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.
The Sprint Planning meeting is the main project planning meeting, as it identifies the work content for the next Sprint; each user story selected for development is then broken down into tasks, which are the basic currency of the project, and are used to report on in the standup meetings. The first Planning meeting has quite a few unknowns to deal with, such as the velocity (amount of work) of the team, the ideal length of a Sprint in weeks and whether the work chosen for the first sprint can be finished in the allotted timeframe. Subsequent Sprints will be refined based on the outcomes of the first Sprint.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: