The West Michigan IIBA Chapter is hosting a panel discussion on the BA practice on Agile teams. This is your opportunity to discuss and explore opinions on topics, such as:

• What roles are there for a BA in an Agile team?
• The relationship between a BA and other Agile team members e.g. developers, QA, Scrum Master, Product Owner.
• Documentation, requirement gathering and traceability in Agile
• Common challenges a BA may face in an Agile team and how to overcome these challenges to be successful in your role.

Our panelists come from prominent companies in the West Michigan region. With their extensive experience in Business Analysis, Project Management and Software development, Product development, the panelists will share their insights to help demystify certain myths in the market about Agile and BA roles e.g. “There is no BA role in a Scrum team”, “Documentation has no place in Agile practice”, etc.
The panelists will take questions from the audience, so come hear what skills, experience and competencies you need to bring to your Agile team to be successful in your role and achieve your goals. This will also be a very informative session to find out about the local business analysis marketplace and Agile community.

Panelists:

Mac Fowler, Director of Software, Service Express

Mac Fowler is the Director of Software at Service Express, a data center maintenance company headquartered in Grand Rapids. Throughout his career, Mac has built multiple award-winning software products and teams at fast-growing startups and mid-market companies while engaging with partners such as Adobe, Microsoft, Evernote, and Caterpillar. Mac specializes in building and scaling agile product teams and implementing new digital-focused strategies across organizations. He holds a Bachelors in Computer Information Sciences from Grand Valley State University.
 

Eric Thompson, CBAP, Sr Business Analyst, GreenStone FCS

As the Senior Business Analyst for GreenStone FCS, Eric is responsible for the development and training of the BA Methodology encompassing Predictive, Adaptive and Iterative projects. GreenStone FCS leverages Use Cases in all three of these project models to expose hidden requirements, define Quality Assurance testing parameters, and provide feedback to developers and business stakeholders.
Eric began his IT career in Farmington Michigan as a software developer trained by IBM’s Southfield Customer Education Center. He has served as IT manager, developer, systems integrator and business analyst for various firms within Michigan since 1978.
Eric’s prior industry experience: Software Developer, Business Analyst and IT Manager includes Health Insurance Benefit Administration, Property Casualty Policy and Claims Administration, Medical Instrument Manufacturing, Oil and Gas Production and Banking.

Mihaela Popescu, CBAP, Lead Business Analyst, Spectrum Health

Mihaela is a certified business analyst professional with 28 years of experience in the Information Technology arena. During her career, Mihaela worked in applications development, systems integration, quality assurance, software training, project management and business analysis across many industries: statistical, consulting, pharmaceutical, healthcare and health insurance. She is currently leading the Business Analysis Center of Excellence for the IT Digital team at Spectrum Health.

Martin Visser, CSM, PMPO, Sr Business Analyst, Gordon Food Service

Martin Visser is a senior business analyst and certified scrum master with more than five years experience on Scrum and Kanban dev teams. Martin is SAFE certified as PM/PO 4.5 and is currently working on a Scaled Agile (SAFE) project at Gordon Food Service for SAP integrations.
Prior to that, Martin worked as a Scrum Master/BA for the Michigan Department of Education/Child Nutrition Department in Lansing where he and a small group of IT and business colleagues put together a Scrum team from scratch and successfully built a Grants Management Portal (MDE Nutrition Gateway) using pure Agile principles and lots of lessons learned. Martin lives in Grand Haven with his wife Kim and has three older children.

Buy Tickets Here
 

When: May 21, 2019 between 5:30pm and 8:00pm

Where: Amway World Headquarters, 7575 Fulton Street, Ada, MI 49355

A light meal is provided.
We hope to see you there!

Best regards,
IIBA West Michigan Chapter