Rolling Wave Planning is a type of progressive elaboration. Both relate to the practice of letting details emerge over time.
Decomposition on the other hand is the process of breaking down scope, costs, risks, resources and other entities into progressively smaller pieces for the purpose of increasing estimation accuracy and improving control.
When delivering a project using an agile approach, we use a combination of rolling wave planning & decomposition. The level of detail in the product/project backlog decreases the further down the backlog we go and the closer we get to working on a requirement or feature the greater the detail we need to have. This is an example of rolling wave planning & progressive elaboration.
However, to take our project vision and break it into a set of themes or features, we use decomposition. The same is the case when we take those themes and break them into epics and further break those down into user stories.
Kiron
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1 reply by Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
Nov 15, 2017 3:33 PM
Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
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Thanks Kiron, can you explain more : However, to take our project vision and break it into a set of themes or features, we use decomposition.
Normally decomposition used in WBS... make project deliverable in smaller and more manageable component as Mr noor Ahmed said..
I think rolling wave planning is the best technique for agile practice as sergio told is not method... but I do not think it is practice as well , it is a professional way or style for project integration management... what do you think?
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Agile is not a methodology. It is a practice. Based on that practice, using an adaptative life cycle model and some life cycle process based on that model (iterative, incremental, iterative-incremental, spiral, etc) you have methods like Scrum (it is a framework not a method), DSDM, XP, and others. Most of them were created for creating software products and today become solution delivery methods, that mean you can create other products than software. Rolling Wave planning, Decomposition, Progressive elaboration are techniques that you can use for anything in your life. For example to solve a problem. All of these techniques are not tied to a method.
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1 reply by Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
Nov 15, 2017 3:38 PM
Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
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Hi sergio
My question is what are the differences between these techniques?I am not agreed Agile is practice as well ... ;) neither method...I think is professional style...
What do you mean by: Rolling Wave planning, Decomposition, Progressive elaboration are techniques that you can use for anything in your life?
Saving Changes...
Noor AhmedTechnical Project Manager| Thomson ReutersBangalore, Karnataka, India
Rolling Wave Planning - It is an iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level. (that is, things in near future should be relatively clearer, while project activities in distant future may not be as detailed. It is a kind of progressive elaboration).
Progressive Elaboration. The iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as
greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available.
On many projects initially when you sit to plan for the whole project then you find that you don’t have sufficient detail to plan in greater detail for many section of the project. With the time more and more details are available related to the same section of the project which enables you to plan in greater detail. In other words with each successive iteration of the planning process, the project plan becomes more elaborate and more complete and this approach of planning is called Progressive Elaboration.
Decomposition - Decomposition is an important technique used in workbreakdown structure(WBS) creation during Scope Management and defining the activities. In general, project deliverables are subdivided into smaller and more manageable components until the work and deliverables are defined to the work package level.
These techniques are general and can be used for any project.
Rolling Wave Planning is a type of progressive elaboration. Both relate to the practice of letting details emerge over time.
Decomposition on the other hand is the process of breaking down scope, costs, risks, resources and other entities into progressively smaller pieces for the purpose of increasing estimation accuracy and improving control.
When delivering a project using an agile approach, we use a combination of rolling wave planning & decomposition. The level of detail in the product/project backlog decreases the further down the backlog we go and the closer we get to working on a requirement or feature the greater the detail we need to have. This is an example of rolling wave planning & progressive elaboration.
However, to take our project vision and break it into a set of themes or features, we use decomposition. The same is the case when we take those themes and break them into epics and further break those down into user stories.
Kiron
Thanks Kiron, can you explain more : However, to take our project vision and break it into a set of themes or features, we use decomposition.
Normally decomposition used in WBS... make project deliverable in smaller and more manageable component as Mr noor Ahmed said..
I think rolling wave planning is the best technique for agile practice as sergio told is not method... but I do not think it is practice as well , it is a professional way or style for project integration management... what do you think?
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Nov 15, 2017 3:49 PM
Kiron Bondale
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Regardless of whether you are leading a waterfall delivery project or an agile delivery project, you need to have a project/product vision defined. This is normally found in the charter.
But once you have that, you need to break that down into smaller pieces - themes or features are two ways to do this. That is decomposition even if you aren't creating a WBS.
Agile planning IS rolling wave planning. Activities happening sooner (i.e. 1-2 sprints) are better understood and defined than those happening much further down the life of the project/product.
Agile is not a methodology. It is a practice. Based on that practice, using an adaptative life cycle model and some life cycle process based on that model (iterative, incremental, iterative-incremental, spiral, etc) you have methods like Scrum (it is a framework not a method), DSDM, XP, and others. Most of them were created for creating software products and today become solution delivery methods, that mean you can create other products than software. Rolling Wave planning, Decomposition, Progressive elaboration are techniques that you can use for anything in your life. For example to solve a problem. All of these techniques are not tied to a method.
Hi sergio
My question is what are the differences between these techniques?I am not agreed Agile is practice as well ... ;) neither method...I think is professional style...
What do you mean by: Rolling Wave planning, Decomposition, Progressive elaboration are techniques that you can use for anything in your life?
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Nov 15, 2017 4:18 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Is not about agreed or not. Is about to go to the basement. I was part of the genesis: USA DoD NSF/Agility Forum, 1990. About the other, find the definition on PMI´s Glossary of terms and you will find that all these stuff belongs to problem resolution from centuries BC.
Thanks Kiron, can you explain more : However, to take our project vision and break it into a set of themes or features, we use decomposition.
