Effort estimation in Agile methodology In the Sprint zero as a part of release planning, the Agile team has come up with effort estimation for all the stories in the release. The Planning Poker is a popular method of effort estimation which ensures that the entire team is involved in the estimation exercise.
Product managers, project managers, and software developers would agree that estimation is difficult. In fact, many software developers claim that it is one of the most challenging aspects of the job.
Needless to say, all of you might have heard this name. It is similar to playing poker. Yes, you will definitely get a chance to win big on online slots, you can use online slots to keep winning and inspiring Planning Poker In Agile Methodology yourself to place a bet online.
Executive leadership and upper management often put a great deal of pressure on product development teams to ensure that estimates are as accurate as possible. However, it's important to remember that estimation is just that—an estimation rather than a hard, concrete number.
Additionally, determining when and how to estimate in the first place is also a challenge. However, answering these questions is essential for launching, delivering, and deploying a successful project.
The good news is there are several estimation techniques in the world of agile project management. One common method is Planning Poker. However, like any technique, there are advantages and disadvantages to using it.
This article will explain more about what Planning Poker is, how it works, and the advantages and disadvantages of using it. We will also discuss Relative Mode and why teams should consider it as an alternative agile estimation method.
What is Planning Poker?
Planning poker is also referred to as Agile Poker. It is a group estimation technique often used by agile teams to estimate the amount of effort or relative size of development goals in software development.
Story Points and Planning Poker
The majority of development teams use story points to rate the amount of effort or work involved in a particular task or story. This is often expressed in a Fibonacci-like format: 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100.
Here are the top reasons why the majority of teams use story points:
- Story points represent the relative measurement of effort to deliver the story: the amount of work to do, the complexity of this work, and any risk associated with this story. Story points, however, do not measure the time spent on a story.
- Estimating in story points is typically faster.
- Specific days, dates, or hours typically don't account for the day-to-day tasks or activities that aren't related to the particular project. This includes answering emails, meetings, or other task management activities that occur throughout the day.
- Since estimations are relative, they should involve comparing stories based on what's known about the story itself and also considering teams' experience. The session should facilitate discussion to make sure all team members are on the same page about the scope of work. The relative weight should be similar for every member at the same seniority level (juniors, mid, or seniors).
- Once the team has agreed on each story's effort, it is easier to assign story points to development teams without any debate or surprises.
Planning Poker is a ‘gamified' exercise to help estimate story point values. The moderator will take a story or task from the backlog, discuss the details, and then each team member will share his or her estimate. Some tasks or stories are easier to estimate than others. Sometimes team members will reach a consensus easily; other times, they will discuss and debate to reach an agreement.
Playing Planning Poker can be done both in-person and virtually. When the product owner or project manager runs through the list of each feature or backlog item, each team member shares their number individually (either expressed as the number of story points, depending on what the agile team uses as an estimation basis). Then, the estimates are discussed as a group.
Planning Poker: Advantages and Disadvantages
There are advantages and disadvantages to Planning Poker. One clear advantage is that each team member can 'voice' his or her estimates, which potentially encourages group discussion and collaboration. It also allows team members to feel more committed to the project plan.
Although Planning Poker might seem like a fun way to estimate effort and work as a group, the process of the 'game' or technique itself isn't entirely intuitive. It can take a significant amount of time to figure out how to play the game in the first place, nevermind coming up with accurate estimates.
Furthermore, it isn't completely relative, and it can make the process of using story points more difficult and complex. In Planning Poker, items are estimated one by one, and each of them should be compared to a baseline. But the problem is that session participants often try to figure out how many times bigger the given item is and here is where the estimation fails. We end up with estimations in fixed time intervals and the real idea of relative estimation is to compare items against each other. That's why Planning Poker is very often recommended for teams with bigger story points experience.
Introducing An Alternative Estimation Method: Relative Mode
Relative Mode is another agile estimation method that can better support the process of team estimation.
Relative Methods, also referred to as the Magic Estimation Games, are perfect for making pretty rough, relative estimations of many issues, and a small number of issues with detailed discussion. It consists of estimating items or user stories, not separately, but by comparing or grouping the items of equivalent difficulty or effort.
No matter if you work in a team new to estimates but also for mature teams with greater experience in estimating that want to speed up the estimation process. This method is for your team if you prefer a visual representation and interaction.
Top 4 Advantages of Using Relative Methods
Now that you have a better understanding of Relative Mode and how to use it in Agile Poker for Jira, here are some advantages of using it as an alternative agile estimation method:
1. It is visual and interactive, making it easier and a better solution for remote or distributed teams. Due to its visual nature, participants can see the tasks or issues to estimate relative to one another. They can compare items or issues by placing them in their respective columns.
2. It is easier to set up, moderate, and manage. Product Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, or Project Managers can set up an estimation 'board' by using a tool that supports Relative Mode in minutes. The estimation can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to figure out and explain Planning Poker to a team.
Unlike Planning Poker, Relative Methods are great for teams that have a low to moderate experience in Story Points estimation since team members don't need to think of estimation values but only compare one issue to another.
