Agile practitioners use an agile approach to release management in projects. As the main idea behind agile project management is to achieve the satisfaction of customers at the end of the project, a release plan in agile is not complete till it is demonstrated to the customer. Agile teams follow release plan at regular intervals in the end of the iterations with the consent of customers.
What is a release plan?
A release plan is a roadmap that displays how an agile team is looking forward to achieve the end of the project, how the requirements and the strategies of implementation are laid down in the project data sheet and finally fulfilling the overall goal set for the project, all the while keeping customer’s consent at work.
Here is a sample video that takes you through introduction to Agile release plan.
Importance of a release plan
A release plan is an important artifact for the product owners because with it they can communicate with the stakeholders of the project and demonstrate the expectations for a given project. It helps an agile team to understand the plan and the expectations that they need to look forward for fulfillment. Also it helps them workout the plan accordingly. Thus, the importance of a release plan can be summarized as a guide-post that channelizes the energies of a project team in a definite direction.
Steps to planning a release
Firstly, the product owner needs to demonstrate the expectations, scope, and quality and so on to customers. Then the requirements to achieve the expectation need to be estimated, followed by prioritizing requirements and selecting a release date. Thus, the steps to planning a release can be listed as following:
- Determining conditions of satisfaction
- Estimating the user stories
- Selecting an iteration length
- Estimating Velocity
- Prioritizing user
- Selecting stories and a release date
End of a release plan
Release plan ends with selection of user requirements and slotting them into specific iterations. Ideally the first one to three iterations is well-defined with definite requirements and length of iteration, the rest is left relatively loose defined. This is to make the release plan flexible in order to adapt to critical situations. To know more about planning and process in agile you can join Simplilearn’s PMI-ACP Online training courses. You might also attend agile certification training courses in your city in the USA or India.
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