This morning as I sat in front of my laptop to write this blog entry and share my thoughts with fellow bloggers, I remembered the very first time I was hired as a Systems Analyst, about ten years ago. For a minute, I indulged myself in a brief walk down memory lane. As a fresh grad with burning desires to take any challenges thrown my way, I had my share of ups and downs. The struggles to blend my student mindset with corporate professionalism are not easy to describe. However, they made me who I am now: a Senior Business Analyst, having a certain level of expertise in terms of both functional and technical knowledge, but still craving new knowledge and challenges on day-to-day basis.

The objective of this article is to share my working experience through some tips for the agile Business Analyst. Like those in some other IT roles, Business Analysts play a significant role in ensuring a smooth project implementation. If you consider the multiple phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or Project Life Cycle (PLC), the business requirement gathering phase is the very first phase in the project pipeline. A precise and concise set of business requirements are the strength, backbone and foundation of the project implementation activities. Business Analysts are the people who face the firing squad of Business Users, Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts and other project team members, as well as other Stakeholders. They get involved in the early stages of the project, remain with the project as it evolves from one phase to another, work as a liaison between business users and developers, are fully accountable for the accuracy of requirements, produce documentation, and the list goes on.

First up, I will cover the preliminary stage, in which we do all of our groundwork prior to gathering the business requirements, along with some general hints and tips for the agile BA.

• Do your homework 
      • Take time to research the company history, business background and stakeholders.  This knowledge will increase your confidence when addressing the company’s business users or other stakeholders.
• Be prepared 
      • Develop questionnaires related to business processes, business user expectations, etc.
      • Prior to a meeting, send the agenda to business users so that they can be properly prepared.
• Be creative
      • Open yourself up to unconventional solutions.
• Communicate well
      • You are an ambassador representing the IT group. You must be able to communicate well not only with your teammates but also with business users, managers and everyone with a stake in the project.
• Break the rules 
      • Don’t take this to mean that you should literally break any of the company rules or policies. What I’m trying to say is that you should break the traditional way of capturing business requirements by incorporating new techniques, tools and methodologies in your requirement-gathering activities.
      • Explore options to present requirements in a strategic way that others will understand.
• Control the interview sessions
      • Always stick to your agenda and questionnaire topics.

In my next entry, I will continue through the project stages of gathering and documenting business requirements.

Most of us have heard Oracle speak of the need to develop a roadmap for our PeopleSoft products. Oracle recommends laying out a timeline or schedule that guides the transition from a PeopleTools-based product to a Fusion-based product. While I’m sure most agree this is a beneficial activity for budgeting and planning purposes, it can prove to be difficult, given that there are no guarantees with the “what, when, where and how” of the future Fusion product suite.

This past September, Oracle presented useful PeopleSoft subject matter at the OpenWorld 2008 conference in San Francisco. Much of this information could impact, or result in further refinement to, existing roadmap documents. The focus of my next few blog entries is to highlight some of the topics relevant to PeopleSoft strategic planning activities.

At the top of my list is PeopleTools 8.50, an update that could impact your 2009 IT plans. With the hype (and some confusion) surrounding the future Fusion product, it was refreshing to see a live demonstration of an enhanced PeopleTools product that brings the user interface more in line with today’s Web 2.0 standards. Oracle expects this release sometime in 2009, and given the fairly extensive demo at OpenWorld, the GA estimate appears accurate. I would recommend reviewing the presentation (and bookmarking the Oracle PeopleTools blog if you haven’t already) to better understand some of the updated capabilities with Tools 8.50.

Some features outlined in the presentation to keep in mind:

• Backward compatible: The 8.5 Tools release is backward compatible to any application running at least 8.4x. If you’re running Financials 8.9 on Tools 8.47 you can upgrade directly to 8.5. Some shops may see a better ROI by upgrading the Tools and leaving the application at the current level.

• Enriched navigation enhancements available with just the Tools upgrade:
    • Partial Page Refresh
    • Modal Lookup Prompts & Error Messages
    • New Menu, Favorites, Recent Visits
    • Homepage Pagelet Drag/Drop
    • Independent Pagelet Refresh
    • Type Ahead/Auto-Complete
    • Modal Zoom Grid for existing grids

• Connected Query – allows the developer to join PS Queries into parent-child relationships to further increase the tool’s ability as a reporting source. There will also be additional enhancements with Web services to run PS Query data to XML publisher or a third-party application.

The presentation does include new features that are dependent on additional product licensing. For example, the presentation shows a new feature that can pull business intelligence (BI) content directly into a page, based on the page’s current context. While the feature looks both sharp and useful, it requires a separate BI tool to generate the required data. Additionally, some of the features are dependent on an upgrade to 9.1 (GA estimate 2010). When reviewing these updated capabilities, make sure you differentiate what is delivered with the Tools upgrade by itself, as well as what’s available with the 9.1 application upgrade included. Regardless, the PeopleTools 8.5 release, scheduled for release in 2009, does offer compelling updates that should be analyzed against existing roadmap strategies.