Success Factors for Agile Planning

Agile Planning Successfully and Purposefully - Your Competitive Advantage

Mathias V. Waldeck

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9783752602111
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783743120679
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

Agile planning is a key success factor for realizing customer benefits in an ever-changing world. If you read about this in publications such as the Scrum-Guide, you will get a few basics, but you will still not have concrete implementation concepts and decision bases.Away from ideological and theoretical considerations, the experienced agile consultant and coach Mathias v. Waldeck describes his insights from a multitude of national and international agile projects, which were partly carried out with Scrum, partly with other agile methods and frameworks such as Kanban, DSDM, extreme programming and others.With much practice purchase in this book not only the theory, but also the practical conversion and the success factors standing behind it are represented. Thus the reader wins concrete support for his own agile projects and reaches thereby in particular value maximization for his customers.topics: The VUCA world * Agile planning levels * Planning Onion * MVP - Minimum Viable Product * Release planning approaches * Agile estimation and agile estimation methods like Planning Poker, Affinity Estimation, Bucket System * Story Points * and many more

Planning

The VUCA world

For some years now, articles on new and changing challenges facing the economy and people have been appearing in the press and specialist literature. Examples of this are rapid changes, the dynamics of markets and fashion trends, the ever-increasing complexity and interconnectedness of topics and systems, global competition, the speed at which markets and technologies change, and the clash of different ways of thinking, philosophies and political systems.

Many experts summarize this situation under the term "VUCA" or "VUCA world". But what does it mean to live and plan in a VUCA world and what exactly does VUCA stand for?

VUCA stands for

• Volatility (volatility)
• Uncertainty
• Complexity (complexity)
• Ambiguity (ambiguity)

Volatility (volatility)

Volatility refers to the speed of change in an industry, a market or the world in general. It is characterized by fluctuations in demand, turbulence and short time to market. We recognize increasing volatility, for example, in the speed at which technological change occurs. Due to ever more advanced technologies and the use of ever faster computers and more sophisticated development tools, we are talking in some industries about capacities and development speeds in some technologies doubling annually, for example. The more volatile the world is, the faster things change.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty refers to the extent to which we can reliably predict the future. Part of the uncertainty is perceived and associated with people's inability to understand what is going on. However, uncertainty is also a more objective characteristic of an environment. Really uncertain environments are those that do not allow for prediction, even on a statistical basis. The more uncertain the world is, the more difficult it is to predict.

Complexity

Complexity refers to the number of factors we have to consider, their diversity and the relationships between them. The more factors determine or influence a situation, the greater its diversity and the more they are interrelated, the more complex an environment is. When complexity is high, it is impossible to fully analyze the environment and reach rational conclusions. The more complex the world is, the more difficult it is to analyze. ¹

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¹ In this context, we would also like to refer to the Cynefin model by Dave Snowden.
Wikipedia.com

"The Cynefin framework is a knowledge management model with the task to describe problems, situations and systems. The model provides a typology of contexts that give an indication of what kind of explanations or solutions might apply.

Cynefin is a Welsh word that is usually translated in German as 'Lebensraum' or 'Platz', although this translation cannot convey its full meaning. A full translation of the word would imply that we all have several pasts of which we can only be partially aware: cultural, religious, geographical, tribal, etc.

The term was chosen by Welsh scholar Dave Snowden to illustrate the evolutionary nature of complex systems, including their inherent uncertainty. The name is a reminder that all human interactions are strongly influenced and often entirely determined by our experiences, both through the direct influence of personal experience and through collective experience such as stories or music.

The Cynefin framework is based on research from the theory of complex adaptive systems, cognitive science, anthropology and narrative patterns, and evolutionary psychology. It "explores the relationship between people, experience and context" and proposes new ways of communication, decision making, policy making and knowledge management in complex social environments.

(access 8/2020)

Ambiguity

Ambiguity refers to a lack of clarity about how something is to be interpreted. For example, a situation is ambiguous if information is incomplete, contradictory or too imprecise to draw clear conclusions. More generally, ambiguity refers to vagueness and uncertainty in ideas and terminology. The more ambiguous the world is, the more difficult it is to interpret. Ambiguity often results from a different context of the observer. Different world views, educational standards, cultural backgrounds, or similar factors can lead to the same information being understood and interpreted differently by different people.

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Problems of traditional planning

Living in a "VUCA world" has an impact on how we plan and how successful planning is. Traditionally, planning often takes place on the basis of some kind of specifications or requirements document. The aim is to describe and plan the state after the change or development as precisely as possible. Often the corresponding information also becomes part of an agreement or a contract, which has to be realized in the context of a project or a change process. The implementation based on this can take months or in some cases years, within which the existing plans are worked through. Projects are generally considered successful if the specified requirements are implemented within the specified cost and time frame and meet the specified quality criteria. Time and again it can be seen that in the course of the project, general conditions, markets, legislation, own company positioning, existing customer requirements or technological conditions are subject to change. In the case of short projects this is less significant, in projects with implementation periods of sometimes several years the effects of VUCA factors can be considerable.

Of course, changes are also possible within the framework of a traditionally managed project. However, this form of project in the agile area is not called "waterfall" project management by chance, because as long as the process is followed, i.e. the individual project phases are carried out as planned, a familiar stream bed can be passed through with the implementation. This means effort, but is guided through the known process. At the moment when changes (VUCA) are not only perceived, but should also have an impact on the project, we basically have two different options:

• Continuation of the existing project as defined, knowing that further project phases must be scheduled after project completion to implement existing change requests.
• Adapt the existing project and thus leave the existing process plan.

Continuation of the existing project

In the present case, the continuation of the existing project offers the advantage that, at least in the short term, everything can continue to run as planned. Budgets, costs, time frame, personnel requirements, etc. will continue to exist at least until the end of the original project and during the corresponding period of time there is the possibility to extensively plan the follow-up project. The disadvantage is undoubtedly that funds and time are potentially used for the implementation of requirements that are not (or no longer) needed in the implemented way and that further costs and implementation times will arise for the follow-up project, which also means that the results of the project can only be benefited from later. The fact to implement things that are not needed at all will also hardly have a positive effect on the motivation and project identification of the team, which potentially leads to further costs, delays and possibly even a reduction of quality.

Adapting the existing project

The alternative is to adapt the existing project. Apart from the fact that this means t...

Table of contents

• Inhaltsverzeichnis
• Planning
• Release planning
• MVP product and release planning for advanced users
• Sprint Planning
• Agile estimation
• Estimation methods
• Bibliography
• Impressum