Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
The Agile Schedule
.jpg)
Ken Whitaker of Leading Software Maniacs (LSM) has more than 25 years of software development executive leadership and training experience in a variety of technology roles and industries. He has led commercial software teams at Software Publishing (remember Harvard Graphics?), Data General, embedded systems software companies, and enterprise software suppliers. Ken is an active PMI member, Project Management Professional (PMP) certified, and a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM). Sources for LSM's material come from case studies, personal leadership experience, the PMI Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) and Ken's leadership books: Managing Software Maniacs, Principles of Software Development Leadership and I'm Not God, I'm Just a Project Manager.
Just because you’ve proclaimed yourself an agile shop, do you think management (and the finance department) will allow your team to get away with no real estimate for completion? Scrum, as in most agile processes, takes the approach that cost (budget) and time (schedule) are fixed and it is the scope (features) that are variable. However, you’ll probably hear from a team “because we now use Scrum, we’ll let you know when we’re done as we iterate through” in response to the need for release dates.
We’ll examine a pragmatic way to derive a schedule (and subsequently a project cost) for a process framework that is inherently flexible--but one that still must plan for a release date. The approach covered will hopefully satisfy both your management and your team’s desire for practical schedule planning.
Background
Using Scrum as an example agile framework, a project’s scope is broken down into prioritized cycles of mini-feature deliveries. This approach encourages “learning and discovery” and quick successes. If the development team does encounter failure, you’ll know it quickly rather than taking months to eventually find out (which might happen with a waterfall-type approach). As with most agile frameworks, each cycle is a fixed iteration of time (typically 30 days each, the trend is becoming more like two …
Using Scrum as an example agile framework, a project’s scope is broken down into prioritized cycles of mini-feature deliveries. This approach encourages “learning and discovery” and quick successes. If the development team does encounter failure, you’ll know it quickly rather than taking months to eventually find out (which might happen with a waterfall-type approach). As with most agile frameworks, each cycle is a fixed iteration of time (typically 30 days each, the trend is becoming more like two …
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill |