Estimating and planning is always important, even on agile projects. This course will team you how to efficiently and effectively drive the planning and estimating process and improve accuracy. We will begin by examining the common pitfalls in planning and estimating processes so that new ideas have a baseline to be compared against.
We will discuss the motivations and challenges of story and task breakdown. Participants will learn an arsenal of techniques for breaking work into manageable chunks that fit neatly into iterations and days. We will discuss the trade offs and practicalities of estimating in StoryPoints vs Ideal Days and how to make the appropriate decision for your project.
Product owners will gain additional insight into Release planning and Backlog Management techniques. We will show simple but powerful ways to prioritize backlog items by financial impact, thematic organization and desirability. You will learn practical skills that will help you create useful plans that lead to reliable decision-making. You will leave with a solid understanding of how to conduct agile roadmap, release, and iteration planning.
Topics Included
• Roadmap and Release planning
• Writing effective User Stories
• Planning Poker
• Iteration Planning
• Estimating work
• Plan Buffers and Uncertainties
• Estimating Velocity
Course Details
Prerequisites: Agile Foundations or Certified Scrum Master Training
Audience: All Team Members
Duration: 2 Days
Lab to Lecture Ratio: 60/40
Course Outline
Day 1
• Introduction
• Estimation and Planning Challenges
• Why do we plan?
• Why Big Up-Front Planning Fails
• Agile Review
• Agile Planning
• Roles in Agile Planning
• Writing Effective User Stories
• Estimation: Estimate Size, Derive Duration
• Story Points versus Ideal Days
• How We Estimate
Day 2
• Prioritizing the Backlog
• Release Planning
• Estimating Velocity
• Plan Buffers and Uncertainties
• Iteration Planning
• Daily Planning
• Re-Estimating
• Tracking and Monitoring
• Scaling Planning and Estimating to Multiple Teams
• Why Agile Planning Works
• The Use of Tools in Agile Planning
• Agile Planning Smells
