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Business analysis engagement typeDiscovery / Sprint 0 leadership
The investigation that every engagement starts with: open the accounts, find the right people, size what is really left, and hand you a Sprint 1 plan you can accept or decline.
You are the CEO of your world; this engagement type tells EliosTech where you want us. Vice-president–level ownership takes vice-president–level money, while a narrow individual or external-consultant focus can carry significant discounts. Contracts set the boundaries, EliosTech work is proprietary, and service continues while paid. How it works →
What this work is
Sprint 0 is the hardest sprint to estimate because it carries the most unknowns, so EliosTech, Inc. runs it as its own paid piece of work. It starts with the $8,000 discovery down payment and runs about 2 weeks and up to about 30 days, depending on the project. It ends with your Sprint 1 plan: scope, stories, people, estimates and price. You keep it whether or not you go on.
What EliosTech does in this engagement type
- Open the accounts: access to boards, wikis, repositories, environments and vendor portals.
- Find and interview the subject-matter experts, and write down who decides what.
- Inventory the systems and APIs, collecting existing Postman collections, OpenAPI specs and test assets.
- Read the existing backlog and code layout to see what is really done and what only looks done.
- Size the remaining effort and the people it needs, and collect outside estimates where needed.
- Write the Sprint 1 plan and a budget tracker, and walk you through both.
What you get
- Stakeholder and SME map
- System and API inventory
- Risks, assumptions and open questions
- Sized backlog for Sprint 1 and beyond
- Sprint 1 plan with price
- Budget tracker you keep
Good fit when…
- The scope is not defined yet
- A project is behind and nobody can say how far
- You inherited a backlog and need an honest read of it
- You want a fixed, paid first step before committing to more
Tools we bring to your development team
Over many engagements, EliosTech, Inc. has worked side by side with development teams on the tools they already run. We work inside your licenses, repositories and boards; we do not resell software or lock you into ours. The point is simple: a business analyst who speaks the team's tools turns requirements into working, tested software faster, with fewer surprises at demo time.
Jira, Confluence & Azure DevOps
The board is where the plan lives. We set it up to match the Epic kickoff (epics, features, stories, tasks), write acceptance criteria, refine and size the backlog, link stories to tests and defects, and keep the dashboards that show progress and budget every sprint. Same discipline in Azure DevOps Boards or similar tools.
In this engagement type: we clean up or build the board so Sprint 1 starts from a real backlog, not a wish list.
Postman
Shared Postman collections and environments for every endpoint in scope, so analysts, developers, testers and partners call the same requests with the same examples. Collections double as living documentation and can run in the team's pipeline (for example with Newman) as a quick API smoke test.
In this engagement type: existing collections are gathered and run, so we know which endpoints really work today.
Redocly & OpenAPI
API contracts written and reviewed as OpenAPI, linted and published with Redocly so the reference docs stay in step with the spec in version control. Business rules, error codes and examples live next to the endpoint they describe, and partner teams read the same contract your developers build to.
In this engagement type: any OpenAPI specs are linted and compared against what the API actually does.
Microsoft .NET teams
We have spent years helping teams that build on Microsoft .NET: Web APIs, background services, integrations and the configuration around them. We read a solution well enough to know where a change lands (controller, service, data layer, config), write stories that match how the code is organized, and check each pull-request demo against its acceptance criteria. Your developers write the production code; we keep the requirements and the code honest to each other.
In this engagement type: a walk through the solution with your developers to see where the effort really sits.
What our BAs do in Jira (and similar)
- Structure the board to match the Epic kickoff: epics → features → stories → tasks, so what you approved is exactly what the team works.
- Write stories developers can build and testers can prove: clear user stories with Given / When / Then acceptance criteria, data rules and examples.
- Refine and size the backlog with the team before each sprint, with agreed definitions of ready and done.
- Trace everything: link stories to API contracts, test cases, defects and the Confluence (or wiki) pages that explain the decisions.
- Report in the open: sprint dashboards, burn-down and a budget view, plus the written progress and change report you get with every demo.
- Triage and route defects so the right person fixes the right thing, and nothing new enters a running sprint without your written approval.
- Turn findings into a sized backlog on day one of Sprint 1, so the team starts building instead of re-discovering.
Jira and Confluence, Azure DevOps Boards or the tracker you already use. We work in your instance and your workflow.
How it runs: Epic kickoff → Sprint 0 → Sprint 1
- 20-minute intro call → Epic kickoff: we walk the whole project (features, stories, tasks) and you decide whether the work and price are right for you.
- Sprint 0 needs the down payment first. About 2 weeks and up to about 30 days of investigation. It produces your Sprint 1 plan.
- You may decline Sprint 1. If you accept it, that scope is honored and demoed as completion. Then the next payment is due.
- After that, two-week sprints: steady two-week payments, a demo every sprint and a written progress and change report.
Rates and how this engagement type starts
| Engagement shape | Typical rate |
|---|---|
| Long-term remote engagement (roughly 1–2 years) | from ~$80/hr (typically $80–$140) |
| Onsite or heavier hybrid, Cook / Lake counties | ~$130/hr |
| Operating domain + crew (EliosTech runs analysts, developers, testers) | $140–$200/hr or an annual program |
| Short C2C surge, rescue or go-live push | ~$200/hr |
| Discovery = Sprint 0 (default start) | $8,000 down payment before Sprint 0 starts, confirmed in written terms |
| Sprint 1 and later sprints | Billed per two-week sprint from your accepted Sprint plan |
Senior bands, stated up front: domain ownership, not commodity staff augmentation. C2C through EliosTech, Inc. preferred. Longer terms and prepaid work move the rate down; short notice and onsite days move it up.
Configure this engagement type
- Configure the job below
- Estimate — a rough range, instantly
- Terms — read and accept
- Down payment — we invoice; kickoff goes on the calendar
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Read about this work →Rather talk it through?
A 20-minute scope call is free and tells you whether we are the right fit. Discovery (Sprint 0) is paid work that ends in a Sprint 1 plan you may accept or decline.