I attended a panel discussion on The Developer’s View of the Value of the BA. Daren May from aspenware pointed out several important behaviors of BAs which improve the entire development process. As Brits often do, Daren used a couple of great phrases: BA’s maintain “solution neutrality”, making sure that the business needs are met while being open to various architecture/platform options. He also appreciates the fact that BA’s ask the difficult questions, without alienating anyone and that they are “absorbed in  the culture” of the business so they really understand the impacts of software changes to the business.

Tony Chen of Sielevel gave a great presentation on Agile which included a Lego Helicoper build exercise! He gave each group different requirements and we all saw the various results. My team got a textual description of how to build the helicoper and failed miserably!!

Afternoon sessions included BI, business case development and relationship topics. I am on my way to Day 2 so I’ll write more later . . .