Table of contents
Overview
Planning in Agile is not a one-time activity which typically happens at the beginning of a project or program. It is continuous activity that occurs throughout the project or program. There are four levels of planning in Agile. These include:
- Vision
- Roadmap
- Release Planning
- Sprint Planning.
Vision
The most important step in the plan is to communicate vision of the product that is considered for development and how it is aligned with the organization strategy.
This helps the team to understand clearly the purpose of their work and helps to align them with the product goals there by organization strategy. The vision statement as shown below needs to be clear with simple language, non-technical, brief and internally focused. Product Owners need to communicate the vision to the team at least once in a year.
Roadmap
The second most important step in planning is to communicate the roadmap to the team. Though the vision describes the market, the value proposition, and the business goals. But it does not tell how the strategy will be executed and the specific outcomes the product is likely to achieve.
A roadmap is a plan that shows how a product or service is likely to develop over time. To communicate will the first product version deliver the entire value proposition and generate the desired business benefits, for instance, or will this take longer? Say we focus the first version of the dance game on user acquisition. While this is a necessary step towards the vision, it does not answer the question when revenue will be generated. This is where the product roadmap comes in.
Release Planning
Release planning is a method where incremental releases of a product are planned. It differs from traditional software planning which focus on major releases.
In Agile release planning, prepare for staged releases and then break those down into several different sprints or iterations. Depending on team structure and the size of the project, there could be several sprints running at the same time.
Sprint Planning
Sprint planning is an event, where the team determines the product backlog items they will work on during that sprint and discusses their initial plan for completing those product backlog items.
Teams may find it helpful to establish a sprint goal and use that as the basis by which they determine which product backlog items they work on during that sprint.
Participants
- Product Owner
- Protfolio Manager or Project Managers
- Scrum Master
- All members of Agile Team
Outcomes
- A Vision for the product.
- Identified Requirements that define Product Roadmap and group logically.
- Epics/User Stories that are estiamted and prioritized as part of Release Plan.
- Break Stories further into detailed Features/Tasks for Sprint Planning.