Growing Agile: A Coach's Guide to Release Planning

We often hear people say "We're agile, we don't need a plan" or even worse "We can't plan". This is just not true. Release Planning in agile is as important as it is in traditional projects, the only difference is there are a few techniques that help make sure the plans bear some relation to reality. We've all worked on projects where you know from day one that you will be late, and yet no one does anything about it. Agile planning is different. We give up the illusion of control of traditional rigid plans, and replace it with a clear view of where we actually are, even if it's badly behind schedule, so that we can make decisions based on what is actually possible.

We have run Release Planning workshops with many organisations. Sometimes starting with C-level executives to set the direction and vision for a product suite; other times starting with teams and making sense of what they are currently working on. This book is a collection of our workshops that will help you run similar workshops to create agile Release Plans. We include teaching points on a range of techniques like Story Mapping and Release Burnups to help you explain to other's how to use these methods effectively.