5. Initiative Horizon

5.4 Time Frame

Agile Extension to the BABOK® Guide

IIBA.org KnowledgeHub Agile Extension 5. Initiative Horizon 5.4 Time Frame

The Initiative Horizon involves looking into the mid-term future compared to the Strategy and Delivery Horizons. What mid-term means depends on the organization and the context in which it is operating. The time frame for analysis at the Initiative Horizon is mainly determined on how rapidly outcomes are achieved and needs are met. As a general reference, the Initiative Horizon guides analysis and action over the period of the upcoming one to three months. In an agile context, this time frame continually shifts and moves forward, creating what can be considered a rolling time frame.

Although the scope of analysis may be set for the mid-term, ongoing analysis and decisions are central to the success of agile initiatives. As new information emerges and greater clarity and understanding of the need and the solution are achieved, business analysis practitioners apply this learning to the understanding and direction of the solution.

At the Initiative Horizon, business analysis practitioners are driven by the following questions:

What outcomes are we driving now?
What outcomes will we be addressing next?
What outcomes will we be addressing in the future?

These questions can form the basis of a roadmap for the solution.

Mapped Tasks From the BABOK Guide

Learn how Tasks from the BABOK Guide Knowledge Areas apply at the Initiative Horizon.

3.1 Plan Business Analysis Approach

The specific agile business analysis approaches and activities are selected at the InitiativeHorizon. The level of planning is lightweight and just what isneeded to meet the needs of the horizon.

The agile approaches and activities arecontinually redefined and business analysis methods change and evolve as feedback is received.

3.2 Plan Stakeholder Engagement

The plans for stakeholder engagement are relative to the specific needs of the Initiative Horizon.

The approach for establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with the stakeholders is an ongoing adaptive process and includes stakeholders from across all initiatives in the organization who are responsible for executing on organizational goals.

3.3 Plan Business Analysis Governance

Define how management of the initiative requirements will take place. This includes determining if Scrum, Kanban, or another agile approach will be used. The team determines how the backlog will be refined and prioritized throughout the initiative.

3.4 Plan Business Analysis Information Management

The approach for how business analysis information will be stored and accessed is defined through ongoing collaboration with the delivery teams involved in the initiative. To facilitate continuous improvements, feedback and learning is shared with the other horizons.

3.5 Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements

Assessing business analysis work and planning to improve processes is continuous and based on ongoing feedback. Measures focus on the ability to learn and adapt based on ongoing feedback.

4.1 Prepare for Elicitation

Preparing for elicitation involves creating and supporting a framework for collaboration and learning across all delivery teams and using feedback to ensure continuous improvement in elicitation outcomes.

4.2 Conduct Elicitation

The focus of conducting elicitation is continuous and spans across all initiatives, throughout the organization, and spans beyond the boundaries of the organization. The focus is on ensuring that ongoing feedback is heard, and that ongoing organizational learning extends across allinitiatives.

4.3 Confirm Elicitation Results

Confirming elicitation results involves ensuring that feedback received from all horizons is both consistent and still relevant. Confirmation occurs from feedback from other horizons.

4.4 Communicate Business Analysis Information

At the Initiative Horizon, the emphasis is on communicating information to stakeholders and collecting feedback and information from customers. This can be done through reviews, product demonstrations, workshops, release plans, and the product roadmap.

4.5 Manage Stakeholder Collaboration

Driving collaboration and connection is a core agile value, and a core agile business analysis value. Find ways to ensure that your activities are transparent and communicated.

5.1 Trace Requirements

Efforts focus on ensuring requirements are traceable to the business goals and metrics established in the Strategy Horizon.

Effective requirements tracing ensures efforts within one initiative are aligned to and not in conflict with other initiatives within the organization.

5.2 Maintain Requirements

Maintaining requirements is focused less on maintaining accurate requirements and more on understanding the accuracy of customer needs and lessons from customer experience, and determining if existing information remains relevant. This may involve a trade-off between accurate maintenance of requirements in favour of experimentation, continual change, and learning.

The focus is on the selection of which features to deliver, not necessarily the order in which they are delivered.

5.3 Prioritize Requirements

At the Initiative Horizon, the focus is on the selection of which features to deliver, not necessarily the order in which they are delivered.

5.4 Assess Requirements Changes

Requirement changes are assessed during backlog refinement activities. This is a lightweight activity and only done on an as-needed basis.

5.5 Approve Requirements

Agile initiatives generally appoint a lead such as a product owner or customer representative. Approval happens when the lead selects a requirement for delivery.

Reducing the number of approvals needed can help ensure that the team can deliver quickly and focus on increasing feedback and learning opportunities.

6.1 Analyze Current State

When beginning an initiative, business analysis practitioners analyze the current state. Analysis focuses on understanding the whole at a high-level and then identifying the most valuable parts for change.

6.2 Define Future State

At the Initiative Horizon, defining the future state involves identifying the intended outcome of the initiative.

Multiple potential future states and different time horizons are continually being defined and re- defined while change is happening.

6.3 Assess Risks

The ongoing assessment of risk, based on continuous feedback and learning, helps determine which features to work on first.

6.4 Define Change Strategy

Continuous feedback and learning informs an ever evolving change strategy. Multiple potential strategies may be defined through experimentation.

7.1 Specify and Model Requirements

The Initiative Horizon specifies and models stakeholder needs and problems to be solved.

7.2 Verify Requirements

Verifying requirements involves communicating a shared understanding of the problem and the solution. This facilitates a shared understanding of the features and ensures the delivery team can act on them.

7.3 Validate Requirements

The ongoing validation of outputs based on continuous feedback and learning helps the evolution towards the desired outcomes of the initiative.

7.4 Define Requirements Architecture

Requirements architecture is managed through the backlog. Techniques such as Purpose Alignment Model, Retrospectives, and Value Stream Mapping are used on an ongoing basis to ensure feedback and learning informs the evolution of the requirements architecture.