to deliver the solution.

Do we need business analysis capability to deliver a solution? Of course, we do. Business analysis is an extremely valuable skill for any project team. In fact, the Product Owner role and the Business Analyst role do overlap significantly. Is the product owner a BA? The answer is yes. A product owner is indeed a BA. Can there be business analysts other than product owners? Again the answer is yes.

Additional business analysis capabilities are a requirement to detail product requirements. A product owner is typically a very senior person, sometimes almost the rank of Sponsor in traditional projects. Obviously, the Product Owner may not have the necessary bandwidth to get involved in detailed business analysis activities. Also, it may not be possible for the Product owner to be available to the scrum team and stakeholders. As needed, business analysts can work as a shadow product owners.