Category Archives: Release Planning

Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Speedy

General George Patton said: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Part of this is an acceptance that all plans are imperfect and are based on incomplete information, including incomplete information about the future. We do the best we can to plan in a quick time-box, and […]

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Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Openness

One of the key ideas behind planning is Openness. What does that mean? Many things. Let’s list a few. Everyone can see it… the current state of our planning. Everyone can voice an opinion… within a reasonable time-box. “It’s too long, it’s too short, too big, too small, too cheap, too expensive…” as examples. And […]

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Ideas Behind Agile Planning: Planning, Not the Plan

There are people in Agile that call themselves the “no-estimates” group. They hate “planning” that used to crush people. And, at least, this is how planning is perceived sometimes. But they overreact. Yes, they are right that planning should never be used to put people under a lot of pressure—certainly not to crush people—but life always includes […]

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The key purpose of Agile Release Planning

The following email lacks some context, but I wanted to post it anyway.  This is what I usually say (enact) at the end of the Agile Release Planning segment or workshop.  Hope it helps you.  This was said in a recent email to a class, as you’ll see. *** Hi all, There was something important […]

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Agile Release Planning – some questions

QUESTIONS: Hi Joe, I’ve read through your book [on Agile Release Planning] and want to say that it was a great review of our Friday session, I enjoyed your clear and concise language, and am sure this will make an excellent resource. But there are still a few things that are unclear to me; it […]

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Questions: Agile Release Planning

Question: Hi Joe! Hope you are well. We are cranking up the Agile Scrum. I know you are likely very busy, and I tried to find answers to my Agile Release Planning questions below, but I am not finding what I am looking for on the net. That said, I have three quick questions that […]

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Release Planning: Summary of our blog posts

Here are the main ones, in order. Joe’s Approach to Agile Release Planning Release Planning: Vision Release Planning: Product Backlog Release Planning: Business Value Release Planning: Effort (1) Release Planning: Effort (2) Release Planning: Risks, Dependencies, Learning, MMFS and Other Release Planning: Completing the Plan Refactoring the Release Plan Some additional related posts: Agile Release […]

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Wide-Band Delphi Estimation for Business Value – 3

This is the third in a series of three.  See Part 1 and Part 2. ____________________________ How can we use the BV points? We could organize the Product Backlog strictly by BVPs, at least initially. In fact, I recommended this, to see patterns or to make any mistakes obvious.  Put the story cards in rows […]

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Wide-Band Delphi Estimation for Business Value – 2

Revised: 9/26/2023. See the first post on this topic: Part 1.  At the bottom is a link to the third post. Step by step Let’s walk through how to do it. We have a Product Backlog, usually user stories. Identify the right people to be the Business Value experts. We recommend they have participated in […]

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Wide-band delphi estimation for Business Value – 1

Revised: 9/26/2023 Many, many teams and I have been doing wide-band delphi estimation of Business Value for several years now. Let me report how we do it. It helps build success in many ways, so you are likely to find these patterns useful. In fact, as far as we can tell, it is more successful […]

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