Agile Analysis Certification (IIBA®-AAC) — Lesson 4: Delivery Horizon, Stories, Acceptance, Feedback, Retrospectives, and AAC Readiness

Learning Objectives

• Identify the dependencies connecting story refinement, acceptance examples, and backlog readiness across the workflow.
• Validate a story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record against explicit acceptance evidence.
• Explain what the team should build, learn, adjust, or stop during the next delivery cycle after testing the stated exception.

Detailed Topics

• Clarify story refinement by identifying purpose, ownership, boundaries, dependencies, and decision criteria.
• Apply acceptance examples to the scenario and preserve the evidence supporting the selected approach.
• Compare alternatives for backlog readiness and explain practical value, risk, and operating consequences.
• Challenge delivery feedback with a realistic exception that exposes assumptions or weak accountability.
• Document retrospective improvement with acceptance conditions, review responsibility, and a clear next action.

Instructor Demonstration

The instructor demonstrates how to refine stories, define acceptance evidence, review an increment, and update the backlog from feedback. The walkthrough explains what the team should build, learn, adjust, or stop during the next delivery cycle, builds the story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record, and tests the exception where stories enter delivery with hidden dependencies and are declared complete without outcome evidence.

Hands-On Exercise

Complete a controlled exercise to refine stories, define acceptance evidence, review an increment, and update the backlog from feedback and preserve the result in the story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record.

1. Confirm the facts, stakeholders, constraints, evidence sources, and success conditions relevant to story refinement.
2. Perform the central analysis involving acceptance examples, backlog readiness, and delivery feedback.
3. Introduce the exception where stories enter delivery with hidden dependencies and are declared complete without outcome evidence and revise the proposed response.
4. Complete the story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record with ownership, acceptance evidence, unresolved concerns, and follow-up actions.

Scenario Analysis

• Identify the assumption with the greatest influence on what the team should build, learn, adjust, or stop during the next delivery cycle.
• Compare two defensible responses involving delivery feedback and explain their trade-offs.
• Specify the evidence required before the story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record can be accepted.

Troubleshooting Guidance

Trace the first difference between the intended outcome and the available evidence. Recheck scope, roles, source quality, dependencies, decision criteria, and retained records independently. The analysis remains incomplete while stories enter delivery with hidden dependencies and are declared complete without outcome evidence.

Validation Checklist

• Scope and ownership for story refinement are explicit.
• The selected treatment for acceptance examples is supported by reviewable evidence.
• The exception involving delivery feedback was tested and its impact recorded.
• The story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record contains acceptance criteria, accountable owners, and next actions.

Lesson Outcome

Learners can apply Delivery Horizon, Stories, Acceptance, Feedback, Retrospectives, and AAC Readiness, explain what the team should build, learn, adjust, or stop during the next delivery cycle, and support the conclusion with a story and acceptance set, feedback log, and AAC readiness record.