Furthermore, the session facilitator can easily move the tasks or issues into a column for estimation, collect estimates from the team, save them, and move onto the next—and all in one view.
3. It is productive and produces results faster. Again, Relative Mode engages the entire team because of its visual and interactive nature, ensuring a high participation level. Relative Mode enables team members to submit and share their estimates, reducing the need to push them for a response and awkward silences that fill a meeting room or Zoom call. Relative Mode is effective at producing and driving fairly accurate estimates and in less time.
Relative Mode is effective at producing and driving fairly accurate estimates and in less time. It is easier and more efficient than scrambling to write down estimates or taking notes in a separate document while simultaneously leading the Relative Mode session.
4. It is more collaborative. By saving time and effort from setting up and explaining a 'game' of Planning Poker, Relative Mode is more straightforward. The session moderator selects an issue or task to estimate, each participant or team member submits his or her response, and the team reaches a consensus. If they do not reach an agreement, they can discuss and deliberate accordingly and re-estimate them if needed.
Although Relative Mode doesn't speed up the process or reduce the time spent on estimating story points, it does reduce the amount of time spent on discussing the logistics of the game, making it an easier and more productive estimation method overall.
Agile Estimation is a Team Effort
Agile estimation should involve the entire team—product owners, developers, designers, testers, etc. It is critical to ensure accurate estimates as each team member has a different perspective on the product and the work required to deliver a user story.
Many team members often think that estimation is just for the product or development team because estimating only involves the development team's time. However, this isn't correct. All the core functional areas of designing, developing, and bringing a product to market should be involved, and estimation should consider all these areas.
Furthermore, the choice to only include the development team in estimation exercises can lower morale for other core functional teams who also play a crucial role in the project. Therefore, implementing a fun, interactive, and productive agile estimation approach and technique is a great way for remote or distributed teams to all get involved.
Agile Estimation Just Got Easier—and Better
The process of agile estimation doesn't have to be difficult or overly complex. By having the right tools and techniques in your toolbox, estimation can be a fun and collaborative activity for remote and distributed teams.
We recently improved and released a new feature in our Agile Poker for Jira functionality that not only provides better estimating accuracy but is also a great solution for remote or distributed teams. In 'Relative Mode' team members can join a Relative session, view and comment on Jira issues, and 'vote' by moving cards around a collaborative board.
If you want to try out Agile Poker for Jira Cloud, then visit the Atlassian Marketplace today. You can also see how it works in action by checking out our fully functional demo option.
With more customers looking at reducing project risks and realizing value faster, more teams are adopting agile methods. According to a PMI survey, over 70 percent of businesses report using some form of agile to plan and execute projects.
In this article, we're going to guide you through the concepts of agile planning. We'll look at how you can structure and execute your projects in a way that delivers great results!
Specifically, we're going to give you an insight into:
- What is Agile Planning?
- What are the Levels of Agile Planning?
- Tips for Planning Projects, Sprints & Daily Tasks
- Agile Planning in Toggl Plan
So, if you're looking to increase your knowledge of agile ways of working, as well as hear some real-life examples, this article is for you!
Well, what are you waiting for? Let's get started!
What is Agile Planning?
Traditional project planning follows a ‘big bang' approach whereby all of the change is co-ordinated and delivered at one fixed time. This often comes at the end of a project, after a lengthy period of detailed up-front planning, designing, and testing.
The agile planning process provides a more iterative approach. By delivering the project in smaller chunks, customers can realize the benefits quicker.
It might be easier to explain in an example… so here's a case study!
Imagine you're running a project to build a website. The website has 10 different pages, each serving a different function.
The development team estimates each page will take one week, meaning your website will take 10 weeks to build.
In traditional project management, you would only put the website live once all 10 pages have been completed. This would mean waiting the whole 10 weeks before your customers could get any value from your website – that's way too long!
When applying agile principles, you may structure your website project to deliver two pages every 2 weeks. The project will still take 10 weeks to complete of course. But after only 2 weeks your customers can start accessing the website and start receiving value!
This is how it may look at the project-level, but how does this fit into the wider business landscape?
6 Levels of Agile Planning (or The Agile Planning Onion)
When making changes at pace, it's important to plan effectively. The agile planning process happens on 6 different levels, and is often referred to as the Agile Planning Onion. Let's take a look at how it works!
1. Strategy Planning
This level of planning will usually be conducted by the senior leadership team. Here they're laying out the strategy for the organization; specifying how they're going to achieve the corporate objectives.
For example, the senior leadership team in a retail organization decides to invest in a new digital strategy. The goal is to increase revenue by 20%. This strategy is long-term and will be realized over the next 2 years.
2. Portfolio Planning
At the next level down, consider how to plan out the portfolio of products/services to achieve the strategy. Again the responsibility lies with senior members of the organization, typically at the head of department level.
Based on the strategy, the different portfolio teams come up with ways to make purchasing faster. The digital team decides to introduce a new mobile app to its portfolio. This will be a great way to connect customers to a new buying experience from home.
