Beyond Agile Methodologies: Exploring the Business Analyst’s Role in Agile Software Development

Mateusz Kwiatkowski; Aleksander Jarzębowicz

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-87880-0_11

Beyond Agile Methodologies: Exploring the Business Analyst’s Role in Agile Software Development

Abstract

Context: Agile methodologies are now used in the majority of software projects, but the definitions of such methodologies rarely include the role of a business analyst (BA). Objective: This paper investigates the responsibilities assigned to BAs participating in agile software projects. Method: We identified potential responsibilities through a systematic literature review (3 databases) and interviews with 6 practitioners. The most commonly mentioned responsibilities were further evaluated in an international questionnaire survey study with 72 respondents. Results: The combined findings from the SLR and interviews resulted in 89 unique responsibilities grouped into 7 areas. A subset of 49 responsibilities were ranked according to the frequency with which they were assigned to BAs in the survey respondents’ organizations. Conclusions: Our findings show that BAs typically support Product Owners (rather than taking on that role) and focus on requirements engineering, business needs, and working closely with development teams. Based on our findings, we propose a framework of agile BA responsibilities.