Agile Planning: Doing Estimates and Completing the Release Plan

Overview/Description
Preparing estimates is not an area of project planning that many people really enjoy. That is, until they learn to do it the agile way. This course focuses on the heart of release planning: creating estimates and prioritizing requirements. You will learn common agile methods for estimating the size of user stories, such as planning poker, and guidelines for splitting and combining user stories. Along with estimating, another key task during release planning is prioritizing user stories to create the project backlog. You will learn the MoSCoW technique for prioritizing user stories, as well as the more sophisticated prioritization tools: the priority matrix and the Kano model of customer satisfaction. You will also learn about a visual approach some agile teams use to create a backlog story map. Finally, the course provides information on how initial team velocity may be determined and used to distribute the user stories among iterations as the final step in release planning. This course is intended for project managers, program managers, or anyone who wants to efficiently participate in agile projects. It is aligned with the Agile Certified Practitioner exam objectives developed by the Project Management Institute® and Certified ScrumMaster learning objectives.

Target Audience
Managers and members of project teams who currently use or plan to adopt agile techniques

Expected Duration (hours)
2.0

Lesson Objectives

Agile Planning: Doing Estimates and Completing the Release Plan

recognize activities carried out when using the planning poker technique

describe the ideal days estimation technique

estimate velocity for a given team

identify factors that can negatively impact the velocity of an agile team

use the MoSCoW model to create a prioritized user story backlog

recognize how various factors influence the prioritization of user stories

recognize the guidelines for splitting and combining user stories

plan iterations based on calculations using velocity and iteration length

estimate user story size and velocity for a given project

assign prioritized user stories to iterations for a given project

analyze survey data using the Kano model

plot examples of features on a graph using the Kano model

prioritize user stories using cost, value, and risk information

recognize the priority level of user stories in a priority matrix