3. Product Planning
Here, plan how the product will evolve and change in the medium-term. This level of planning will start to involve team members such as Project Managers, Product Managers, and Research Managers to understand the roadmap for change.
A product team is assembled for the new app. They use market research to devise a roadmap of features for the app. They spend time planning out, at a high-level, the effort for each feature, and which ones to deliver over the next 12 months. Best texas holdem strategy.
4. Release Planning
With the roadmap of changes identified, then manage how to release those changes to the customers. Set the business framework for that to happen. Here, Project Managers/Delivery Managers work with technical leads to plan the processes to support technical release.
Technical teams assemble to place structure around the deployment of the initial app features. They also plan ahead, detailing how they will manage the integration of further features moving forward. They're planning in 2 monthly cycles for each release.
5. Iteration Planning
This is where small teams of developers/designers/testers really start to come together. An iteration, sometimes referred to as a sprint, is a single period of time to make the changes. Here, the planning is somewhere between 1-4 weeks ahead and will involve all team members understanding what needs to be achieved in that time.
Based on the first targeted release in 2 months' time, the team breaks down the features from the product roadmap and divides them into development iterations. These will be 2-weekly, with set sessions scheduled to re-plan and assess performance at the start and end of each iteration.
6. Daily Planning
When working through iterations, plan for the day ahead. To do this you must understand what each team member has achieved, what's on the schedule for the next day, and assess any problems they're currently facing.
Each day, the team will get together to communicate their individual progress towards the completion of that iteration. Each team member can input what they have completed, what they have left to do, and raise any issues. It will be the role of a Project Manager/Delivery Manager/Scrum Master to facilitate that session and ensure progress remains on track.
When using Toggl, you'll probably focus on Levels 3, 5 & 6 of the onion.
Let's look at some of the common methods for planning and executing at each of these levels.
Level 3 Agile Planning – Building a Product Backlog
Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion is all about planning at a product level. Specifically, this is where we identify and plan the features we want to bring to our product.
There are multiple techniques you can use to build a product backlog. Let's look at exactly what a backlog is and how you can start building your own!
What is a Product Backlog?
A backlog is a list of changes, new features, bug fixes, or any other activity that a team might deliver.
To build a backlog, you need to add each feature as an individual ‘backlog item'. As you add items into your backlog, you need to do three things:
- Define the backlog item
- Estimate the backlog item
- Prioritize the backlog item
Using User Stories to Define a Backlog Item
Backlog items are the requirements of customers or stakeholders. They are often written in the format of user stories.
A user story captures the description of a software feature from the end user's perspective. They can be written in different formats, but the most common is the ‘who' ‘what' ‘why' format. Here's an example:
- 'Who' – As a website user
- 'What' – I want to login to my account
- 'Why' – So that I can view my orders
At this stage, you should keep your requirements broad. The exact detail will be defined during the development iteration.
The process of defining requirements is often undertaken by a Business Analyst or a Product Owner. In practice, requirements may come from customer feedback or customer-facing team members, e.g. Customer Success Managers.
Once you've got your list of requirements, it's time to work out how long each will take to deliver.
Estimating a Backlog Item
With your backlog defined, it's time to estimate exactly how long each item will take to build.
There are different ways to do this but two of the most common methods are:
- T-shirt sizing
- And, Agile planning poker
Here's how they both work:
‘T-shirt sizing' uses familiar terms from clothing to understand the size of a requirement. As a team, you have to estimate if a requirement is a small, medium, large or extra-large piece of work. There will need to be common effort metrics underpinning your sizes. For example, you might agree beforehand that a small piece of work is equivalent to 2 days effort.
‘Agile planning poker cards' work in much the same way. But instead of using t-shirt sizes, you'll use the numbers on playing cards. As with t-shirt sizing, you need to agree on how much effort each number represents e.g. a number 4 may represent 4 days effort.
How Does Agile Estimation Work In Practice?
- The Business Analyst/Product Owner gets the team together for an estimation session.
- Read each user story out in turn. Each member of the team then writes down their opinion of the t-shirt size or shows the card they believe its worth.
- There will probably be differences in opinion! As a group, discuss your thoughts until you come to a consensus.
- Each user story will now have a documented estimation. Be sure to also capture any stand-out notes detailing why it is that size.
Great, you've now estimated all your user stories!
Prioritize the Backlog
You've defined the user stories and given them an estimation. Now the final question you must answer is: Which one do we do first?
For this, you need to prioritize each item to understand what will bring the most value.
Unfortunately, prioritization isn't an exact science. The reason a certain user story may be more important than another will be unique to your business.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when prioritizing backlog items:
- How much value will this bring our customers?
- How many customers receive that value?
- Could this item directly increase business revenue? If so, by how much?
- Does this item fit into our long-term strategy?
- What are the costs to build this item?
However you chose to prioritize, you now arrange your backlog items accordingly. This helps answer the question of which item(s) to do first!
Managing your backlog isn't a one-off task. As a product team, you need to constantly add/update/remove items as customer and business needs change!
So, that's planning at Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion. In practice, there's a lot more to mastering the process – but these are the high-level principles.
