Who is Agile Business Analyst?

Traditional Business Analyst
nBusiness analyst are suppose to be the requirement definer who will be able to define all the requirement of the project from the starting of the project(s). This is the job of Business analyst in tradition requirement analysis. During the traditional software engineering once documented by business analyst are not going to change atleast not without potential delay and budget overruns. He should communicate properly with the customer and refine the needs of the customer. He should be able to satisfy the customer(s) need.
What is Agile Project Management?
This SE assumes that process required to develop working software in todays economy is not predictable. Requirement may change, technology may change we can predict individual team members efficiency. When the factors that affect engineering are not static we can’t predict the outcome within sufficient tolerance. Instead we need to adjust the outcome and guide them to create desired outcome. Agile project management does this by creating a high level visibility of the project status, frequently inspecting outcome and maintain the ability to adapt the changing requirement.

In Agile collaborative project requirement succeeds. All the team members are from all discipline involved in defining project requirement. Technical team members and Quality Assurance (QA) collaborate with the product owner and the BA to develop the project specifications. So Team members in Agile project management can experience the collaborative business process involved in the product engineering.
Then Who is Agile Business Analyst?
Just as every Agile team does not necessarily need a dedicated Project Manager, not every team will need a dedicated Business Analyst. Many Agile projects rely on team members that can perform more than one role. Following are the skills needed for a Agile Business Analyst.

  • Like traditional SE Agile Business analyst facilitate discussion with the product owner.
  • Afterwards the business analyst should be able bring tremendous amount of technical knowledge that help him to draw out the high level functional requirement from the product owner.
  • BAs can also help translate user needs into more technical language for the developers.
  • Coaching and team building.
  • Developing a good understanding of software architecture concepts will help to bridge the gap between the development team and the business.
  • Agile team dynamics and collaborative decision-making techniques.

As a whole even the project can be deliver even without a Project Manager, the Business analyst facilitate, define, understand the team deliver the project with even admit continuous requirement change. That means the Business Analyst should participate in the whole engineering cycle.

Rapid Application development tool without any coding for Desktops and Mobiles LyteRAD

I know this age is all about SaaS based products, now I am going to introduce you a desktop application but that create a real value for money and time. We can develop both desktop and mobile application using this RAD tool. One major feature that makes LyteRAD different from other RAD tools is we don’t even need to code a single line code for building database applications. The application was developed by a company based in Bangalore called LyteCube.

LyteRAD is developed using Java platform we don’t need to care about database administration configuration etc. So a normal user without enough knowledge in coding can build CRM tools, financial marketing tools etc. The application store database in binary files so the database can be export to other databases like Oracle, MySQL, Postgres. There are 2 version available for download LyteRAD CE and LyteRAD Pro in which LyteRAD CE is free of cost while LyteRAD pro cost $149.

The company is merchandising the product to Indian markets who want to build there own application without investing much money. They are mainly concentrating on small business companies who hesitate to use SaaS based hosted solutions because of security, privacy & reliability issues.

LyteRAD also allow us to develop mobile applications. In the Pro version we can develop applications called RADlets. This application can be deployed to any J2me enabled mobile devices. We can even develop the application in mobile phone itself. Just look at this video. A good documentation is available for LyteRAD.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This is a modern software application delivery model, in which vendor develop the application, host and maintain the applications by themselves.

Traditional applications are Application service provider or on demand applications. So customer need to pay for the entire application. Moreover customer might not be interested in all the service provided by the software. This create customer a feeling to pay less for the application. All most all traditional desktop applications are on demand or application service provider model.

As web space bringing more attention to customers the idea of software as a service arise. Now web act as a platform to help and enhance service based access to infrastructure, applications and business processes. You can see that almost all modern web 2.0 applications follow the software as a service model. Customers do not pay for the entire application rather than they pay only for use. Even the vendor can expose there service via API which may be web service or REST calls. Since the application resides centrally any patch can be applied anytime without any hurdles. Recent survey says that software as a service and cloud computing holds most strategic values in the coming years.

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Let me bring your attention by demonstrating an application. One of the popular platform fastalerts where customers can send alerts which can be sms, email or voice alerts. If I am a customer of the application I don’t need to pay for using application rather than that I pay for the sms. I can purchase sms packages and send from the application. I hope now you got a clear idea what is SaaS?

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