Maybe you missed one of Adriana’s articles this year. To make them easier to find, here’s a list of posts from her you may want to check out:
What’s Agility, Anyway?
Agile practices are not intrinsically “value-adding” — they must be aligned to business needs and goals in order to provide true value. By measuring their agility based on compliance with a particular method, organizations may prevent their teams from adapting practices to suit projects with different characteristics and needs.
Agile vs. Traditional Software Development: The future is hybrid
Even though the Agile Manifesto recently completed 10 years, there are still some lingering misconceptions about the agile approach within the BA community. In this post Adriana Beal addresses two points that are often overlooked by business analysts when they discuss agile methods.
Agile vs. Traditional Part I: The dangers of bounded rationality
In the first part of this trilogy, Adriana provide some interesting examples of when even positive agile practices, such as early user feedback, are not enough to ensure the quality of requirements.
Agile vs. Traditional Part II: Methods are a means to the end of project success, not the end themselves
There is no silver bullet capable of completely removing the risks of missed schedules, blown budgets, and flawed products, either in traditional or agile software development.
Agile vs. Traditional Part III: Winning Through Integrative Thinking
Approaches for software development should not be looked at as an “either-or” proposition, but rather as a “both-and” situation.
The Psychology of Change
Understanding the psychological aspects of change is a critical skill for project leaders and business analysts. It includes playing to motivational drivers, gaining traction at the group level, and finding ways to make the invisible visible.
On the Bright Side
We’re good at scrutinizing problems, but many project managers and business analysts could do a better job of fostering positive change and improving future results by giving more attention to the “bright spots” on projects — those flashes of success that often go unnoticed when other things go wrong.