Agile Planning Poker Cards
Product Level Agile Planning in Toggl Plan
Creating a product backlog is super easy in Toggl Plan – here's how it's done:
Step 1 – Create a new plan in Toggl selecting the ‘Boards' view to begin creating your own agile planning board. Give it a name you'll easily recognize, such as ‘Website Product Backlog.' Poker odds calculator software, free download.
Step 2 – Create some custom statuses. We've gone for ‘Backlog', ‘In Progress', ‘Ready for Release' and ‘Done', but create what works for you.
Step 3 – Start creating tasks against your backlog status. Give each task a unique number and name, use tags to record your size estimation and prioritization, and utilize the notes area to put the detail of the user story.
Step 4 – You can now view all of your backlog items in one place. Remember you can drag and drop them into the correct order as well as using the filter tags function to sort further.
You're now a backlog expert and you've got it all set up in Toggl!
Level 5 Agile Planning – Planning a Sprint
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With product-level planning complete, we can move onto planning at Level 5 – iteration planning!
Iterations are commonly known as sprints within certain agile frameworks and we'll use both terms interchangeably.
Before committing to delivering backlog items, we have to answer the following question: How much work can be achieved in this iteration?
Understanding Sprint Capacity & Velocity
As your team matures, you will understand exactly how much work you can achieve in a certain time period.
When answering the question of ‘how much' there are two different terms thrown around: capacity and velocity. Here's what they both mean:
- Capacity – When planning your iteration, understanding your team's capacity means looking ahead to see what each member can achieve. Here, you're looking for events such as holidays, long-term illnesses, and training days. You need to identify events that may prevent work from being completed.
- Velocity – For mature teams, velocity looks back at how much work you've been able to complete previously. If we cast our minds back to t-shirt sizing, we may say the velocity of our team is equivalent to 3 ‘large' items per iteration.
So, as we begin to plan our iteration we can look forward (capacity) and back (velocity) to understand what we can achieve.
Let's take a brief example:
You're the Project Manager working with a team of 5 people to plan your next iteration. From previous iterations, you know you can typically complete 10 small-sized work items per iteration.
You look at the calendar. You notice one of your team members will be on holiday for the whole iteration. This means your team capacity is down to 80%.
Therefore, when planning forward you should also adjust your capacity down to 80%. This means you will only commit to 8 small-sized items for this sprint (10 x 80% = 8) instead of 10.
Sprint Plan Meeting
So far, you have prioritized items in your backlog with associated time estimates. You have also forecast your team's capacity.
Now you need to marry up the two during a formal sprint planning meeting.
As a team, select which backlog items you can complete in this iteration. To avoid missing deadlines don't exceed your capacity allowance.
Once the backlog items have been selected, you're ready to go!
Sprint Planning in Toggl Plan
There are different ways you could manage this in Toggl depending on the size, scale, and complexity of your team.
Here's a simple way to set up your sprint!
Step 1 – Bring your team together for an iteration planning session. Get your Website Backlog Plan up for everyone to see.
Step 2 – Once you have selected an item, open it up on the task view.
Step 3 – From here, update the item. Change the status to ‘In Progress' and assign attributes such as segment, assignee, and from-to dates.
Step 4 – You can also add further to-do activities. This will help you better track its completion.
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Step 5 – Now you have a view of which items have moved from your backlog ready for this iteration!
The backlog items have been selected and the iteration has been planned. Now it's time to make sure it gets delivered and for that, we need daily planning!
Level 6 Agile Planning – Daily Stand-up Meetings
With the iteration underway, you need to keep everything moving smoothly.
The project manager, delivery manager, or scrum master has to keep an eye on progress. There are many ways to do this; using to-do lists, assigning sub-tasks, and arranging demonstrations. But there's one activity that underpins daily agile planning – the daily stand-up.
What is a daily stand-up meeting?
The daily stand-up is a 15-30-minute session where everyone in the team reports their progress. Specifically, each member will discuss the following:
- What they completed yesterday
- What they plan to complete today
- Any blockers they are facing
Daily Stand-ups in Toggl Plan
The daily stand-up isn't task-/item-specific, so you need to record it generically rather than by task.
Here's one way to manage it:
Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan and create a new status. Give it a name that isn't related to your main work process – we've chosen ‘Admin'.
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Step 2 – Create a task under this status to document your daily stand-up. Give it an appropriate title, tag, and assignee and use the notes area to record the minutes of the meeting.
Step 3 – Remember you can also use to-dos to track tasks or attach relevant files.
What About Release Planning?
The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice we've missed out Level 4 from the Agile Planning Onion – release planning.
Depending on the organization, a single release may comprise multiple iterations' worth of work. This will need its own separate process.
We could write a whole article about it, but instead here's a simple way to pass the work over to a release team once it's complete.
Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan. Once an item has been completed, simply drag it to the ‘Ready for Release' column. Your release team can clearly see the items they need to pick up!
Step 2 – From here, the release team can either move the item to ‘Completed' once it's been released or they may want it in another plan. If so, they can open the item and by selecting the ‘plan', re-assign it to the correct place.
