Topics today: “What do Business Analysts add to Lean Projects” and some general chat about career backgrounds.

What do Business Analysts add to Lean Projects?

• We don’t want to add a layer between the team and the business / customers
• One definition offered of business analysis “abrogation of responsibility of business to engage with the team” …
• If you have a product owner, why have business analysts?
• Scrum team – the whole team should own the problem of what to develop
• In Australia the role is undervalued and gets low quality people in it
• Small teams should engage directly with the Product Manager / Product Owner
• “lean companies have people that sell and people that developer – that’s it”
• May need skills to analyse business flows, but they need to be able to sell as well
• team should just learn the domain, it’s not that hard
• this segwayed into a great discussion about whether you should hire domain experts or good people – the net outcome we felt good people are always better. But we have met many people who disagree and feel that their domain is ‘special’ and that doesn’t apply

Career Advice

• lots of specific chat about a particular career path, the point I wanted to record was this:

In a company “follow the money”, “where the money is, I go”. That is look for opportunities to move to those parts of the business generating the most value.