PMI-ACP Certification: Planning and Monitoring Iterations

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.