PMI-ACP Certification: Planning and Monitoring Iterations
Planning and Monitoring Iterations on an Agile Project
Welcome! This is the fifth course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Planning and Monitoring Iterations on an Agile Project.
An iteration planning meeting
In an agile project, planning occurs before each iteration starts. An iteration planning meeting should typically last for one or two hours per week included in an iteration, and should include the product owner, agile project manager, or Scrum Master, and the development team.
During iteration planning, the participants adjust the priorities of user stories and estimate the development team’s velocity. They then develop an iteration goal, select user stories, break the stories down into tasks, and estimate the tasks. The three key outputs of an iteration planning meeting are the iteration goal, an iteration backlog, and an iteration schedule.
Creating an iteration backlog
During iteration planning, an agile project team follows three steps to create an iteration backlog. First the team splits any overly large user stories into multiple, smaller stories. Each story should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable.
Next the team breaks each user story down into development tasks. Each task should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-boxed. Finally the team estimates the effort required to complete each task, generally using ideal hours.
Calculating the buffer
To help ensure that an agile project will be completed on time, you can use various types of buffers – including feature, project, feeding, and resource buffers.
To calculate a suitable project buffer, you can use the critical chain method or the square root of the sum of the squares method. Alternatively, you can simply add average-case estimates for tasks or user stories and divide the result by two.
Complex projects
For large, complex projects, project leaders should facilitate iteration planning by using a rolling lookahead approach, making plans for the next few iterations at a time. They should also communicate conditions of satisfaction for user stories before the relevant iterations start, and establish feeding buffers between tasks that are critically dependent to absorb any delays.
Monitoring progress during an iteration
Monitoring progress in an agile project involves assessing the end results of iterations in terms of customers’ requirements, rather than comparing planned and actual progress. On a daily basis, an agile team uses standup meetings to track its progress and any obstacles.
In addition, a team may use an iteration backlog, task board, and burn charts to track its progress during an iteration. Managers and other stakeholders may also track progress using a burnup chart.
Project information
Agile project release plans should be constantly updated to reflect the work completed in a project, changes to requirements and priorities, and any revised estimates. When updating release plans, you should monitor the team’s velocity and the frequency of unfinished user stories.
You can monitor and report project progress at the release level using release burnup and burndown charts, parking lot charts, and defect reports.
This course has two main sections. After completing the first one, called Iterative Planning and Estimating, you will be able to:
- understand activities that take place during an iteration planning meeting,
- identify the outputs of the iteration planning meeting,
- recognize the steps for creating an iteration backlog,
- calculate the buffer for a given set of project tasks, and
- pinpoint the appropriate actions to take when planning iterations for a complex project.
After completing the second section, called Monitoring and Reporting Project Work, you will be able to, you will be able to:
- recognize the tools are used to monitor progress during an iteration,
- identify project information that should be updated in a release plan, and
- interpret project release information using various types of charts.
Who is your instructor?
My name is Sorin, and I will be your instructor. I am a trainer and project manager with more than 10 years of experience. Before Udemy, I trained hundreds of people in a classroom environment – civil servants, managers, project workers, aid workers and many more. And I managed projects in the fields of justice, corrections, regional development and human resources development.
How will you benefit?
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.
Training videos, examples, exercices and quizzes will help you learn all about the Planning and Monitoring Iterations on an Agile Project. And, if you take your time to go through all the learning materials this will entitle you to claim 5 PDU’s for the PMI certification exams and to maintain your PMI certification.
So, thank you for considering this course! Now, go ahead, and hit that “Take This Course” button. And, see you on the inside.
Course Introduction
Welcome! This is the fifth course out of eight of the Agile PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program. This part is on Planning and Monitoring Iterations on an Agile Project. And, just to give you an overview, the next lecture will briefly present all the sections that form this Program.
This video will help you understand better the content of the other courses that will form this Agile Project Management - The PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) Certification Program.
And, just to be clear, because what I call section in the larger Certification Program, is a course by itself, let’s see what every section includes.
For a better learning experience change your view settings to HD. Depending on your internet connection the quality of your video lesson should be better on your playing device.
This course includes closed captions, at least in English. So, if you want to watch videos quietly or defeat noise it’s a good idea to turn them on. Or, maybe is just easier for you to take video lessons if you also see the subtitles.
Program description, course introduction and learning guidelines.
Iterative Planning and Estimating
The Agile Iteration and Agile Principles
Once the high-level release planning for an agile project has been completed, it is time to begin planning project work in more detail. Unlike in a traditional project, this type of planning doesn't occur just once. Instead it takes the form of iteration planning. It's completed before each of multiple iterations begins.
During release planning, an agile team and the project customer create a product backlog, which lists the features or user stories to be developed during a project in order of their priority.
During an iteration planning meeting, the participants determine the team's target velocity and adjust the priorities of user stories. They then identify an iteration goal, select the user stories to develop, split the user stories into tasks, and estimate the effort involved in developing the tasks.
A team's velocity refers to the amount of work, typically represented as story points, it can complete per period, or per iteration.
Iterative Life Cycle
An iteration planning meeting has three key outputs:
- an iteration goal
- an iteration backlog
- an iteration schedule
During an iteration planning meeting, the team creates an iteration backlog. This backlog is an ordered list of the work that the team plans to complete during the coming iteration.
Creating the iteration backlog involves three steps - splitting large user stories, breaking the user stories into development tasks, and estimating the tasks.
