Do Not Underestimate the Need of Planning in Agile

1

Do Not Underestimate the Need of
Planning in Agile
2
Do Not Underestimate the Need of
Planning in Agile
When Agile methodology came into practice, the
first thing to be tossed out of the window was
project planning. Project managers could not
spare the required time when there were tight
deadlines to meet and sprints to be completed.
Planning stage itself went on for months under
Waterfall, whereas Agile designates only a couple
weeks to each sprint. In such a scenario,
planning process took a back seat and slowly
disappeared into the oblivion. Managing several
parallel sprints, continuous feedback loops,
voluminous data without strategic planning takes
a toll on the quality of end product. Lack of a
documented planning creates immense ambiguity
around a projects objectives and leads to badly
defined, overly-restrictive goals. It becomes
problematic to handle a projects scope, leading
to failure in prevention of scope creep. A
no-plan-only-action strategy and random
prioritizing without using appropriate
methodology blurs the lines around a projects
scope, resulting in missed deadlines, inability
to meet the desired criteria, and subpar quality.
To be concise, utter chaos ensues! In order to
be truly Agile, whether in terms of business
processes or software development and testing
practices, planning is critical for identifying
the right controls to effectively manage and
measure change. Planning in Agile is anything but
redundant. All that the organizations need to do
is change their approach and outlook. Instead of
planning to succeed, Agile requires planning to
fail quick, fast, and often. This means,
organizations need to eliminate pre-defined
outlines and restrictive definitions. They should
provide the room for mistakes, feedback, and
rectifications by following an adaptive and
flexible style in project planning.
3
Do Not Underestimate the Need of Planning in
Agile
Transcending the misconceptions around Agile
planning Contrary to popular belief, planning
and Agile blend well together. Agile planning
puts a clear picture of the project goals in
minds of the entire team, so that they all can
work in synergy to achieve a common objective.
Absence of a plan leads to a lot of vagueness
surrounding the project requirements and thus,
decisions have to rely on assumptions rather than
facts. Without a planned resource allocation,
there is a chance that the team will quickly burn
out. Having a plan in place imparts
organizations the ability to effectively deal
with frequent changes and incorporate them in the
next sprint. Meticulous planning enables project
managers to distribute funds and resources wisely
and implement the right framework and tools for
ideally fulfilling the project necessities. Agile
project planning empowers the sprint teams to
well-coordinate with each other and deploy
releases within the scheduled timeframe. Long-ter
m goals in Agile may seem impractical due to
frequent change in requirements, approaches, and
strategies. However, having a rough layout of the
upcoming release schedules help teams steer in
the right direction at the right pace for the
right purpose. Developing an overall product
vision and a roadmap is critical for
understanding the ground on which an organization
is standing. It helps in determining the bumps
and potholes in the way. Additionally, it is
important to analyze where the ground is firm and
where it might subside. Documenting all these
observations and expectations offer equips the
Agile teams to set metrics and benchmarks, define
4
Do Not Underestimate the Need of Planning in
Agile

project scope, chart the course of action, and
stick to it as much as possible. A documented
Agile plan also makes for a quick reference point
to clear any confusion or ambiguity regarding the
project goals. It lifts the cloud of uncertainty,
enhances participation and commitment in the team
members. Sprint planning and review sessions
offer end-to-end visibility and improve
transparency of the entire process. By
obliterating the restrictive goals, the Agile
teams can explore the potential to bring in an
innovative solution to reach the desired
outcomes. Looking at the bigger picture to plan
small Think Agile, Think Integration. Adoption
of Agile requires change and process disruption
at the organizational level top-down and
bottom-up. Going beyond the hierarchal
boundaries, Agile planning requires inputs from
the entire team including developers, testers,
project managers, as well as project
owners. Active planning steers the success of
Agile development processes and requires a
comprehensive, collaborative, and continuous
approach. With such an integrated Agile planning
strategy, every sprint can result in practical,
defect-sans, production-ready software within the
expected schedule.
5
Do Not Underestimate the Need of Planning in
Agile
The GIST of Agile Planning In his recent eBook
on Adding Agility to Project Planning, Zach
Brown provided an solution for incorporating
velocity in planning for Agile enterprises. GIST
Goals, Ideas, Step-projects, and Tasks, is an
efficient way around the complex, cumbersome, and
tiring project planning processes. The GIST
concept promotes collaboration among teams and
offer a platform to share and discuss ideas. It
propagates the adoption of rapid and continuous
testing that allows disposal of useless ideas and
pursual of viable ones. Goals Set attainable
goals without vague statements and pre-defined
solutions Ideas Capture all the ideas that are
potential solutions from all the stakeholders.
Prioritize them using data and evidence. Step-proj
ects To develop and test goal-oriented ideas to
see which one is a viable solution or contributor
to the overall goal. With each step, the idea is
developed further or discarded based on success
or failure. Tasks Set task for each step-project
to determine success or failure in its
completion. Test Planning in Agile Planning for
Agile software testing allows the QA teams to
prioritize the high-risk requirements and provide
the necessary attention at the time of testing.
Not having a test plan in Agile hinders the
testing and subsequently release of a quality

6
Do Not Underestimate the Need of Planning in
Agile
Agile testing methodology takes a continuous and
parallel approach, which makes advance planning
and communication of goals more critical. By
spending the time in planning, an Agile testing
process becomes more efficient in terms of
criteria-fulfillment and goal-achievement. The
importance of testing in Agile environment is
indispensable and so is the criticality of
planning for Agile test management. Cigniti has
developed a matured and proven test approach that
has the ability to seamlessly integrate with
clients agile development processes or hybrid
development processes. This methodology ensures
that testing is complementing development,
helping in the early adoption of automation
through Continuous Integration and implementation
of testing techniques (TDD, BDD et al). The Agile
testing approach not only helps achieving time to
market but also reduces defect slippage. Connect
with us today. Read Full Blog at
https//www.cigniti.com/blog/test-planning-in-agi
le-environment/

7