Conclusion
Agile planning offers an exciting new way to deliver change. Giving more flexibility and allowing stakeholders to feel the benefits sooner, it's no wonder it's such a popular method!
Executive leadership and upper management often put a great deal of pressure on product development teams to ensure that estimates are as accurate as possible. However, it's important to remember that estimation is just that—an estimation rather than a hard, concrete number.
Additionally, determining when and how to estimate in the first place is also a challenge. However, answering these questions is essential for launching, delivering, and deploying a successful project.
The good news is there are several estimation techniques in the world of agile project management. One common method is Planning Poker. However, like any technique, there are advantages and disadvantages to using it.
This article will explain more about what Planning Poker is, how it works, and the advantages and disadvantages of using it. We will also discuss Relative Mode and why teams should consider it as an alternative agile estimation method.
What is Planning Poker?
Planning poker is also referred to as Agile Poker. It is a group estimation technique often used by agile teams to estimate the amount of effort or relative size of development goals in software development.
Story Points and Planning Poker
The majority of development teams use story points to rate the amount of effort or work involved in a particular task or story. This is often expressed in a Fibonacci-like format: 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100.
Here are the top reasons why the majority of teams use story points:
- Story points represent the relative measurement of effort to deliver the story: the amount of work to do, the complexity of this work, and any risk associated with this story. Story points, however, do not measure the time spent on a story.
- Estimating in story points is typically faster.
- Specific days, dates, or hours typically don't account for the day-to-day tasks or activities that aren't related to the particular project. This includes answering emails, meetings, or other task management activities that occur throughout the day.
- Since estimations are relative, they should involve comparing stories based on what's known about the story itself and also considering teams' experience. The session should facilitate discussion to make sure all team members are on the same page about the scope of work. The relative weight should be similar for every member at the same seniority level (juniors, mid, or seniors).
- Once the team has agreed on each story's effort, it is easier to assign story points to development teams without any debate or surprises.
Planning Poker is a ‘gamified' exercise to help estimate story point values. The moderator will take a story or task from the backlog, discuss the details, and then each team member will share his or her estimate. Some tasks or stories are easier to estimate than others. Sometimes team members will reach a consensus easily; other times, they will discuss and debate to reach an agreement.
Playing Planning Poker can be done both in-person and virtually. When the product owner or project manager runs through the list of each feature or backlog item, each team member shares their number individually (either expressed as the number of story points, depending on what the agile team uses as an estimation basis). Then, the estimates are discussed as a group.
Planning Poker: Advantages and Disadvantages
There are advantages and disadvantages to Planning Poker. One clear advantage is that each team member can 'voice' his or her estimates, which potentially encourages group discussion and collaboration. It also allows team members to feel more committed to the project plan.
Although Planning Poker might seem like a fun way to estimate effort and work as a group, the process of the 'game' or technique itself isn't entirely intuitive. It can take a significant amount of time to figure out how to play the game in the first place, nevermind coming up with accurate estimates.
Furthermore, it isn't completely relative, and it can make the process of using story points more difficult and complex. In Planning Poker, items are estimated one by one, and each of them should be compared to a baseline. But the problem is that session participants often try to figure out how many times bigger the given item is and here is where the estimation fails. We end up with estimations in fixed time intervals and the real idea of relative estimation is to compare items against each other. That's why Planning Poker is very often recommended for teams with bigger story points experience.
Introducing An Alternative Estimation Method: Relative Mode
Relative Mode is another agile estimation method that can better support the process of team estimation.
Relative Methods, also referred to as the Magic Estimation Games, are perfect for making pretty rough, relative estimations of many issues, and a small number of issues with detailed discussion. It consists of estimating items or user stories, not separately, but by comparing or grouping the items of equivalent difficulty or effort.
No matter if you work in a team new to estimates but also for mature teams with greater experience in estimating that want to speed up the estimation process. This method is for your team if you prefer a visual representation and interaction.
Top 4 Advantages of Using Relative Methods
Now that you have a better understanding of Relative Mode and how to use it in Agile Poker for Jira, here are some advantages of using it as an alternative agile estimation method:
1. It is visual and interactive, making it easier and a better solution for remote or distributed teams. Due to its visual nature, participants can see the tasks or issues to estimate relative to one another. They can compare items or issues by placing them in their respective columns.
2. It is easier to set up, moderate, and manage. Product Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, or Project Managers can set up an estimation 'board' by using a tool that supports Relative Mode in minutes. The estimation can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to figure out and explain Planning Poker to a team.
Unlike Planning Poker, Relative Methods are great for teams that have a low to moderate experience in Story Points estimation since team members don't need to think of estimation values but only compare one issue to another.
Furthermore, the session facilitator can easily move the tasks or issues into a column for estimation, collect estimates from the team, save them, and move onto the next—and all in one view.
3. It is productive and produces results faster. Again, Relative Mode engages the entire team because of its visual and interactive nature, ensuring a high participation level. Relative Mode enables team members to submit and share their estimates, reducing the need to push them for a response and awkward silences that fill a meeting room or Zoom call. Relative Mode is effective at producing and driving fairly accurate estimates and in less time.
