A Copilot agent, designed to help BAs turn user stories into ready-to-use acceptance criteria.
Agent name:
BA Agile Assistant
Industry:
Universal
Type of agent:
Retrieval
Built with:
Copilot Studio
Challenge
Business Analysts (BAs) play a critical role in shaping technology solutions, but a lot of time is spent on repetitive documentation. One of the most time-consuming tasks is converting user stories and requirements into formal acceptance criteria, often using Gherkin-style formatting for tools like Jira. While this is essential for delivery, it’s also prone to inconsistency and can be frustrating across large teams. Small errors or unclear criteria can delay sprint planning and cause extra work for developers and testers.
Solution
The BA Agile Assistant is a simple, helpful agent built using Microsoft Copilot Chat’s Agent Builder. It’s designed to take structured inputs, like a use case or requirements document, and quickly turn them into Gherkin-style acceptance criteria that follow your organisation’s standards.
Here’s how it works:
- BAs upload their story or use case into the agent
- The assistant generates acceptance criteria in a ready-to-review format
- It flags anything unclear or missing, so the BA can make quick adjustments
- The assistant also uses trusted Gherkin training examples to stay consistent with best practice. In the future, it can be expanded to link directly with tools like Jira, making it even easier to use during sprint planning.
Expected value
The BA Agile Assistant helps reduce the time spent writing acceptance criteria and makes the process more consistent across teams.
- 75% Time Savings: BAs usually spend 4 to 5 minutes writing acceptance criteria for each story. With the assistant, it takes just 1 to 2 minutes. That’s a saving of around 3 minutes per story.
- Better use of time: Those hours can be spent on higher-value activities like working with stakeholders or improving backlog quality.
- Consistent outputs: With the assistant using the same structure each time, acceptance criteria become easier to read and act on.
For example:
| Example scenario | Manual process | With assistant | Time saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time per story | 5 mins | 2 mins | 3 mins |
| Stories per BA per sprint | 20 | 20 | 1 hour |
| 10 BAs working per sprint | — | — | 10 hours |
| Across 2 sprints per month | — | — | 20+ hours |
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