Agile estimation and planning

Planning is one of the most important activities on any project. Agile methodologies offer a completely new approach that makes planning more valuable and more accurate, and therefore makes the project more predictable. In Agile, planning happens at several levels: project, release, and iteration planning. Each of them draws on the team members’ knowledge and experience, an estimation system that isn’t tied to time, and tasks broken down to different levels of detail.

Agile planning lets the team genuinely take part in planning the project, and it strengthens the team and motivates it to reach its goals. Many interesting practices and approaches are used for planning in Agile: Planning Poker, user stories, story points, story mapping, and others. They all serve to make planning as effective as possible without wasting time.

This training introduces you to the principles behind Agile planning and the benefits it can bring. Through practical work, we’ll explore many approaches to planning in an Agile team and to adopting it. We’ll also pay special attention to the challenge of gathering and analyzing requirements in an Agile project, since it lays the foundation for successful planning. By the end of the training, you will:

• Learn about techniques for gathering, managing, and analyzing requirements in Agile
• Gain hands-on experience applying Agile planning practices
• Get to know metrics and tools for monitoring project status
• Learn about useful practices and techniques for planning at different levels