place

Agile Planning Principles for Agile Development by Agile Teams [#AgilePlanning #AgileDevelopment #AgileTeams]

1. Organizations need a forward-looking perspective
2. Agile teams need time to plan
3. Agile teams need a defined planning process
4. Planning should align with the primary artifacts
5. Planning practices need mechanisms to measure effectiveness and impact

1. Organizations need a forward-looking perspective
This can be a vision statement, a strategic plan, or other communication that establishes a north star on what customers or users need and what business performance indicators are targets.

Unlike a real north star, this communication also needs to be agile and updated iteratively as customer and business needs evolve.

2. Agile teams need time to plan
Planning does not come free.

If the enterprise values or requires forward-looking plans, then managers must allocate time for teams to brainstorm, review data, learn directly from customers, invest in proof of concepts, and document user stories weeks ahead of when the actual stories are prioritized.

3. Agile teams need a defined planning process
This planning process should align with Agile principles and with the Agile backlog tools in place.

It needs to use people’s time efficiently, with well-defined outputs and established roles and responsibilities.

Organizations should also consider planning standards and determine where teams can self-organize to address the specifics of their application and technology.

4. Planning should align with the primary artifacts
These primary artifacts are used by Agile development teams.

These are specially the quality of requirements in user stories, steps to estimate user stories, and whether stories align with technology, data, security, user experience, and other standards.

Planning should also align with operational needs to support the application in production environments.

5. Planning practices need mechanisms to measure effectiveness and impact
Are teams delivering according to plan?
Are they making business impact with prioritized plans?
Are they using information and data captured after a release to readjust practices and priorities?

Adapted from
5 planning principles for Agile development
InfoWorld