Agile Estimation and Planning

Prepared by Bachan Anand

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Agenda

• Overview of Agile and Scrum

• Vision and Product

• Agile planning

• Release Planning

• Iteration Planning

• Daily Planning

• Q&A

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Agile Manifesto

• Agile is a set of values:

▫ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

▫ Working software (Products) over comprehensive documentation

▫ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

▫ Responding to change over following a plan

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Agile Principles

• Highest priority is to satisfy the customerthrough early and continuous deliveryof valuable software/products

• Welcome changing requirements

• Deliver working software (product) frequently

• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Agile Principles

• Build projects around motivated individuals

• Most efficient and effective method of conveying information is face-to-face conversation

• Working software (product) is the primary measure of progress

• Agile processes promote sustainable development (maintain a constant pace indefinitely)

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Agile Principles …cont’d

• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility

• Simplicity (art of maximizing amount of work not done) is essential

• Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams

• At regular intervals, team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

What is Scrum

• Scrum is an Agile framework that supports lightweight processes that emphasize:

▫ Incremental deliveries

▫ Quality of Product

▫ Continuous improvement

▫ Discovery of people’s potential

• Scrum is simple to understand, but requires discipline in order to be successful

• Scrum is not a methodology

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Foundations of Scrum• Empiricism

▫ Detailed up-front planning and defined processes are replaced by just-in-time Inspect and Adapt cycles

• Self-Organization▫ Small teams manage their own workload and organize themselves

around clear goals and constraints

• Prioritization▫ Do the next right thing

• Rhythm▫ Allows teams to avoid daily noise and focus on delivery

• Collaboration▫ Leaders and customers work with the Team, rather than directing

them

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Overview of Agile and Scrum

Core Values

• Transparency

▫ Everything about a project is visible to everyone

• Commitment

▫ Be willing to commit to a goal

• Courage

▫ Have the courage to commit, to act, to be open and to expect respect

• Focus

▫ Focus all of your efforts and skills on doing the work that you have committed to doing

• Respect

▫ Respect and trust the different people who comprise a team

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Iteration

Sprint Cycle

Vision and Product

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The Product Vision----Why?

• The Vision serves as a common bonding to the Project, every participant needs to understand and share it, to be able to contribute effectively

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The Vision Board

- Visible to the team

- Maintained by the Product Owner/ Customer

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Role: Product Owner

• Thought Leader and Visionary

• Steers the Product Vision (for example, with Story Mapping)

• Prioritizes the Goals - User Stories

• Maintains the Product Backlog with the team

• Accepts the Working Product (on behalf of the customer)

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Agile planning

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Why Plan?

• Gives the Product Owner & Customer Opportunity to explain the vision, goals and requirements.

• Helps in fulfillment of customer specification.

• Communicate the bigger picture to team members

• Keep team's focus on what can be achieved

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Why We Need Plans?

• To predict the future

• To communicate our expectation

• To be able to compare our predictions with the reality we are facing

• To guide us to the desired situation/state

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What is a good plan?

► A good plan is one that supports reliable decision-making

► One that increases in accuracy and precision over time

We’ll be done in the fourth quarter

We’ll be done in November

We’ll be done November 7th

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“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

-John Maynard Keynes

What makes planning “Agile”?

•Focus on planning – not the plan

•Re plan based on reality

•Involve people who are doing the work in planning

•Balance benefit and investment

•Adaptive to change and learning

•Plans are easily changed

•Planning is continuous throughout the project

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Different levels of planning

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Agile Planning Lifecycle Summary

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The Goals Of Release Planning

• A time question: How many iterations approximately will we need to deliver this rough scope having the resources we might have?

• Scope question: How much of this rough product backlog can we do within this range of sprints and having the resources we might have?

• Resources question: What resources do we need to accomplish this rough scope within this range of sprints?

• How rough can this be? What level of accuracy do we need?

• What things do we need to know to make each of these predictions?

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The Goals Of Iteration Planning

• Duration is fixed.

• Resources are fixed and dedicated.

• Scope is open for discussions: how many backlog items (stories) can we do during the sprint?

• What level of accuracy do we need here?

• What we need to know to make the prediction?

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The Goals Of Daily Planning

• Why we need this planning?

• How formal should this level of planning be?

• Who participated in Daily planning?

• Should you do it more often?

• Why is this usually out of scope in project running by a predictive process (e.g. waterfall)?

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Release planning

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Release Planning

• How many iterations?

• How much scope?

• At what costs?

