Agile Planning: Doing Estimates and Completing the Release Plan

Course details

• Preparing estimates is not an area of project planning that many people really enjoy. That is, until they learn to do it the agile way. This course focuses on the heart of release planning: creating estimates and prioritizing requirements. You will learn common agile methods for estimating the size of user stories, such as planning poker, and guidelines for splitting and combining user stories. Along with estimating, another key task during release planning is prioritizing user stories to create the project backlog. You will learn the MoSCoW technique for prioritizing user stories, as well as the more sophisticated prioritization tools: the priority matrix and the Kano model of customer satisfaction. You will also learn about a visual approach some agile teams use to create a backlog story map. Finally, the course provides information on how initial team velocity may be determined and used to distribute the user stories among iterations as the final step in release planning. This course is intended for project managers, program managers, or anyone who wants to efficiently participate in agile projects. It is aligned with the Agile Certified Practitioner exam objectives developed by the Project Management Institute® and Certified ScrumMaster learning objectives.
• recognize activities carried out when using the planning poker technique
• describe the ideal days estimation technique
• estimate velocity for a given team
• identify factors that can negatively impact the velocity of an agile team
• use the MoSCoW model to create a prioritized user story backlog
• recognize how various factors influence the prioritization of user stories
• recognize the guidelines for splitting and combining user stories
• plan iterations based on calculations using velocity and iteration length
• estimate user story size and velocity for a given project
• assign prioritized user stories to iterations for a given project
• analyze survey data using the Kano model
• plot examples of features on a graph using the Kano model
• prioritize user stories using cost, value, and risk information
• recognize the priority level of user stories in a priority matrix