Agile Planning Empirical Process Control

Agile frameworks use adaptive, versus predictive, planning techniques to continuously refine and adjust the plan based on what is currently known.

By Robert Weidner

Strategy

Different Levels of Planning

Portfolio

Product

Release

Sprint

Daily

´  The purpose of Information Technology is to support the goals, objectives and priorities (i.e., the strategy) of the organizations they serve.

´  There are five domains of governance to consider:

´  Strategic alignment

´  Risk management

´  Resource management

´  Performance management

´  Value delivery

Strategy Planning

1.  What does the organization do? 2.  Who does the organization do it to or for? 3.  Where does the organization do it? 4.  When does the organization do it? 5.  Why does the organization do it? 6.  How does the organization do it?

´  A portfolio is a collection of product or service lines that contain a subset of interrelated products or services.

´  Portfolio planning attempts to:

´  Weigh the value of each initiative against strategic objectives

´  Monitor active initiatives for adherence to desired outcomes

´  Balance the portfolio across other investments

´  Ensure efficient use of resources

´  Balance return on investment with risk

Portfolio Planning

´  A product is something that is produced to satisfy a market need.

´  Product planning attempts to:

´  Define the product vision

´  Generate a high-level product backlog

´  Build a product roadmap

Product Planning

´  Release planning attempts to:

´  Balance scope against schedule

´  Determine the release cadence:

´  Release after multiple sprints

´  Release every sprint

´  Release every feature

Release Planning

Size Velocity Duration

140 Story Points

Velocity = 20 Story Points

140/20 = 7 Sprints

Forecasting

Minimum Viability vs. Marketability

´  Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

´  Used to test a hypothesis and gain product knowledge for further development

´  Usually achieved when 6% of the product feature set has been developed

´  Minimum Marketable Product (MMP):

´  Used to ship product with maximum value based on minimalist design principles

´  Usually achieved when 20% of the product feature set has been developed

´  Minimum Releasable Feature (MRF):

´  Any feature that can be released which will add value, including points-of-parity

´  Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF):

´  Any feature that can be marketed, usually focused on points-of-difference

´  Sprint planning attempts to:

´  Establish the Sprint Goal

´  Negotiate and agree on the user stories the team will work on in the next sprint

´  Decompose the User Stories into the specific tasks that will be necessary to complete the User Stories

´  Estimate task durations

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning Divided in Two Halves

End

Hard commit?

Start

Soft commit?

Use velocity to forecast the sprint goal

Calculate capacity and adjust forecast

Seek to understand and

negotiate the work

Refine sprint goal

Disaggregate the work into

tasks with estimates in

hours

1st half = the “what” 2nd half = the “how”

No

No

Yes

Yes

´  The daily scrum attempts to:

´  Synchronize team member activities

´  Keep activities aligned with the sprint goal

´  Create transparency

´  Team members communicate to one another the following three items:

´  What did you do?

´  What will you do?

´  What is impeding your progress?

Daily Planning

Team Size

´  Ideal team size is denoted as 7+-2:

´  Though Teams of 3 to 9 have proven effective.

´  Smaller teams are more productive than large ones:

´  Once team size increases beyond nine, velocity actually decreases.

´  Brook’s Law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”.

´  The time it takes to bring people up to speed

´  The limited number of communication channels we can substantively maintain

´  Miller’s Law: People can only remember 7 4 “chunks” of data

´  Example: fbicbsibmirs

´  Sub-teams begin to form, collaboration decreases, and cross-functionality is lost.

´  Meetings that took minutes now take hours.

´  The more people on the team, the more difficult it is to reach consensus

´  Formula: N(N-1)/2

´  2(2-1)/2 = 1

´  3(3-1)/2 = 3

´  4(4-1)/2 = 6

´  5(5-1)/2 = 10

´  6(6-1)/2 = 15

´  7(7-1)/2 = 21

´  8(8-1)/2 = 28

´  9(9-1)/2 = 36

´  N > 36 channels = Communication breakdowns

Communication Channels

7 1

8

5

6

3 2

9

4

Context Switching

´  The efficiency loss to context switching can be substantial, whether:

´  Project based

´  Task Based

´  Or relationship based

Simultaneous Projects

Percent Allocated

Efficiency Loss

1 100% 0%

2 40% 20%

3 20% 40%

4 10% 60%

5 5% 75%

Level Horizon Who Focus Deliverables Portfolio Possibly a year or

more Stakeholders and product owners

Managing a portfolio of products

Portfolio backlog and collection of in-process products

Product Up to many months or longer

Product owner, stakeholders

Vision and product evolution over time

Product vision, roadmap, and high-level features

Release Three (or fewer) to nine months

Entire Scrum team, stakeholders

Continuously balance customer value and overall quality against the constraints of scope, schedule, and budget

Release plan

Sprint Every iteration Entire Scrum team What features to deliver in the next sprint

Sprint goal and sprint backlog

Daily Every day Scrum master, development team

How to complete committed features

Inspection of current progress and adaptation of how best to organize the upcoming day’s work

Multilevel Planning Summary

´  Cohn M. Agile Planning and Estimating. Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. 2006.

´  Glandon G, Slovensky D, Smaltz D. Information Systems for Healthcare Management, Seventh Edition. Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press. 2008.

´  Pichler R. Agile Product Management with Scrum. NJ: Addison-Wesley. 2010.

´  Rubin K. Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional. 2014.

References