Agile

Agile Planning and Estimation

Background 

“A good plan is one that supports reliable decision making”.

 

This intensive one day workshop gives an in-depth exploration of Agile Practices & Techniques for Planning & Estimation. You will learn how to harness the flexibility and adaptability of Agile and apply them to planning and estimation, such that realistic plans and estimates result in better projects, lower risk of project failure and ultimately more satisfied clients.

 

Some of the techniques covered include: The difference between Estimate and Commitment; combining multiple expert perspectives; use of Story Points; Planning & Estimation at Epic / Goal level; Release Planning & Estimation Methods; Wideboard Delphi; Planning Poker.

 

The training style is highly interactive with the opportunity to try out various planning techniques, working from real life examples and receiving constructive feedback so that you can feel confident in applying these practices and techniques in your own work.

 

Benefits of attending 

The aim of this practical workshop is to equip you with Agile practices and techniques to

  • Plan your projects more efficiently
  • Learn techniques for prioritisation
  • Realise early Cost / Benefit
  • Make realistic estimates
  • Involve the entire team
  • Create plans that are easily changed
  • Create plans that are spread throughout the project
  • Learn from the practical experience of the presenters

 

Topics Covered

Why do we plan?

Question: Estimate or Commitment?

Why Traditional Plans Fail

 

Is Planning Agile?

  • Agile delivery is more focussed on the planning than the plan
    •  Plan on what we know now
    •  Don’t try to predict the future!
  • Agile encourages change
    •  Respond to change over following a plan
  • Results in plans that are easily changed
  • Is spread throughout the project

 

Prioritisation

  • Use prioritisation themes to help prioritise groups of stories or features
  • Responsibility shared among the whole team, but led by the product owner / sponsor who has final say
  • Can become difficult with multiple product owners – but prioritisation can expose and help alleviate this

 

Using Wideband Delphi to plan projects

  • Quick and easy way to answers questions about the size, cost and benefits of a project.
  • The team (including stakeholders, product owners, and delivery team) approach acknowledges the value of combining multiple expert perspectives.
  • Removes some of the politics from estimation and filters out extreme initial values.
  • Successfully used lightweight variations that can be run in a single workshop.

 

The presentation is interspersed with practical exercises so delegates can practice the various methods and techniques and see how to apply them to their own work.

 

The Presenter 

Steve Tulk, Founding member and thought leader for UK Business Analysis Practice Group at UK BA-RPG.

 

Steve is an Agile Advocate. Over the last five years he drove BT’s adoption of Agile Values, Principles & Practices, where he gained very valuable direct experience in introducing and applying Agile across large organizational boundaries in complex situations.

 

Steve is qualified in Lean Quality Assurance “Smart ways to get Quality that are more effective and cheaper than testing” and Project Value Requirements (certified by Tom Gilb with the British Computer Society). 

 

As a Qualified Scrum Master and change advocate, Steve has provided coaching & mentoring from senior level to junior management levels, used retrospectives to help them learn by experience, and accelerated their transition to Agile methods and practices. He developed successful metrics to measure their progress to assist the teams in their Agile transformation. 

 

Regarded by BT as a Subject Matter Expert in Agile and Estimation, Steve gained much knowledge and experience in how to successfully carry out change/transformation from waterfall to Agile by inspiring the teams to want to change and developing a culture of collective responsibility.