Relative Mode is effective at producing and driving fairly accurate estimates and in less time. It is easier and more efficient than scrambling to write down estimates or taking notes in a separate document while simultaneously leading the Relative Mode session.
4. It is more collaborative. By saving time and effort from setting up and explaining a 'game' of Planning Poker, Relative Mode is more straightforward. The session moderator selects an issue or task to estimate, each participant or team member submits his or her response, and the team reaches a consensus. If they do not reach an agreement, they can discuss and deliberate accordingly and re-estimate them if needed.
Although Relative Mode doesn't speed up the process or reduce the time spent on estimating story points, it does reduce the amount of time spent on discussing the logistics of the game, making it an easier and more productive estimation method overall.
Agile Estimation is a Team Effort
Agile estimation should involve the entire team—product owners, developers, designers, testers, etc. It is critical to ensure accurate estimates as each team member has a different perspective on the product and the work required to deliver a user story.
Many team members often think that estimation is just for the product or development team because estimating only involves the development team's time. However, this isn't correct. All the core functional areas of designing, developing, and bringing a product to market should be involved, and estimation should consider all these areas.
Furthermore, the choice to only include the development team in estimation exercises can lower morale for other core functional teams who also play a crucial role in the project. Therefore, implementing a fun, interactive, and productive agile estimation approach and technique is a great way for remote or distributed teams to all get involved.
Agile Estimation Just Got Easier—and Better
The process of agile estimation doesn't have to be difficult or overly complex. By having the right tools and techniques in your toolbox, estimation can be a fun and collaborative activity for remote and distributed teams.
We recently improved and released a new feature in our Agile Poker for Jira functionality that not only provides better estimating accuracy but is also a great solution for remote or distributed teams. In 'Relative Mode' team members can join a Relative session, view and comment on Jira issues, and 'vote' by moving cards around a collaborative board.
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With more customers looking at reducing project risks and realizing value faster, more teams are adopting agile methods. According to a PMI survey, over 70 percent of businesses report using some form of agile to plan and execute projects.
In this article, we're going to guide you through the concepts of agile planning. We'll look at how you can structure and execute your projects in a way that delivers great results!
Specifically, we're going to give you an insight into:
- What is Agile Planning?
- What are the Levels of Agile Planning?
- Tips for Planning Projects, Sprints & Daily Tasks
- Agile Planning in Toggl Plan
So, if you're looking to increase your knowledge of agile ways of working, as well as hear some real-life examples, this article is for you!
Well, what are you waiting for? Let's get started!
What is Agile Planning?
Traditional project planning follows a ‘big bang' approach whereby all of the change is co-ordinated and delivered at one fixed time. This often comes at the end of a project, after a lengthy period of detailed up-front planning, designing, and testing.
The agile planning process provides a more iterative approach. By delivering the project in smaller chunks, customers can realize the benefits quicker.
It might be easier to explain in an example… so here's a case study!
Imagine you're running a project to build a website. The website has 10 different pages, each serving a different function.
The development team estimates each page will take one week, meaning your website will take 10 weeks to build.
In traditional project management, you would only put the website live once all 10 pages have been completed. This would mean waiting the whole 10 weeks before your customers could get any value from your website – that's way too long!
When applying agile principles, you may structure your website project to deliver two pages every 2 weeks. The project will still take 10 weeks to complete of course. But after only 2 weeks your customers can start accessing the website and start receiving value!
This is how it may look at the project-level, but how does this fit into the wider business landscape?
6 Levels of Agile Planning (or The Agile Planning Onion)
When making changes at pace, it's important to plan effectively. The agile planning process happens on 6 different levels, and is often referred to as the Agile Planning Onion. Let's take a look at how it works!
1. Strategy Planning
This level of planning will usually be conducted by the senior leadership team. Here they're laying out the strategy for the organization; specifying how they're going to achieve the corporate objectives.
For example, the senior leadership team in a retail organization decides to invest in a new digital strategy. The goal is to increase revenue by 20%. This strategy is long-term and will be realized over the next 2 years.
2. Portfolio Planning
At the next level down, consider how to plan out the portfolio of products/services to achieve the strategy. Again the responsibility lies with senior members of the organization, typically at the head of department level.
Based on the strategy, the different portfolio teams come up with ways to make purchasing faster. The digital team decides to introduce a new mobile app to its portfolio. This will be a great way to connect customers to a new buying experience from home.
3. Product Planning
Here, plan how the product will evolve and change in the medium-term. This level of planning will start to involve team members such as Project Managers, Product Managers, and Research Managers to understand the roadmap for change.
A product team is assembled for the new app. They use market research to devise a roadmap of features for the app. They spend time planning out, at a high-level, the effort for each feature, and which ones to deliver over the next 12 months. Best texas holdem strategy.
4. Release Planning
With the roadmap of changes identified, then manage how to release those changes to the customers. Set the business framework for that to happen. Here, Project Managers/Delivery Managers work with technical leads to plan the processes to support technical release.
