What is the role of a business analyst in Scrum?

I often come across "shared PO" for multiple scrum teams. They, indeed, are representatives of customer in a Scrum Team. Alignment of product strategy and execution are the key points PO bridges the gap on. While the Product Managers (PMs) dedicate more time in strategic roadmap, the POs spend time working, validating, and materialising the targeted features in the roadmap.

In Scrum, the Business Analyst (BA) is a key player, adapting to project dynamics. BAs refine the Product Backlog by collaborating with stakeholders, prioritizing requirements, and breaking them down into user stories with clear acceptance criteria. They serve as a crucial link between business and development teams, ensuring a shared understanding of project goals. BAs actively contribute to sprint reviews and retrospectives, providing valuable insights for continuous improvement. In essence, the role involves dynamic collaboration, effective communication, and a commitment to refining processes for successful project outcomes.

I think it differs depending on the organization. Although Scrum does not acknowledge the BA role, it does exist within the team. While in some teams the BA may also serve as the PO for the team, in other situations the PO collaborates with the strategic stakeholders to gain a deeper comprehension of the business objectives and communicates the business needs to the BAs for alignment or sharing with the developers.

A SHORTY STORY : A Scrum team bypassed having a Business Analyst for their project in a software firm. Misunderstandings emerged as they raced ahead, and the product failed to fulfil stakeholder expectations. Without a BA, the backlog became jumbled, dangers remained ignored, and the project went off the rails. The team discovered the hard way that failing to consider the job of a Business Analyst may result in delays, unhappiness, and costly blunders. END OF STORY. Even though the responsibilities of a BA are not explicitly stated in Scrum, the presence of a BA cannot be overstated.

In Scrum, a business analyst typically serves as a liaison between the development team and stakeholders. Their role involves gathering and clarifying requirements, defining user stories, and ensuring that the product backlog is well-maintained and prioritized based on business value. They also collaborate with the product owner to ensure that the product backlog items are clear, concise, and aligned with the overall vision and goals of the project. Additionally, business analysts may assist in refining user stories during sprint planning and provide ongoing support to the development team throughout the sprint.

Business Analysts extend Product Owners. Sometimes, this means that POs can direct multiple squads effectively with the help of BAs to refine stories and own the details. Sometimes, this means that BAs are there to supplement the POs with skills like data analysis, or creating flow charts, etc.

A common myth: business analysts are more junior than product owners. I believe that BA's are more specialized than PO's and play a bigger part in the analysis, whereas a PO is a big person individual. Some BA's are more data-driven and process oriented and much more involved in interpreting the data or digging deeper into a business processes. A PO on the other hand might spend more time setting product metrics, creating the overall product roadmap, performing competitive analysis and coming up with a go-to-market strategy. I've helped many BA's transition into product ownership roles when their interests changed and they've decided that they want to do less analysis & more strategy.

A Business Analyst in scrum is the Sherlock Holmes of the project. They investigate, analyze, and decode the client's needs, turning vague clues into clear, actionable user stories. They're the ones who help the team solve the mystery of creating a product that truly satisfies the client's desires

Business Analysts is one who must is a helping hand for PO and go to person for all the team. It is not necessary he has all the knowledge in the world but he should be someone who manages to solve the problems. Key Skills - Stakeholder management - within team, organisation and outside world as well. - Crystal clear Communication- keeping team aware with all the facts transparent - Problem Solving Attitude - A good Team Player

The collaboration between product owners and business analysts in Scrum is akin to a symbiotic partnership. While product owners champion the vision, business analysts provide the essential contextual understanding that enables the team to deliver customer-centric solutions. Together, they form a dynamic duo that ensures requirements are not just defined but refined continuously. This collaboration fosters a shared sense of ownership, accelerating the alignment of scope, quality, and time with evolving customer needs.

Both BA and POs need to have the understanding of what customer wants and what are their business needs. They have to decide what's most important for the product and make sure it gets done on time and works well. They need to ensure that the product evolves in line with changing market dynamics and user needs which would lead to delivering value to the stakeholders

If there is a direct link to the stack they can be similar, if not you can consider BA as a developer! Yes, it is possible. According to the Scrum Guide, anyone involved in building any aspect of the product is a developer.

Agility helps redistribute skills and competencies. While product owner owns vision and strategy, business analysts/designer is more hands-on working to identify requirements and add necessary detail for development team. However business analyst as a role was created for a waterfall world and does not fully fit into modern agile world. Instead its competencies were redistributed and they either move to product owner role or become designers adding additional skills related to product and solution discovery.

As someone who has filled both roles and coached many people through the years, the primary difference I have seen is that Product Owners make decisions about investments in the product - what to develop, what not to develop, what to do now, what to wait to do - and then they are held to account for those decisions. Business Analysts are, as the name implies, more focused on the analysis that enables and facilitates decision-making. But the role, in most companies, does not include making the decisions and being held to account for them.

Distinguishing Product Owners (POs) from Business Analysts (BAs) in Scrum is crucial: Responsibilities: POs drive the product vision, own the backlog, and decide on feature development. BAs gather and refine detailed requirements. Decision-Making: POs have authority over features and "done" criteria. BAs provide valuable input but don't make final decisions. Backlog Ownership: POs own and prioritize the backlog, while BAs assist with refinement and prioritization. Strategic vs. Tactical: POs focus on the product's long-term vision, while BAs manage detailed requirements and user stories. Effective collaboration is key for Scrum success.

The Product Owner concentrates on defining and driving the product's development, while the Business Analyst is focused on analyzing and documenting business processes and ensuring that the project aligns with business goals. In my opinion, the PO is closer to the customer side, while the BA is more likely a linchpin between the customer and the development team. (Of course, there may be some overlap in tasks and responsibilities; sometimes the role name is Product Owner, but with Business Analyst responsibilities.)

In Scrum framework there is no specific term as BA. It is PO only who acts as a BA. But in real world one may find PO and BA in Scrum team. 1)PO has broader view of a product whereas BA could be specific to a functionality/team. 2)BAs work with dev team , resolve their queries and clarifies the requirements. Whereas PO provides the high level requirement or design to BA which BA further drill down for dev team. 3)Many a times PO decides stories for a sprint. i.e. Prioritization is done by PO as he works more closely with business . BA can provide input for prioritization but usually decision is made by POs

The business analyst like the product owner should be involved in the strategic and visionary aspect of the product. This experience empowers the business analyst to ask the right questions during requirement elicitation and subsequently in their tactical and operational responsibilities. The understanding of the strategy and vision of the product enables the business analyst to support the testers and developers in understanding the definition of done.

Product Owner owns the stakeholder expectation management while Business Analyst supports in communication with the stakeholders. Stakeholder expectation management requires: 1. Clear product vision, backlog prioritisation for the organisation instead of single stakeholders 2. Keeping the product backlog clear of good ideas and filled with tangible delivery commitments 3. Always being able to communicate what is more important than something else instead of accepting everything to be important 4. Sharing product backlog for stakeholders to view instead of time consuming weekly status meetings 5. By clearly communicating trade-offs when explaining prioritisations 6. Not allowing shoulder stripes or loud voices to dictate priorities

Both PO & BA communicate the expectations via Show and tell. While PO restricts to the products success, the BA has to manage all contributing and affected stakeholder expectation.

As a Product Owner, I communicate with stakeholders about the product vision, prioritizing features to meet their goals. I manage expectations through clear roadmaps and regular updates. As a Business Analyst, I gather requirements and present data-driven insights. I focus on realistic solutions and implications of decisions. In both roles, maintaining transparency, setting clear goals, and consistent feedback are key to managing stakeholder expectations effectively.