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Estimating Backlog

• Backlog items expressed as User Stories

• Team estimates the Product Backlog

• Estimated in relative size

• Estimated 1 or 2 days before start of your iteration

• Discussing during the estimation more important that the estimates

• Planning Poker

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Sizing Release/Product Backlog

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Product Backlog (Stories) Iteration Backlog (Tasks)

Story Points orIdeal Days

Hours

Estimate Size – Derive Duration

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Velocity

• A rate at which the team is able to convert product backlog items into working product.

• Measured for each iteration

• Expressed in relative size

▫ Story points

▫ Number of Stories

• Used as a reference by teams when committing for the next Iteration

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• Shows progress across Sprints

• X-axis is the number of Sprints

• Y-axis is the total number of stories

Release planning

Release Burndown

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Iteration planning

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• System requirements formulated as one or more sentences in the everyday or business language of the user

▫ As a <user>, I would like <function> so that I get <value>

• Each User Story has an associated Acceptance Criteria that is used to determine if the Story is completed

Iteration planning

Spirit behind User Stories

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• Independent

▫ Not overlap in concept and be able to schedule and implement them in any order

• Negotiable

▫ Not an explicit contract for features; rather, details will be co-created by Product Owner and Team

• Valuable

▫ Add business value

• Estimated

▫ Just enough to help the Product Owner rank and schedule the story's implementation

• Sized Appropriately

▫ Need to be small, such as a few person-days

• Testable

▫ A characteristic of good requirements

Iteration planning

A Good User Story …

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Iteration Planning

• Select the top PB items for the iteration▫ PO’s involvement is key and mandatory

• Team builds the task list for completing the stories

• Output in an Iteration Plan or Sprint Backlog

• Team makes a commitment at end of the planning session

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Daily planning

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Daily planning: Daily Standup

• Meetings held in same location, same time, every day

• Time boxed at 15 minutes• Helps the “team” to plan everyday • Each Team member speaks to:

▫ What did I accomplish in the last 24 hours▫ What do I plan to accomplish in the next 24 hours▫ Any impediments getting in the way of my work

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Daily Planning: Taskboard

• Active visual indicator of flow of work

• Should be visible to team members at all times

• Kept current by the team

• Reflection of Iteration commitment vrs reality

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• Shows daily progress in the Sprint

• X-axis is the number of days in the Sprint

• Y-axis is the number of remaining stories

Daily planning : Burndown

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What is in it for me? (Customer)

• As a customer , I am

▫ Kept closer to reality of the project during execution phase

▫ Involved in Release planning and prioritization

▫ Able to make priority changes at Iteration boundaries

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What is in it for me? (Leadership)

• As a Leader , I want

▫ To understand progress in terms of real progress made on product .

▫ Better deal with changing business priorities

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What is in it for me? ( Team Member)

• As a team member, I want

▫ Able to make a realistic commitments

▫ Provide estimated based of past data

▫ Right balance between planning and doing

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Learn By Doing

• Apply few practices at a time

• Understand the values and foundations

• Inspect and Adapt

• Experience the Joy of Being Agile

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Experiential Training

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Pay-it-forward / Donation only

-- 1 day Agile & Scrum Training

- August 26th – Atlanta

- Sep 30th - Boston

- Sep 30th – San Diego

- Oct 1st - Irvine

- Oct 20th – Pheonix

- Oct 21st – Denver

- Nov 11th – Seattle

- Nov 14th – Portland

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User groups /Communities

• APLN – Agile Project Leadership Network

• Scrum Alliance – Scrum User Groups

•Online User GroupsScrum Alliance

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Q & A

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Few thoughts….

• Planning is important

• Plan as often and spend as less time as possible each time

• Plan changes, embrace reality and change your plan every time you plan

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Donation only 1 day Trainings

▫ Atlanta– September 26th

http://agile.conscires.com/1-day-agile-scrum-training-atlanta-02/

▫ Boston – September 30th

http://agile.conscires.com/1-day-agile-scrum-training-boston-04/

▫ San Diego – September 30th

http://agile.conscires.com/scrum-1-day-training-sandiego-02/

▫ Irvine – October 1st

http://agile.conscires.com/1-day-agile-scrum-training-irvine-08/

▫ Pheonix– October 20th

http://agile.conscires.com/1-day-agile-scrum-training-phoenix-02/

▫ Denver– October 21sthttp://agile.conscires.com/1-day-scrum-training-denver-04/

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Thank you !

• More Resources at

▫ http://agile.conscires.com/suggested-reading-list-and-resources/

Contact Info

Bachan Anand

Bachan.anand@conscires.com

949-232-8900

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bachan

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