Technical teams assemble to place structure around the deployment of the initial app features. They also plan ahead, detailing how they will manage the integration of further features moving forward. They're planning in 2 monthly cycles for each release.
5. Iteration Planning
This is where small teams of developers/designers/testers really start to come together. An iteration, sometimes referred to as a sprint, is a single period of time to make the changes. Here, the planning is somewhere between 1-4 weeks ahead and will involve all team members understanding what needs to be achieved in that time.
Based on the first targeted release in 2 months' time, the team breaks down the features from the product roadmap and divides them into development iterations. These will be 2-weekly, with set sessions scheduled to re-plan and assess performance at the start and end of each iteration.
6. Daily Planning
When working through iterations, plan for the day ahead. To do this you must understand what each team member has achieved, what's on the schedule for the next day, and assess any problems they're currently facing.
Each day, the team will get together to communicate their individual progress towards the completion of that iteration. Each team member can input what they have completed, what they have left to do, and raise any issues. It will be the role of a Project Manager/Delivery Manager/Scrum Master to facilitate that session and ensure progress remains on track.
When using Toggl, you'll probably focus on Levels 3, 5 & 6 of the onion.
Let's look at some of the common methods for planning and executing at each of these levels.
Level 3 Agile Planning – Building a Product Backlog
Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion is all about planning at a product level. Specifically, this is where we identify and plan the features we want to bring to our product.
There are multiple techniques you can use to build a product backlog. Let's look at exactly what a backlog is and how you can start building your own!
What is a Product Backlog?
A backlog is a list of changes, new features, bug fixes, or any other activity that a team might deliver.
To build a backlog, you need to add each feature as an individual ‘backlog item'. As you add items into your backlog, you need to do three things:
- Define the backlog item
- Estimate the backlog item
- Prioritize the backlog item
Using User Stories to Define a Backlog Item
Backlog items are the requirements of customers or stakeholders. They are often written in the format of user stories.
A user story captures the description of a software feature from the end user's perspective. They can be written in different formats, but the most common is the ‘who' ‘what' ‘why' format. Here's an example:
- 'Who' – As a website user
- 'What' – I want to login to my account
- 'Why' – So that I can view my orders
At this stage, you should keep your requirements broad. The exact detail will be defined during the development iteration.
The process of defining requirements is often undertaken by a Business Analyst or a Product Owner. In practice, requirements may come from customer feedback or customer-facing team members, e.g. Customer Success Managers.
Once you've got your list of requirements, it's time to work out how long each will take to deliver.
Estimating a Backlog Item
With your backlog defined, it's time to estimate exactly how long each item will take to build.
There are different ways to do this but two of the most common methods are:
- T-shirt sizing
- And, Agile planning poker
Here's how they both work:
‘T-shirt sizing' uses familiar terms from clothing to understand the size of a requirement. As a team, you have to estimate if a requirement is a small, medium, large or extra-large piece of work. There will need to be common effort metrics underpinning your sizes. For example, you might agree beforehand that a small piece of work is equivalent to 2 days effort.
‘Agile planning poker cards' work in much the same way. But instead of using t-shirt sizes, you'll use the numbers on playing cards. As with t-shirt sizing, you need to agree on how much effort each number represents e.g. a number 4 may represent 4 days effort.
How Does Agile Estimation Work In Practice?
- The Business Analyst/Product Owner gets the team together for an estimation session.
- Read each user story out in turn. Each member of the team then writes down their opinion of the t-shirt size or shows the card they believe its worth.
- There will probably be differences in opinion! As a group, discuss your thoughts until you come to a consensus.
- Each user story will now have a documented estimation. Be sure to also capture any stand-out notes detailing why it is that size.
Great, you've now estimated all your user stories!
Prioritize the Backlog
You've defined the user stories and given them an estimation. Now the final question you must answer is: Which one do we do first?
For this, you need to prioritize each item to understand what will bring the most value.
Unfortunately, prioritization isn't an exact science. The reason a certain user story may be more important than another will be unique to your business.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when prioritizing backlog items:
- How much value will this bring our customers?
- How many customers receive that value?
- Could this item directly increase business revenue? If so, by how much?
- Does this item fit into our long-term strategy?
- What are the costs to build this item?
However you chose to prioritize, you now arrange your backlog items accordingly. This helps answer the question of which item(s) to do first!
Managing your backlog isn't a one-off task. As a product team, you need to constantly add/update/remove items as customer and business needs change!
So, that's planning at Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion. In practice, there's a lot more to mastering the process – but these are the high-level principles.
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Product Level Agile Planning in Toggl Plan
Creating a product backlog is super easy in Toggl Plan – here's how it's done:
Step 1 – Create a new plan in Toggl selecting the ‘Boards' view to begin creating your own agile planning board. Give it a name you'll easily recognize, such as ‘Website Product Backlog.' Poker odds calculator software, free download.
Step 2 – Create some custom statuses. We've gone for ‘Backlog', ‘In Progress', ‘Ready for Release' and ‘Done', but create what works for you.
Step 3 – Start creating tasks against your backlog status. Give each task a unique number and name, use tags to record your size estimation and prioritization, and utilize the notes area to put the detail of the user story.
