Lean-Agile Enterprise Release Planning

Summary

This course answers the question – “how do we do high-level release planning on Agile projects across an Enterprise?” It illustrates release planning at both the project level as well as how to coordinate releases of related products. While Agile has demonstrated an ability to bring high quality software products to market faster than legacy methods, many organizations have had difficulty with Agile’s bottom-up approach. By incorporating the Lean principle of “optimize the whole” with “deliver fast” participants learn how to implement business driven software development, a top-down planning approach that enables Agile teams to deliver higher quality product fast and with lower cost.

Course Objectives

Provide the thought process and mechanisms for product portfolio management that allow the organization to always be building on those business capabilities that will produce the greatest value
Give product champions an understanding of how to maximize the return on investment for their software projects
Give managers of agile projects an understanding of the Agile process
Prepare analysts, leads, developers and testers for doing Agile projects
Emphasize the need for driving Agile projects from business needs
Create a focus in the development team towards delivering high value, high quality software in a sustainable manner

Description

This course is designed within the context of Lean Software Development. This enables Agile planning to scale to the Enterprise because it enables Agile practitioners to keep the big picture in mind (which focusing on business value requires) while working on the small pieces (which Agility requires).

This course deals with the following questions:

How do I identify those business capabilities which will generate the greatest return for my company?
How do I estimate the value and cost of these capabilities?
How can I create a release plan for building these?
How can I coordinate multiple release plans across related projects?
How do I define and manage interim releases for integration and alpha testing?
How do I break down these capabilities into smaller, more manageable pieces?
How do I manage my analysis over the life of the project?
How does Agile analysis affect architecture?

Agile analysis has brought about new challenges and new opportunities. Agile has proven to be an improvement at the project level over old-school techniques of heavy use-cases or significant up-front analysis. But expanding Agile to the Enterprise has been somewhat problematic because of Agile’s historical bottom up approach of creating release plans from stories or Epics.

Lean-Agile Enterprise Release Planning focuses on uncovering and managing the customers’ needs of the products being built by the enterprise. It teaches how to discover these business capabilities in an Agile manner. It goes beyond the process of merely pulling out stories as they are encountered and tying them together into releases. It drives from the business need. By doing so, it creates a big picture view which is missing from most Agile endeavors.

This course blends concepts of Lean Software Development and Agile Analysis while incorporating proven methods to plan according to the business needs. When done as an on-site course participants work on their own products. If the course is taken towards the beginning of an actual project, participants will actually develop real release plans during the course.

Course Level

Intermediate

Course Outline

Lessons from Lean Software Development
- The Scientific Method
- Respect People
- Respect Knowledge
- Improving Process
- Wastes in Software Development
  - Building what you don’t need
  - Complexity
  - Non-Maintainability
- Market Risk Vs Technical Risk
Overview of Agile Methods
The Business Case for Agility
- Add Business Value Quickly
- Get Clarity on Customer Needs
- Project Management
- Help the Team
- Technical Perspective
The Risks of Software Development
Product Portfolio Management
Minimum Marketable Features
- Driving ROI from business capability
- Focus on greatest return through incremental delivery
Mapping Business Capabilities into Features
The Need for Release Planning
How to Do Release Planning
- Release planning constrained by a target date
- Release planning constrained by required functionality
- What to do when you don’ t have the time or resources required
How to Manage Interim Releases
- for major integrations
- to get feedback from customers
- for specific platforms
How to Create and Manage a Product Backlog
Agile Project Estimation
Agile Story Estimation
Kano Analysis
The Changing Role of the Analyst
Wastes in Analysis and How To Avoid Them
Products Vs Projects

You learn how to

Create a product portfolio that will maximize your ROI
Create a release plan for each product in that portfolio
Create a set of interim releases to improve integration and customer feedback
Scope requirements with Minimum Marketable Features so only the most important features are built
How to improve the conversation between the customer and the development team while simultaneously improving the quality of the software developed
Unfold requirements in a just-in-time manner that both eliminates waste and minimizes risk
Estimate stories

Target Audience

- Primary: Product managers, product owners, directors, managers, team leaders, architects, business analysts, project managers
- Secondary: C-level executives, analysts

Room Setup and Equipment Needed

Classrooms require students at tables (round or long) as well as several white boards or flip-charts. A projector with screen is also needed.

Prerequisites

- Required: None
- Highly Recommended: none
- Recommended: Experience in any aspect of software development, including management.

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