Agile Tutorial - What is Agile Planning?

Agile planning is the process of brainstorming with key or all stakeholders/members to define goals, identify activities to achieve the goals and planning/organizing the activities.

There are 5 different levels of planning in Scrum framework. Each has a associated Scrum Ceremony with specific objectives. Like any other ceremony, all these planning meetings are time-bound.

5 levels of Agile Planning -

• Product Vision
• Product Roadmap
• Release Planning
• Iteration Planning
• Daily Planning

Product Vision - 

This is a broadest level picture of the product, with a vision statement of the Product Owner along with different business users/stakeholders. This is done yearly as part of Vision workshops, where questions like what the product should be, how it should work, who it should benefit, how/when it will be achieved etc. Various assumptions and constraints are discussed too.

Keywords - What, Who, Why, When, Constraints, Assumptions

Product Roadmap - 

Roadmap serves as next building block assigned with the vision. These are done as Roadmap Workshops either bi-yearly or quarterly with high level pieces identified for the next 4 quarters. These pieces can be Business Features (also called Epic/Themes), and or Architectural components. These go into Product Backlog with initial estimates done using 'SML (Simple-Medium-Complex)' methodology. Planning of releases is also done along with their tentative dates.

Keywords - Release date, Theme/Feature set, Objective, Development Approach

Release Planning - 

This is also known as Sprint 0. Its focus is only on the current release. It involves creating Release Backlog. A release backlog consists of user stories from features/epics. These are prioritized using multiple iteration techniques. These are estimated using Story Point estimation technique. Release planning is done by involving the entire team and it generally has a time-line of 2-3 weeks. Sprint/Iterations and release dates are planned based on the estimates and team strength/capacity.

Keywords - Iteration, Team capacity, Stories, Priority, Size, Estimates, Completion definition

Sprint/Iteration Planning - 

This is the first activity that is taken up in every Sprint/Iteration. Focus is only on the current sprint. This is done by involving entire team for 2-4 hours. This activity involves picking up top stories from the Release Backlog and creating Sprint Backlog out of it. The Sprint Backlog consists of Tasks having estimates in Hours. Sprint Goal is also defined and Sprint Commitment is given by the team. 

Keywords - Stories, Tasks, Completion definition, Level of effort, Commitment. 

Daily stand-up - 

It is a 15 minute time-boxed/bound meeting between all team members. Each team member talks about what they have accomplished yesterday, what are the plans for today and impediments if any in achieving them. This ensures that team is on the same page and everyone in the team has a sense of purpose and meaning about the work to be accomplished on a daily basis.

Keywords - What I did yesterday?, What I will do today?, What is stopping/blocking me?