Agile Planning

Agenda

Iteration zero and Hardening

Iteration Planning

Release Planning

Agile Planning

Daily Planning

Using Buffers

Predicting velocity

Planning – Why Plan?

Why Plan? Helps in decision making Helps in reducing risks Establishes trust Provides basis for checking progress

Planning – Typical Planning Mistakes Uncertainty is ignored - Trying to plan too much when too little is known

Delay in the beginning itself - Too much time and effort goes in planning

Rigid Plans – trying to fit the work around plan rather than updating plan based on real time changes

Plans are activity driven rather than feature Incorrect measurement x% complete is not same as x% value Parkinson’s law – Work expands to fill the time available Activities are often dependent so delay in one cause delay for others

Features are not developed by Priority

Planning

Agile Planning “Planning is everything, plan is nothing”

o Focus on iterative planning rather than trying to plan everything up front and then trying to stick with initial plan

Inspect and adapt - Gives a plan that can be changed whenever we learn something new

Planning happens at every level including product strategy, product roadmap, release planning and iteration/sprint planning.

Agile planning is around working product rather than around activities.

It’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

John Maynard Keynes

Waterfall Vs. Iterative development

Is it really 40% done?

End to end Small slices of work 40% done, 100%

valuable

Agile Planning - Planning OnionStrategyPortfolio

Product

Release

Iteration

Day

Organization Level Strategic planning

Product selection inline with org strategy

Product requirements met in form of releases.

Release contains number of iterations.

Release planning focused on identifying and delivering minimal set of features that will help to go in market as early as possible.

Every day the team plan how to complete the highest priority features and deliver working software.

Strategy & Portfolio Product

Release Short fixed length 1-4 weeks

long timeframes.

Planning focus here is to deliver potentially shippable product in each iteration.

Iteration

Day

Release Planning It helps the product owner and the whole team to decide how much must be

developed and how long that will take before they have a releasable product.

It feeds into strategic planning activities

Serves as a guidepost towards which project team can progress.

Two types of plan Feature Driven – Scope is fixed. Schedule is flexible. Date-Driven – Time is fixed. Scope is flexible.

Release Planning

Inputs Attendees Outputs

Prioritized product backlog with Estimates

Product vision Team velocity Agenda Date (optional)

Product owner or customer Delivery Team(s) Agile project manager Team Leads (optional) Stakeholders (optional)

Release plan Assumptions Risks Action Items Dependencies Release backlog

Inputs, attendees, and outputs of a release planning session

Release Planning Steps

Determine conditions of Satisfaction

Estimate the User Stories

Select Stories and a release date

Select an iteration length

Estimate Velocity

Prioritize User Stories

Do in any sequence

Ref: Mike Cohn’s “Agile Estimation and Planning”

Release Planning – Iteration LengthOne of the key element of release planning is to decide iteration length. Factors in deciding iteration length:- Length of release – Shorter iterations are preferred for shorter releases as that allows

more regular feedback Level of uncertainty/Risks – Keep shorter iteration if risk is high How long priority can remain unchanged The ease of getting feedback Overhead of iterating Feeling of urgency is maintained

Release Planning – Estimate Velocity

Good to have historic values but as every project & team is unique, these have limited value

Use Historic ValuesIdeal way if feasible. After each iteration the range of possible velocity figures will converge

Run an IterationEstimate based on team’s capacity

Make Forecast

Team velocity is needed for release planning to estimate how much can be delivered in every iteration.

Three options available to calculate team velocity:-1) Use historical values 2) Run an iteration 3) Make a forecast

Release Planning – Velocity Forecast

Person Hours Available per iteration

Tom 32 – 40

Harry 36 – 40

Rita 20 – 28

Han 16 – 22Total Hours 104 – 130

Calculate Team’s capacity – An example

Estimate number of hours effort available based on team size & team members availability. Pick few stories, break these into tasks and estimate these. Identify enough stories and tasks to fill the

number of hours available. Based on story points of selected stories, velocity can be determined. Instead of using a single value, it’s

better to determine velocity in range.

