Software the Agile Way....

Agile release planning is best accomplished via the straightforward method of getting everyone into a room together. Everybody who will be involved in the release should participate in the planning. That gives us a potential invite list that looks like this: ·          Scrum Master ·          Product Owner ·          Delivery Team ·          Stakeholders ·          Outside experts ·          Customer(s) ·          3rd Party Vendors ·          Marketing ·          Sales When all of these people gather and work together on the release, marvelous things can happen. A Release Planning agenda might look like this: ·          Goals of the release (PO) ·          Background, business and competitive climate (PO) ·          Current product and development state (PO) ·          Grooming of Product Backlog for release (All) ·          Capture and discussion of issues (All) ·          Technical Issues  (Dev teams) o     Technology o     Testing Challenges

1. Iteration is too short and stories are big ( Can't get things done in 2 or 3 weeks) 2. We need experts 3. Team formation by layer/component 4. Experts estimating 5. We must have overtime 6. We don't have technical debt 7. Featur-itis

1. Changing old ways of thinking  Learn Scrum well, read lots and talk to people that have done it. Be willing to learn.  2. Be a servant leader and coach.  Learn to let go and not manage. Attend courses on how to coach.  3. If you have just learnt Scrum, don't try transform an organisation into agile.  Be a Scrum Master in a team, but hire a person that has experience in changing an organisation. A good transformation coach will help you learn to really run a team and not theoretically.