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Business Analyst

Every requirement is traced. Is any of them traced to an outcome?

How Value Erosion shows up for you

A Business Analyst is the guardian of traceability, and Value Erosion creeps in when traceability stops at the requirement. Requirements link to stories, tests and releases, yet nothing links them to the business outcome they were meant to produce. Elicitation captures what stakeholders want built, and the question of what they want to change is skipped.

Three questions to ask before building

  1. 1

    Which business objective does each requirement trace back to, and how would we know it was achieved?

  2. 2

    If a stakeholder asks for a requirement, what problem would we ask them to describe before we write it down?

  3. 3

    Which approved requirements have no measurable outcome attached, and what should we do about them?

The first 15 minutes

Add an outcome column to your traceability matrix

  1. Open your requirements traceability matrix or backlog export.
  2. Add one column named "Outcome / metric" and fill it for the five highest-priority requirements.
  3. Mark the blanks. Bring those requirements to your next refinement session as questions, not as complaints.

Start here

Run the diagnostic

Five questions tailored to your role.

Prompts for your role

Copy-paste prompts framed around outcomes.

Claude skills

See how each skill applies to your seat.

Templates

Free templates picked for your role.

Work it through with the Assistant

A thinking partner for a real project from your role.