The plan for Agile

What is agile planning?

Agile planning is a project planning method that estimates work using self-contained work units called iterations or sprints. Sprints are periods of 1-3 weeks in which a team focuses on a small set of work items, and aims to complete them. Agile planning defines which items are done in each sprint, and creates a repeatable process, to help teams learn how much they can achieve.

How is agile planning and estimation different?

It breaks down software development into small, self-contained units which can deliver value to a customer. Teams don’t try to plan the “big product” all at once. They plan for what they can accomplish to satisfy a customer in a short period of time.

In this post we provide a step-by-step guide to breaking your project down and planning in small iterations, to deliver reliably every time.

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4 essential components

1. An agile project plan is divided into releases and sprints

Agile planners define a release, which involves creating a new product or substantially updating an existing product. Each release is broken down into several iterations, also called sprints. Each sprint has a fixed length, typically 1-2 weeks, and the team has a predefined list of work items to work through in each sprint. The work items are called user stories.

The release plan is broken down into several iterations (sprints) that include user stories (items)

2. Planning is based on user stories

A user story briefly describes a need experienced by your users. For example:

“As a team member, I need to know which tasks are currently assigned to me”

“As a team leader, I need to receive email notification when a task is stuck or behind schedule”

Unlike in traditional project management methodologies like waterfall, in which teams would create detailed technical specifications of exactly what they would build, in agile planning, the team only documents what the user needs. Throughout the sprint, the team figures out together how to address that specific need in the best way possible.

3. Planning is iterative and incremental

The agile process is focused on the concept of iteration. All sprints are of equal length, and an agile team repeats the same process over and over again in every sprint. Each sprint should result in working features that can be rolled out to end users.

An iterative process allows the team to learn what they are capable of, estimate how many stories they can complete in a given timeframe (the team’s velocity) and learn about problems that impede their progress. These problems can be taken care of in subsequent sprints.

4. Estimation is done by team members themselves

A core ethic of agile planning is that development teams should participate in planning and estimation, and not have the work scope “dictated” to them by management.

In this spirit, agile planning allows teams to assign story points to user stories in the release plan.