Iteration Planning

Presenting By
Anjali Baalne
22031D2502
Modules
● Iteration Planning
● The Iteration Timebox
● The Iteration Schedule
● How to Plan an Iteration
● The Commitment Ceremony
● After the Planning Session
● Dealing with Long Planning Sessions
● Tracking the Iteration
● When Things Go Wrong
● Partially Done Work
● Emergency Requests
● Iteration length
Iteration Planning
Iterations are the heartbeat of an project. When an iteration starts,
stories flow in to the team as they select the most valuable stories
from the release plan. Over the course of the iteration, the team
breathes those stories to life. By the end of the iteration, they’ve
pumped out working, tested software for each story and are ready
to begin the cycle again
The Iteration Timebox
Programming schedules die in inches. At first you’re on schedule:
“I’ll be done once I finish this test.” Then you’re limping: “I’ll be
done as soon as I fix this bug.” Then gasping: “I’ll be done as soon
as I research this API flaw... no, really.” Before you know it, two
days have gone by and your task has taken twice as long as you
estimated.
The Iteration Schedule
Iterations follow a consistent, unchanging schedule:
• Demonstrate previous iteration (up to half an hour)
• Hold retrospective on previous iteration (one hour)
• Plan iteration (half an hour to four hours)
• Commit to delivering stories (five minutes)
• Develop stories (remainder of iteration)
• Prepare release (less than 10 minutes)
How to Plan an Iteration
After the iteration demo and retrospective are complete, iteration
planning begins. Start by measuring the velocity of the previous
iteration. Take all the stories that are “done done” and add up their
original estimates. This number is the amount of story points you
can reasonably expect to complete in the upcoming iteration
The Commitment Ceremony
Commitment is a bold statement. It means that you’re making a
promise to your team and to stakeholders to deliver all the stories
in the iteration plan. It means that you think the plan is achievable
and that you take responsibility, as part of the team, for delivering
the stories.
After the Planning Session
After you finish planning the iteration, work begins. Decide how
you’ll deliver on your commitment. In practice, this usually means
that programmers volunteer to work on a task and ask for someone
to pair with them. As pairs finish their tasks, they break apart.
Individuals pick up new tasks from the board and form new pairs
Dealing with Long Planning Sessions
Iteration planning should take anywhere from half an hour to four
hours. Most of that time should be for discussion of engineering
tasks. For established teams, assuming they start their iteration
demo first thing in the morning, planning typically ends by
lunchtime.
Tracking the Iteration
● iteration plan should be a prominent part of your informative
workspace.
● Put your stories and tasks on a magnetic whiteboard
● When you start work on a task, take it off of the whiteboard
and clip it to your workstation.
● As you finish each task, put it back on the board and circle it
with a green marke
When Things Go Wrong
● First see if there’s any way you can change your plan so that
you still meet your commitments
● Sometimes the problem will be too big to absorb. In this case,
you’ll usually need to reduce the scope of the iteration
● After changing the plan, the customers should re-establish trust
with stakeholders by explaining what happened, why, and what
the team is doing to prevent this sort of problem in the future.
Partially Done Work
● At the end of the iteration, every story should be “done done.”
Partially completed stories should be rare they reflect a
planning problem
● That said, they will happen occasionally, particularly when
you’re new to Project.
Emergency Requests
● It’s inevitable: you’re on the third day of the iteration,
everything is going well, and a customer comes up to you and
says, “Pat, we really need to get this story in.” What do you
do?
● As a programmer, it’s very tempting to tell your customer to
take a hike—right over the edge of a cliff. Changing direction
in the middle of an iteration, after all, means an interruption in
concentration, delays, and lost work.
Iteration length
● Throughout this project, I’ve assumed that the team uses one-
week iterations. However, iterations may be of any length.
Many teams prefer two-week iterations.
THANK YOU