Step 4 – You can now view all of your backlog items in one place. Remember you can drag and drop them into the correct order as well as using the filter tags function to sort further.
You're now a backlog expert and you've got it all set up in Toggl!
Level 5 Agile Planning – Planning a Sprint
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With product-level planning complete, we can move onto planning at Level 5 – iteration planning!
Iterations are commonly known as sprints within certain agile frameworks and we'll use both terms interchangeably.
Before committing to delivering backlog items, we have to answer the following question: How much work can be achieved in this iteration?
Understanding Sprint Capacity & Velocity
As your team matures, you will understand exactly how much work you can achieve in a certain time period.
When answering the question of ‘how much' there are two different terms thrown around: capacity and velocity. Here's what they both mean:
- Capacity – When planning your iteration, understanding your team's capacity means looking ahead to see what each member can achieve. Here, you're looking for events such as holidays, long-term illnesses, and training days. You need to identify events that may prevent work from being completed.
- Velocity – For mature teams, velocity looks back at how much work you've been able to complete previously. If we cast our minds back to t-shirt sizing, we may say the velocity of our team is equivalent to 3 ‘large' items per iteration.
So, as we begin to plan our iteration we can look forward (capacity) and back (velocity) to understand what we can achieve.
Let's take a brief example:
You're the Project Manager working with a team of 5 people to plan your next iteration. From previous iterations, you know you can typically complete 10 small-sized work items per iteration.
You look at the calendar. You notice one of your team members will be on holiday for the whole iteration. This means your team capacity is down to 80%.
Therefore, when planning forward you should also adjust your capacity down to 80%. This means you will only commit to 8 small-sized items for this sprint (10 x 80% = 8) instead of 10.
Sprint Plan Meeting
So far, you have prioritized items in your backlog with associated time estimates. You have also forecast your team's capacity.
Now you need to marry up the two during a formal sprint planning meeting.
As a team, select which backlog items you can complete in this iteration. To avoid missing deadlines don't exceed your capacity allowance.
Once the backlog items have been selected, you're ready to go!
Sprint Planning in Toggl Plan
There are different ways you could manage this in Toggl depending on the size, scale, and complexity of your team.
Here's a simple way to set up your sprint!
Step 1 – Bring your team together for an iteration planning session. Get your Website Backlog Plan up for everyone to see.
Step 2 – Once you have selected an item, open it up on the task view.
Step 3 – From here, update the item. Change the status to ‘In Progress' and assign attributes such as segment, assignee, and from-to dates.
Step 4 – You can also add further to-do activities. This will help you better track its completion.
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Step 5 – Now you have a view of which items have moved from your backlog ready for this iteration!
The backlog items have been selected and the iteration has been planned. Now it's time to make sure it gets delivered and for that, we need daily planning!
Level 6 Agile Planning – Daily Stand-up Meetings
With the iteration underway, you need to keep everything moving smoothly.
The project manager, delivery manager, or scrum master has to keep an eye on progress. There are many ways to do this; using to-do lists, assigning sub-tasks, and arranging demonstrations. But there's one activity that underpins daily agile planning – the daily stand-up.
What is a daily stand-up meeting?
The daily stand-up is a 15-30-minute session where everyone in the team reports their progress. Specifically, each member will discuss the following:
- What they completed yesterday
- What they plan to complete today
- Any blockers they are facing
Daily Stand-ups in Toggl Plan
The daily stand-up isn't task-/item-specific, so you need to record it generically rather than by task.
Here's one way to manage it:
Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan and create a new status. Give it a name that isn't related to your main work process – we've chosen ‘Admin'.
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Step 2 – Create a task under this status to document your daily stand-up. Give it an appropriate title, tag, and assignee and use the notes area to record the minutes of the meeting.
Step 3 – Remember you can also use to-dos to track tasks or attach relevant files.
What About Release Planning?
The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice we've missed out Level 4 from the Agile Planning Onion – release planning.
Depending on the organization, a single release may comprise multiple iterations' worth of work. This will need its own separate process.
We could write a whole article about it, but instead here's a simple way to pass the work over to a release team once it's complete.
Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan. Once an item has been completed, simply drag it to the ‘Ready for Release' column. Your release team can clearly see the items they need to pick up!
Step 2 – From here, the release team can either move the item to ‘Completed' once it's been released or they may want it in another plan. If so, they can open the item and by selecting the ‘plan', re-assign it to the correct place.
Conclusion
Agile planning offers an exciting new way to deliver change. Giving more flexibility and allowing stakeholders to feel the benefits sooner, it's no wonder it's such a popular method!
Whether it's building and prioritizing a backlog, managing your iteration capacity, or simply recording day-to-date plans, Toggl can help.
If you're new to agile planning, Toggl Plan Boards can offer all of the elements you need in one concise platform, meaning you can spend more time focussing on the things that matter. Or if you're an agile planning expert, why not use Toggl Plan Boards to take your planning skills to the next level?
Either way, Toggl gives you and the team a clear and visual way to plan, collaborate, and track your work to help guarantee great results for your customers!