Normally decomposition used in WBS... make project deliverable in smaller and more manageable component as Mr noor Ahmed said..
I think rolling wave planning is the best technique for agile practice as sergio told is not method... but I do not think it is practice as well , it is a professional way or style for project integration management... what do you think?
Regardless of whether you are leading a waterfall delivery project or an agile delivery project, you need to have a project/product vision defined. This is normally found in the charter.
But once you have that, you need to break that down into smaller pieces - themes or features are two ways to do this. That is decomposition even if you aren't creating a WBS.
Agile planning IS rolling wave planning. Activities happening sooner (i.e. 1-2 sprints) are better understood and defined than those happening much further down the life of the project/product.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Nov 15, 2017 3:38 PM
Replying to Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
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Hi sergio
My question is what are the differences between these techniques?I am not agreed Agile is practice as well ... ;) neither method...I think is professional style...
What do you mean by: Rolling Wave planning, Decomposition, Progressive elaboration are techniques that you can use for anything in your life?
Is not about agreed or not. Is about to go to the basement. I was part of the genesis: USA DoD NSF/Agility Forum, 1990. About the other, find the definition on PMI´s Glossary of terms and you will find that all these stuff belongs to problem resolution from centuries BC.
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1 reply by Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
Nov 16, 2017 5:50 AM
Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
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Sergio
You can divide agile practices roughly into 1) customer and management practices, which address agile requirements analysis, planning and project management, and 2) programmer practices, which address how to work with the code in an agile way.
“Agile Development” is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. The most popular agile methodologies include Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Lean Development, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD).
Please check Wikipidia etc.
Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Peyman,
decomposition is breaking something down into smaller, more manageable parts. You can do it with project scope in the WBS. In Scrum projects you do it during backlog grooming when breaking down EPICs into stories into smaller stories until the team thinks they can deliver it, in a Sprint. So mainly it is used with scope.
Rolling wave planning is looking primarily at the timeline, you have sequenced phases and the question is how much detail should you/can you plan ahead. So rolling wave would be looking at the next 3 months or so, detailing the work, but keeping the 2nd 3 months at a higher level of decomposition and maybe the last 3-month period not breaking down at all. In scrum that’s what you do with sprint planning, but not looking into detail into the next sprints yet.
Progressive elaboration is concerned with deliverables of the project. You build a core of a deliverable at the beginning in the 1st phase (e.g. the structure of a document), review it and extend it in the 2nd phase and so on. And so on means progressive. Elaboration means you continue to work on the deliverable and it might be finished only at the end of the project. An example is the schedule when using rolling wave planning: you won’t have any details about the last phase when you start but you have every detail at the end of the project. In Scrum this is represented by the concept of MVP.
So you see, these are general PM concepts, applicable to most project life cycles.
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1 reply by Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
Nov 16, 2017 6:21 AM
Peyman Mokhtarzadeh Sharabiani
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Hi Thomas
Thanks, your explanation is more practicable rather than academical and theoretical explanation, many thanks, I do not aware much about scrum... I will study... But Rolling Wave Planning is part of Progressive elaboration which is useful for scheduling and planning and prototype is useful for scope managing in Progressive Elaboration... what do you think? I do not think so only useful at the end of project, it is useful throughout the project.
Is not about agreed or not. Is about to go to the basement. I was part of the genesis: USA DoD NSF/Agility Forum, 1990. About the other, find the definition on PMI´s Glossary of terms and you will find that all these stuff belongs to problem resolution from centuries BC.
Sergio
You can divide agile practices roughly into 1) customer and management practices, which address agile requirements analysis, planning and project management, and 2) programmer practices, which address how to work with the code in an agile way.
“Agile Development” is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. The most popular agile methodologies include Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Lean Development, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD).
Please check Wikipidia etc.
...
1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Nov 16, 2017 9:11 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Not at all. I was part of the genesis of Agile and then of Agile implementation for software when I was one of the DSDM method authors. Once again, my recomendation is you go to the basement. And let me say: if you take wikipedia as your source of information you are lost. My best regards.
I think what you are saying in Scrum projects regarding decomposition but in agile projects, DECOMPOSITION is Tool and technique of define activities, create WBS.
You have subdivided the work package into smaller manageable components of schedule activities which is decomposition
Decomposition was used to create WBS process, if u further decompose WBS package you get schedule of activities.
Two forms of Progressive Elaboration - Rolling Wave Planning and Prototypes.
Rolling Wave Planning is one of the techniques in the ‘Define Activities’ process under Project Time Management.
Prototypes are a technique in the ‘Collect Requirements’ process under Project Scope Management.
Rolling Wave Planning is the best for agile projects :
In this technique, detailed planning is done for activities in near term and high-level planning for activities to be performed far away in the future. As the project progresses, and requirements become more clear, more detailed planning is done for the work packages at lower levels of the WBS.
Are you agreed on it ?
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2 replies by Kiron Bondale and Stéphane Parent
Nov 16, 2017 7:44 AM
Kiron Bondale
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Peyman -
In short, what I was trying to get across is that all three of these techniques are applicable on any type of project but the specific way in which they are utilized will vary based on the delivery approach. Also, rolling wave planning is one type of progressive elaboration.
Kiron
Nov 16, 2017 9:21 AM
Stéphane Parent
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I'm curious Peyman. You say "Rolling Wave Planning is best for agile projects."
What do you mean by "agile projects"? What are the not so good planning approaches for agile projects?
