Planning is important, even for agile projects. Too many teams view planning as something to be avoided and too many organizations view plans as something to hold against their development teams. In this session you will learn how to break that cycle by learning and practicing skills that will help create useful plans that lead to reliable decision-making. You will learn about story points, ideal days, and how to estimate with “Planning Poker.” Both short-term iteration and long-term release planning will be covered.

Lack of good release planning is endemic. Teams seem caught up in iteration-at-a-time development and not planning for releases. Even those who create initial release plans often fail to keep them current. This approach enables teams to resist request for “spurious” information such as “how much is this project going to cost,” or “how long is this project going to take?”

This session will address why release planning is so important and then cover a series of release planning topics such as value-driven planning and multi-level planning