Agile vs.Waterfall: What's the Best Methodology for Business Analysis ?

Business Analysts can be all about the business needs and assist teams to locate their perfect solution. The way your project takes can a lot influences how your Business Analyst will work. There are 2 types of project approaches, Agile and Waterfall. Both methods offer companies their own benefits and disadvantages, which is why often times it depends on the project type, business needs and how frequent changes might be. Waterfall is the sequence approach. The project generally passes through few phases like requirement design develop, test, and implementation. As one phase is finished another phase starts. Business Analyst spends more time at the need analysis phase of a project and can require the entire input from client before starting a project. The benefits of using Waterfall is that it has a clear structure. When the requirements are fixed and understood up-front, this approach works well. For clearly-defined projects like the system implementation where the requirements are known and will not change, Waterfall allows for better planning, documentation, and it can be easier to get an understanding of the schedules and outputs in advance. Yet, Waterfall can become difficult if requirements are changed during development. When the development has begun, if the stakeholder then wants a change to be made, it can be demanding of time, effort, and cost to make a significant change. This is one of the key reasons that organizations opt for Agile. More flexible and iterative: Agile does not attempt to define everything upfront. More often than not, the project is broken down into little chunks of work often referred to as iterations or sprints. Smaller features are built, tested, and reviewed frequently, so that feedback can be provided on a regular basis and requirements changed as the business needs evolve. Agile for a Business Analyst Agile is communications. As a BA you may be communicating with the business, Product Owner developers testers etc. all the way through a project. You could be creating user stories, acceptance criteria, process diagrams and asking questions about requirements in sprint meetings. This allows you to immediately identify things that aren't right and change them before they create bigger issues. This approach is most of all beneficial if the product is digital, a mobile app, a CRM project, or akin to a single link in a chain that has many and is subject to change. For example, if the company develops a customer-facing application, customers' feedback can generate new features and tweaks in the existing ones — easier to manage with Agile. But, the Agile approach demands positive engagement from stakeholders with good communication. When stakeholders are not available for feedback, and when changing priorities without planning creates chaos, then Agile can be hard to control. In these situations, Waterfall offers more predictability, if some requirements are set in stone. I believe that there is no single way that is best for every Business Analysis project. Which approach is best, depends on the situation. For example, Waterfall may be more suitable, when requirement are set in stone, well documented and do not change – and Agile more suitable, when flexibility and regular feedback and improvement are necessary. A BA this way needs to be aware of both or both types of approaches rather than blindly picking up either one. The BA needs to take a call based on the project type, customer's willingness, level of uncertainty, timelines, and requirement change possibility. To sum up, both Agile and Waterfall are effective business analysis techniques. Agile offers change and feedback, while Waterfall offers structure and predictability. A good BA recognizes the power and weaknesses of each method and applies whatever approach is most appropriate to achieve the overall business goal. In today's fast paced business world, this adaptability to different methods is a requirement for every Business Analyst!