104 – 130 hrs effort available

Release Planning – Velocity Forecast

Story Story Points

As user.. Search 2

As admin... Add 5

As visitor .. Inquire 3

As admin .. clone 5

104 – 130 hrs effort available Task HrsDesign 6Code 12Test 8Total 26

Task HrsDesign 10Code 12Test 12Document 10Automate 8Total 52 Task Hrs

Design 10Code 14Test 12Total 36

Task Hrs… …Total 54

Backlog

Effort = 26+52+36 = 114Velocity= 2+5+3=10

Using Velocity for Planning

200 Points

Velocity = 25

200/25 = 8Iterations

Update release plan with some regular frequency. For e.g. if there is any major difference between velocity assumed initially and actual velocity.

200 Points

Velocity = 20

200/20 = 10Iterations

SCRUM – Sprint Planning

Product Owner presents top priority stories.

Clarifications, re-prioritization and re-estimation

Selection of stories for iteration.

Iteration Commitment

Decompose selected stories into task and create iteration plan

Estimate tasks in hours

Task Level Planning

Iteration PlanningProduct Backlog

Product Vision

Current Product

Iteration Start & End Dates

Iteration Goal

Iteration Backlog

Technology

Team Velocity / Capacity

Iteration Planning

Iteration PlanningVelocity Driven

Commitment Driven

Velocity Driven - Iteration Planning

Adjust Priorities

Determine Target Velocity

Do in any sequence

Identify iteration goal

Select user Stories

Decompose user Stories into Tasks

Estimate Tasks

Ref: Mike Cohn’s “Agile Estimation and Planning”

Commitment Driven - Iteration Planning

Identify iteration goal

Ask for team commitment

Iteration planning done

Remove the story

Select story to addCreate Tasks for story

Estimate Tasks

Adjust Priorities Full

Can CommitNot Full

Can’t Commit

Ref: Mike Cohn’s “Agile Estimation and Planning”

Iteration Zero and Release/Hardening IterationIteration Zero Some teams need iteration zero for pre-development work before starting the actual

iterations. The kind of activities to be done in iteration zero are:

Completing third party contracts Preparing development environment Obtaining Funding Organizing any necessary tools such as bug tracker

Hardening / Release Iteration Some teams prefer to have hardening / release iteration at the end of release or after

every few iterations. Required when team’s definition of done is not sufficient. Hardening means whatever

you need to do to make the system ready for production. Shouldn’t be used as dumping ground for sloppy work.

Daily Planning Estimation or signing-up for task and keeping relevant artifacts such as task board,

sprint back-log and burn-down charts etc up to date Daily Stand-up Meeting

Time-boxed to 15 minutes Same time and same place All team members required Each team member should respond to 3 questions

What have you done since the last Daily Scrum regarding this project? What will you do between now and the next Daily Scrum meeting

regarding this project? What impedes you from performing your work as effectively as possible?

The key purpose is team coordination and planning on daily basis Also, highlights risks and issues

Planning Buffer Better to add buffer to your plan to mitigate any uncertainty that can arise in future. Buffer is not padding so it is always advisable to communicate buffers to the customer

and reason behind. How much buffer needs to be added into plan is depends on historical data and project

complexity. Historical data helps in identifying problem hours for each iteration so basically this can

be derived from velocity. Types of buffers

Schedule Buffer Feature Buffer Budget Buffer

Planning Buffer Schedule Buffer

Generally used for high level planning. Two estimates one that gives 50% confidence and other 90%. Estimation as range. Work will complete in 4 weeks ± 2 days The additional time between 50% to 90% estimate is called as local safety. To find overall buffer requirement, a mathematical formula is to do a sum of

squares of differences between 90% and 50% confidence level estimates. Square root of this sum will be the buffer.

Feature Buffer Many of the agile methodologies recommend that on top of ‘must have’ features,

25-40% additional features should be chosen for the release. DSDM also recommends that release shouldn’t have more than 70% ‘must have’

features i.e. 30% ‘should have’ or ‘could have’ features.

Planning BufferMinimal Marketable feature – The smallest set of functionality that when implemented provides value to the customer.

Thank You