Riding the Wave: Using Rolling Wave Planning

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile  

Planning a project can be a challenge. Stakeholders will have competing, conflicting and overlapping expectations; requirements need to be gathered, prioritized and sequenced; and budgets and resources need to be secured and scheduled.

Even a minor project that has been done before carries some degree of risk and assumptions, all of which need to be managed, mitigated and retired. Even in the best case, creating a project plan can be a major undertaking.

Making things more difficult, stakeholders will have different opinions as to what the project plan should even look like. Executives may want to have clarity as to what is being delivered, and when it will be delivered, perhaps spanning quarters or years. Sales and marketing will want to know what to expect far enough ahead of time that strategies and programs can be put together and executed.

Meanwhile, the team will want to remain flexible, so that it can react to new information or new feedback gained along the way. Creating a project plan that meets everyone’s expectations becomes nearly impossible.

To balance these competing needs, a project manager often will seek a compromise, providing enough long-term clarity to satisfy some stakeholders, while still leaving the ability for the team to change course if needed. One method to do this is called rolling wave planning.

This method seeks to plan in …

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