I’ve been reading Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn recently, one of the ideas introduced in the first couple of pages is that Agile Planning is very different to planning an Agile Project.
Mike explains that as you progress throughout the project the amount of uncertainty diminishes. He calls this the Cone of Uncertainty and argues that you should continuously revise your plans as you revise your priorities.
In an agile project change is embraced and priorities are adjusted so the team are always delivering maximum value to the business. The idea of agile planning is that your plans should develop as this uncertainty reduces.
For example:
- Sprint 1 – We estimate this is about 12-18 weeks’ worth of work
- Sprint 2 – we’ve done some of the initial R&D and underestimated several of the user stories. We now believe the total project will take 22 weeks
- Sprint 4 – We’re happy with our 22 week estimate at the moment but we’re getting into some of the big refactors at the moment, we’ll confirm in a few weeks
- Sprint 6 – the majority of the work is behind us and we actually got some quick wins. We are now aiming to deliver on the 20 week mark
- Sprint 8 – we’ve mostly finished and will be delivering on the 20th week
- Sprint 10 – your install will be on Tuesday 15th
As you can see progress reports and updates are continuously being fed back to the stakeholders but these are updates and estimates which refine with time rather than hard deadlines before the work has even begun.
I’m very intrigued by this idea. I do have my concerns how it would work when delivering to a 3rd party – several of our customers pull large testing teams together for UAT testing of our software. I’m not sure how they’d react to a “it’ll be 12-18 weeks” but I’m certainly interested enough to continue reading!
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