Planning Roles
The Scrum Master plays a facilitation role, quite unlike the role of project manager. He ensures that the required meetings are held and time-boxes them according to Scrum best practices.
The Development Team plan what work they are to do in the next Sprint, based on the Prioritized Product Backlog and their Sprint Velocity (amount of work expressed as a number of points that can be accomplished in one Sprint). They also own the short-range planning, as they each report on their next day’s planned work in the daily stand-up meetings.
Planning for the Project
During project initiation, once the project team has been appointed, the first two planning meetings can occur. These are the Project Release meeting and the Sprint Planning meeting. The Release meeting includes stakeholders, and a decision is made on the frequency of releases. This is very product and environment specific and is tied directly to the sprints. Approximate release dates are scheduled, giving the stakeholders some comfort as to when product features will be developed and completed, with the acceptance by all parties that only the first release has a firm date, and that subsequent dates may change. The Scrum team can use the release dates to decide on the ideal length of a Sprint, say 4 weeks. They will use this variable for the next sprint. This sprint length is not cast in concrete and can be made shorter or longer for future sprints, but the initial Release meeting gives a good indication of how long a Sprint should be.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: