Agile estimation and planning by bachan anand ( sep 10th)

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


Overview of Agile and Scrum


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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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Agile Principles
• Highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software/products
• Welcome changing requirements
• Deliver working software (product)
frequently
• Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project
Please dial in to (218) 895-4640 PIN: 3289145

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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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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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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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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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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)

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

“It is better to be
roughly right than precisely wrong.”
-John Maynard Keynes

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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)?

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
Product Backlog (Stories) Iteration Backlog (Tasks)

Hours
Story Points or
Ideal Days

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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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Release planning

Release Burndown

• Shows
progress across
Sprints
• X-axis is the
number of
Sprints
• Y-axis is the
total number
of stories

Iteration planning


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Iteration planning

Spirit behind User Stories
• 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

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Iteration planning

A Good User Story …
• 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

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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

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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Daily planning : Burndown

• Shows daily
progress in the
Sprint
• X-axis is the
number of days
in the Sprint
• Y-axis is the
number of
remaining
stories

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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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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 Groups
Scrum Alliance

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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 21st
http://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

Agile estimation and planning by bachan anand ( sep 10th)

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