Incremental Release Planning

Wayne is a software developer, ScrumMaster and Agile Coach.

  Estimating   Scrum   ProjectsAtWork  

Release planning for a Scrum project is a tricky proposition, especially when crammed into a single up-front session that forces teams to make guess-timates. More informed estimates can be derived from shorter, incremental planning sessions facilitated by a field-tested visual technique. Here’s how it works.

Release planning for a Scrum project can be a tricky proposition. The stakeholders justifiably want some early predictability as to when individual releases are likely to be delivered. Frequently, I see teams attempt to accommodate this demand by tackling their project’s release planning in one big up-front meeting. Having one release planning session for an entire project’s deliverables can leave the team feeling that they have offered up no more than a very rough guess based on scant effort and consideration. The result can be a release plan that the team does not believe in.

For the last six months I have taken a different approach. Rather than having one big release planning session I have spread the exercise over several short sessions using a visual technique. I did not come up with the technique. A team member briefly described it to me in passing after attending a Scrum course with Martine Devos. I have added my own refinements over time to evolve those initial rough details into an effective working practice, the details of which I present in this post. In …

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