Tag: scrum

Day 16: Stringing You Along…

We had two major blasts today in class.

One: we got our Friday projects back. The good news is that, by and large, our instructor felt we did well. The bad news is that I completely spaced on putting all my inputs into a <form> element—apparently, I wasn’t the only one, and there were a few other things I missed that needed attention. We all had issues to correct, on which we spent most of the morning working. One issue, a link not working, turned out to be a non-issue. I suspect our instructor had us immediately work on our defects as, in real life, during an Agile Sprint, it would be expected that you would correct mistakes right away. As a BA, I’ve been on the other side of this equation (“What do you mean, you didn’t make the changes YET???”).

Two: we worked with strings today. We used different functions and methods, such as indexOf(), lastIndexOf(), substr, slice, etc. Before you ask, NO…this is NOT as much fun as working with that other type of string (a.k.a. yarn).

This all culminated in an exercise to parse out a full name by prefix (if present), first name, middle name, last name, and suffix (if present). After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I DID IT!!! Woohoo!!!

Tomorrow we work on dates…no, not the type you eat…

KT-ing to the new guy, or…do I REALLY know this little?

…and if so, why do I have so much documentation???

In preparation for my great move to Code Academy on July 8 I am in the process of doing KT with the BA who will be taking my place. I always assume people know what I mean by acronyms–KT stands for “knowledge transfer.” I have four days to impart my great wisdom (stop laughing) to my heir-apparent before the 4th of July weekend.

When my boss and I found out that I’d been accepted into Code Academy, after congratulating me on a job well-done, he informed me that he’d already found a replacement business analyst. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or insulted that I was this easy to replace.

In time-honored corporate tradition, the new BA is going to be doing his work and mine. We are in the wonderful world of Agile/Scrum now, so BAs don’t have as much to do as they used to. I know…BLASPHEMY! I’m probably breaking some sacred BA code by even mentioning it, but honestly our product owners now do a lot of the heavy lifting in getting our requirements. From what I’ve heard from BAs in other organizations, their BAs ARE the product owners–it’s not a separate role at all. Couple that with the fact that our product owner is a NINJA businessperson who also is very familiar with many systems…this is one of the reasons I decided that now would be a good time to pursue development work again. It’s only a matter of time before someone upstairs figures out that our BA roles can be just as easily performed by product owners trained to also document (remember: Agile…there isn’t as much anymore) and understand how the systems and the data flow. As it is, our product owner is also adept at designing test scenarios and use cases. Honestly, what’s left? When I first began being a business analyst back in 2008, we were still doing QA testing. This, of course, is now done offshore.

Despite all this, I still have quite a bit to impart to the new guy. He has some understanding of our system, but I’m filling in the blanks for him. I’m not too worried about him being lost because…well, see above. Our product owner, who used to work on the system as an adjustor ages ago, probably knows more than the developers.

And, in answer to the inevitable question…no, I have no desire to segue into product owner work. I really feel that this is all happening for a reason. Ever since my mainframe system work was shipped offshore back in 2008, I’ve missed developing. I’m excited about coding again!