The second step in creating an iteration backlog is to split each of the user stories selected for development into tasks. According to the SMART acronym, good tasks - like good objectives - are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-boxed.
The third and final step in creating an iteration backlog is to estimate task durations. During release planning, teams often estimate using story points, which represent fixed amounts of development effort.
A team that has considerable history working and estimating together may be able to estimate a story point with an equivalent average of development time. However, since story point values are relative in nature and unique to a specific team, they shouldn't be translated directly into hourly estimates.
In a traditionally managed project, a project manager estimates task durations before work starts, and aims to ensure that each task is completed in time - resulting in a project that stays on schedule overall.
In an agile project, however, early scheduling provides a general framework, outlining what a project will involve and how many iterations it'll include. Distinct tasks aren't identified until the iteration planning stage, when all team members participate in estimating the effort required to complete them.
You can calculate a project buffer in different ways. First, however, it is important to be familiar with various statistical concepts and practices - including the standard distribution of task durations, estimating at 50% confidence, estimating at 90% confidence, and using both 50% and 90% estimates.
When working with very large projects and multiple teams, it is crucial to have a functional agile scaling model in mind. An agile scaling model provides a way to tailor agile methods to more complex development and delivery scenarios.
When scaling a complex or large project, at least one additional management or planning layer is generally needed to define the product. This level may develop and maintain a product roadmap, in addition to the usual release planning and iteration planning levels.
Understand activities that take place during an iteration planning meeting, identify the outputs of the iteration planning meeting and recognize the steps for creating an iteration backlog.
Monitoring and Reporting Project Work
Although traditional and agile approaches to project management differ, all projects rely on careful monitoring. Success depends on ensuring that team members stay on track and that unexpected challenges are resolved without compromising project objectives.
In a traditionally managed project, the focus of project monitoring is on tracking actual progress against the ideal progress outlined in a project plan. The aim is to minimize all deviations between actual and planned progress.
As well as monitoring progress across each iteration, an agile project team monitors progress at the release level. This is to ensure that together, all the iterations in a project will result in delivery of a product with the required features by the planned release date.
The starting point for project-level or release-level monitoring is the release plan, developed at the start of a project. This plan generally contains a list of high-level project and release goals, unrefined user stories, and priorities at the time the project started. It also includes an estimate of the number of iterations in the project and a date for the project's completion.
The starting point for project-level or release-level monitoring is the release plan, developed at the start of a project. This plan generally contains a list of high-level project and release goals, unrefined user stories, and priorities at the time the project started. It also includes an estimate of the number of iterations in the project and a date for the project's completion.
Tools for tracking and communicating progress at the project or release level include release burn-up and burn-down charts, parking lot charts, and defect reports.
Release burn-down charts are similar to iteration burn-down charts, but they indicate the amount of work outstanding in a full project instead of in a single iteration. A typical release burn-down chart plots the number of story points in a project against the number of iterations.
Recognize the tools are used to monitor progress during an iteration, identify project information that should be updated in a release plan, and interpret project release information.
Estimates and Release Planning
Course project (optional)
This is it for now. The next course of this Agile Certification Program will be on Leading an agile team. Thank you for taking this course, and see you in the next one!
Course wrap up and optional project.
Bonus - Agile Key Exam Concepts
This course covers the key exam concepts of Kanban, work in progress or WIP, lead time, cycle time, and Little's Law. You'll also learn about Agile Team Spaces, sharing the product vision, and identifying and reducing defects.
In Lean project management waste, or the Japanese term Muda, is defined as any activity or process that doesn't add value to a product but does add cost. Lean's original Seven Forms of Waste include transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overprocessing, overproduction, and defects. The new eighth form of waste is skills or non-utilized talent.
In a Pull-based system, the customer demand creates what is called pull. Production or development relies on pull rather than on complicated market forecast to determine how many products to deliver.
A Kanban board is a tool that agile teams often use to visualize workflow through a system. While Kanban principles are often used in IT and software development, they can be helpful in any industry.
In lean project management, one of the key concepts is process improvement. Lead time and cycle time are two important metrics that help determine how lean a process is. In other words, how much of the time dedicated to creating a product is value added.
Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy that focuses on reducing waste and implementing a flow-based production line rather than a batch and queue method. It's aimed at reducing costs and improving overall customer value.
In order to maintain a stable process with minimal chaos organizations should attempt to minimize work in progress or WIP in their processes. One way to do this is by setting WIP limits. WIP limits help to reduce bottlenecks, improve the rate of throughput, and control the workload levels of project team members.
Stakeholder engagement is a fundamental part of project management. It's important to be able to express the product vision to stakeholders in order to gain support in common understanding about the product requirements. The product owner often collaborates with other key stakeholders to develop a product vision.
With today's modern technology there are a variety of tools to bring teams together virtually.
Agile teams achieve efficiency by leveraging many of the tools from Lean Management, but also by valuing individuals and interactions.
In this exercise, you'll demonstrate that you can identify characteristics of waste recognize the relationship between PCE variables identify characteristics of Agile environments
This course covers the key exam concepts of Kanban, work in progress or WIP, lead time, cycle time, and Little's Law. You'll also learn about Agile Team Spaces, sharing the product vision, and identifying and reducing defects.
This course covers the key exam concepts of Kanban, work in progress or WIP, lead time, cycle time, and Little's Law. You'll also learn about Agile Team Spaces, sharing the product vision, and identifying and reducing defects.
PMI Certification Info
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