Role of Business Analysts in SCRUM and Why is a QA Best for this Role?

How Business Analysts Crucially Matter in SCRUM:

A Business Analyst, often abbreviated as BA, serves a pivotal role in SCRUM by bridging the gap between the product owner or client and the IT team. Although we have covered BA tutorials on our site before, this tutorial offers a unique perspective into the significance of a BA in the SCRUM process.

Let’s Discover Why!

=> Discover All Business Analyst Tutorials Here.

Duties of a BA

Business Analysts embody various roles in Scrum and have specific obligations they must meet.

Here are some of their main duties:

• Refining product backlog based on the order of priority indicated by the product owner.
• Assessing customer needs and discovering solutions to fulfill them.
• Formulating user stories with suitable acceptance criteria designed to specify the demands.
• Examining user stories authored by the product owner to ensure the inclusion of all relevant business rules and functionality.
• Collaborating with the product owner and stakeholders to comprehend the range and propose enhancements to the requirements.
• Generating documents like wireframes, design flow, and UI as needed.

Additionally, Business Analysts regularly partake in brainstorming sessions to discuss the backlog for the upcoming sprint. They guide the team, help to clarify requirements, and occasionally even authorize the execution.

They also work closely with QAs, examining test coverage, transforming use cases into test cases, and providing insights into testing complex functionalities. Business Analysts join in planning meetings to aid the team in estimations by helping them understand the flow, complexity, and dependencies.

Business Analysts must persistently learn about market trends, innovate, and keep abreast in the business sector for which the product is being created.

Business Analyst Acting as a Product Owner

In certain scenarios, companies may have Business Analysts undertake the role of product owner. In such cases, the BA serves as the primary point of contact for all queries and acts as a go-between for the team and stakeholders.

The BA must comprehend the requirements of the stakeholders and their vision for business growth. Based on these, the BA generates documents and user stories, prioritizes them, assists the team in understanding them, and answers any associated inquiries.

It is critical to note that this arrangement functions optimally when the BA is physically present and not located in a conflicting time zone—this ensures effective communication and mitigates any potential gaps or misunderstandings.

In my view, having a BA as a product owner is advantageous due to the BA’s thorough understanding of the product. This facilitates the negotiation and scoping of assignments.

Business Analyst Participating as a Team Member

Another possibility is to assign the Business Analyst as a member of the team, particularly when the product owner is unavailable. In this case, the Business Analyst aids the team with backlog grooming.

Designating a Business Analyst as a team member yields several advantages as the technical team finds it easier to communicate and seek clarification from the BA. The BA also works closely with the QA team for testing, analyzing test coverage, spotting hidden requirements, dependencies, and impacts.

When the acceptance criteria provided by the product owner are unclear, it becomes the BA’s duty, as a team member, to write detailed and clear acceptance criteria. When the team demands extra information, the BA generates wireframe documents, flow documents, and so on, to clarify the prerequisites.

In extensive projects with dispersed modules, deploying a BA for multiple teams proves beneficial. The BA can take into account interoperability and the influence of new features or updates on other modules, which is advantageous to the technical teams who may not always include these factors in user stories or acceptance criteria.

Importance and Function of Business Analysts in a SCRUM Group

Business Analysts contribute indispensably to the success of projects within SCRUM. They are involved from comprehending customer necessities to the sprint demo. They serve as the primary communication conduit for the technical team when it comes to clarifications or discussions. Their role is especially crucial at the onset of new and large-scale projects.

The Product Owner may not always be skillful at authoring documentation. Sometimes, they hail from a technological background. In such instances, it falls to the Business Analyst to compose detailed, explanatory, and extensive user stories, acceptance criteria, wireframes, and more.

In my project experience, our Product Owner found documentation challenging. The user stories were often only a few lines long, and the acceptance criteria were similarly brief. The Business Analyst had to adjust and elaborate on them.

There were occasions where the Product Owner wrote user stories with 21 or more story points, obliging the Business Analyst to expend extra time and effort in dissecting them and prioritizing them with the Product Owner.

Imagine a scenario devoid of a Business Analyst where the Product Owner drafts a user story such as “As a customer, I want to execute all banking transactions for my account” with acceptance criteria such as:

1. The customer should possess the ability to log in.
2. The customer should gain the ability to conduct transactions in their account.
3. The customer should acquire the ability to download their historical statements, and so forth.

In my perspective, this solitary user story could surpass 34 story points, necessitating further decomposition. Without proper flow diagrams and UI screens, the work of the technical team would become even more challenging.

This could eventually lead to a failed sprint and consequently, a failed project. Unless the Product Owner is a trained/proficient Business Analyst, the need for a BA on the team is critical.

Why is a QA Ideal for this Role?

QAs bear the responsibility for validating proposed solutions to problems or requirements through testing. Therefore, Business Analysts, stakeholders, and Product Owners are all keen to receive feedback from QAs. The involvement of a BA in testing outstrips their involvement in development.

Business Analysts collaborate closely with QAs, reviewing test case coverage to glean insights into hidden flows, requisites, and impacts. This exchange of knowledge aids QAs in understanding product functionality, business rules, customer expectations, flows, dependencies, and more.

QAs consistently test from the standpoint of the end users, thereby enabling them to propose enhancements and improvements to the product. Developers focus on implementing the product as per user stories and acceptance criteria, without always considering how customers will utilize the product (QA).

While development adheres to defined implementations, flows, and rules, testing heavily relies on logical reasoning and the capability to perceive things from an end-user’s viewpoint.

The chances presented in daily work make it a smooth transition for QAs to evolve into the role of Business Analysts in SCRUM.

Suggested Read => Career Transition from Tester to BA

QAs can transition seamlessly into BA roles by:

• Studying requirements in detail and identifying gaps during review gatherings or brainstorming sessions, proposing superior solutions, and discussing them with the team and the BA.
• Participating actively in calls with the Product Owner, engaging in questioning, and sharing discoveries. Demonstrating interest in the product increases the Product Owner’s confidence.
• Serving as a liaison between the BA and the development team and being the point of reference for developers’ clarifications or doubts.
• Establishing and persistently innovating the testing process to ensure successful sprints.
• Proposing enhancements for product appearances by keeping abreast with new trends.
• Achieving a comprehensive understanding of the product.
• Acquiring strong knowledge about stakeholders, their expectations, and sharing experiences with them.

To transition into the BA role, it is necessary to develop skills through various courses available in the market. These courses range from basic to advanced levels.

Are you a BA or a QA? Did we accurately capture your role? Did we miss any unique facets of your work? We would love to hear from you. Feel free to share your insights in the comments section below!

=> Navigate Here To See The Business Analyst Series.