Based on the E-Book, The Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook, this presentation offers how-to tips and practical Agile planning best practices. Some of the areas it covers are: * Time boxing * Optimizing iterations * Prioritizing and sizing the backlog * Using uncertainty and maturity to improve prioritization * Improving predictions using velocity and capacity and more * Most common challenges related to planning and how to overcome them Download the Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook for FREE: http://www.telerik.com/agile-project-management-tools/whitepapers/agile-planning-handbook.aspx

2. Traditional vs. Agile Planning
is done incrementally.
2
Traditional planning is done prior to investing time and
resources in the project.

3. Traditional planning
In traditional planning,
significant time and effort are
placed into upfront planning
and so plan divergence is
discouraged.
3
Agile planning
Instead of making “big up front plans” agile teams use the time to
respond to customer feedback. They recognize that the true value
emerges as customers begin to consume the incremental
components they receive.

4. 4
Traditional Teams
Traditionally run projects are planned by an “expert.” One person is assessing
and then producing a plan to deliver the end project.
Agile Teams
Agile planning is done with the entire team. It promotes the tenet that the
people doing the work should be the ones producing the plans as they have the
best knowledge about how the work will get done.

5. Timeboxing in Agile
“Timeboxing refers to the act of putting strict time boundaries around an
action or activity.”
5
When we timebox an event the result is a natural tendency to focus on the most
important “stuff” first.
It also guards against
“feature creep” -adding
features without a
scrutinizing relevance
or need.
FIGURE - ON AN AGILE PROJECT EVERYTHING IS GIVEN A TIME CONSTRAINT

6. Iterations/Scrums
Agile teams break projects down into smaller timeboxed durations-
iterations/scrums. An iteration length is fixed, meaning it will end regardless of
whether all assigned work is completed.
6
At the beginning of an
iteration, a team works
with the customer to
select an appropriate
amount of requirements.
After that the team
breaks-down those
requirements into tasks
and at the end of the
iteration makes a
release.
FIGURE - PROJECTS ARE COMPRISED OF FIXED DURATION ITERATIONS.

7. Backlog - Priority and Size
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For agile planning to work, the backlog must
be prioritized and sized (estimated).
• A prioritized backlog is simply a list of
work that needs to get done that is
ordered by priority- the most important
work is done first.
• A sized backlog is another way of saying
that the item should have an estimate.
FIGURE - PRIORITIZED BACKLOG

8. 8
Backlog - Uncertainty and Maturity
Sometimes, when commencing
the building of the software, not
all requirements are ready so
we should also consider the
uncertainty and maturity levels
of our tasks.
FIGURE - ITEMS WITH LOW MATURITY OR LOW CERTAINTY ARE
NOT GOOD CANDIDATES FOR ITERATION ASSIGNMENT – TEAM
SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME MATURING OR VALIDATING THE
REQUIREMENT BEFORE DEVELOPMENT BEGINS

9. 9
Iteration Velocity and Capacity
Understanding how
much work the team
can deliver in one
iteration (capacity) is a
good estimate of how
long (velocity) the
project will take.
Planning an iteration is very much like
using a bucket (iteration) to scoop
water out of a pool
(backlog).
FIGURE - CAPACITY

10. 10
Decomposition into Tasks
The backlog is comprised of
requirements (user stories - value
required by the customers). Those
requirements are assigned to the
current or the next iteration filling it
to capacity and are then decomposed
into smaller tasks.
Agile teams much rather have team
members assign work to themselves
instead of having a project manager
assign work to them.
FIGURE - ITERATION PLANNING ASSIGNS ITEMS FROM THE
PRODUCT BACKLOG TO THE ITERATION BACKLOG AND
DECOMPOSES INTO TASKS

11. 11
Release Planning
Many (traditional) organizations release a version of their software after a
long period of time.
Agile companies use a continual release process where features are
rolled out to customers as soon as they are complete.
The Agile teams begin each release with release planning, and ends
each release with a production software release.
FIGURE - RELEASES HAVE A SIMILAR STRUCTURE TO AN ITERATION

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Common Agile Planning Challenges
1. Handling incomplete work at the end of an iteration
2. Handling bugs
3. Handling uncertainty with spikes
4. No time for agile meetings

13. 13
1. Handling incomplete work at the end of an
iteration
There are only a few things that teams can do to manage unfinished work:
move the work forward into the next iteration (if the task is close to finish)
or move it back to the main backlog (if the task was not even started).
FIGURE - WORK NOT COMPLETED IN AN ITERATION CAN EITHER MOVE TO THE BACKLOG OR TO FUTURE ITERATIONS.

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2. Handling Bugs
Having bugs is inevitable and must be addressed by all Agile teams.
Perhaps the most common way to handle bugs on a project is to allocate a
particular amount of capacity in the iteration toward fixing bugs.
FIGURE - AGILE TEAMS ALLOCATE A % OF THE CAPACITY OF AN ITERATION FOR BUGS

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3. Handling uncertainty with spikes
Every project will contain a degree of uncertainty. Uncertainty is usually
resolved with experimentation and further research.
Agile teams dedicate a timeboxed amount of time to addressing uncertainty
(spikes).
FIGURE - SPIKES ARE SCHEDULED INTO AN ITERATION TO INCREASE CERTAINTY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY OR REQUIREMENTS.

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4. No time for agile meetings
The following four meetings are critical to this process and should never be
skipped because they are a critical best practice in Agile planning:
• Daily standup (Daily Scrum)
• Iteration planning (Sprint planning)
• Iteration review (Sprint review)
• Iteration retrospective (Sprint retrospective)
FIGURE - MINIMUM MEETINGS FOR A HEALTHY AGILE TEAM

17. 17
Conclusion
There are different valid approaches to development, but the Agile
approach has legions of fans around the world. It’s an efficient method to
organize complex work into executable chunks while empowering all
stakeholders to participate in the process.

18. 18
http://www.telerik.com/agile-project-management-
tools/whitepapers/agile-planning-handbook.aspx
This presentation was based on the e-book:

19. 19
TeamPulse is an all-in-one agile project management software that
helps you manage requirements & bugs, plan releases and track
progress while keeping your team constantly connected.
Want to put this theory into practice?
For more information:
http://www.telerik.com/teampulse/
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