[news.eclipse.technology.epf] Re: Plan Iteration at the beginning

["Charles Edwards" <charles.edwards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I agree with Roman (mostly).

I personally prefer to make sure that we spend the time both evaluating how 
we could improve things (retrospective) as well as what we are going to do 
next before the end of the current iteration. We found that if you don't 
give a deadline for getting the next iterations plan well defined, then it 
tends to drift on into the iteration and there is no pressure to finalise 
it. We have never managed to finalise all the planning in one day. Maybe the 
team needs more practice at this... or maybe we are trying to go into too 
much detail.

Having said that I also agree with Ricardo on the point of having a demo of 
the software that was completed at the end of the last iteration, so that 
you plan the current iteration based on Stakeholder as well as team 
feedback.

regards Charles

"Ricardo Balduino" <balduino@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:f6ephk$rru$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Roman,
>
> IMHO the distinction is not much on whether you plan the iteration today 
> in the afternoon or tomorrow morning (assuming the current iteration 
> finishes today and a new one starts tomorrow).
> The distinction in OpenUP is that project manager does not spend time 
> creating an iteration plan for next iteration during the current 
> iteration. Any new requirements and change requests that are raised during 
> the current iteration are captured in the work items list (the Scrum 
> product backlog), and are prioritized (by stakeholders and team) with 
> everything else in the bucket, then agreed to be allocated to next 
> iteration. That doesn't affect the time-box, or imply that an iteration 
> starts without any objectives and work being assigned.
>
> It's a matter of how practical it is to get stakeholders and team together 
> for this meeting that should take a few hours, where you assess the 
> iteration results by showing working software to stakeholders, then based 
> on feedback and prioritized work items, plan the next iteration. These 
> meetings (iteration assessment and planning) should not take more than a 
> couple hours or so each. They can happen on the same day (let's say the 
> day the current iteration finishes). Worst case, you can have the 
> assessment meeting one day and the planning meeting on the next day.
>
> We use to do this way in the OpenUP team (well, we follow OpenUP to 
> develop OpenUP :-). The last business day of each month is usually when 
> the iteration assessment and planning for next iteration happens, all at 
> once, on a conference call with OpenUP developers. It's been working quite 
> well for our team.
>
> I hope that it clarifies.
> Feel free to ask additional questions.
>
> Ricardo Balduino
> IBM | EPF Committer
>
>
> "Roman Smirak" <roman.smirak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
> news:f62gio$c04$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Hi,
>>
>>   as far as I understood, OpenUP plans forthcoming iteration at the 
>> beginning of the iteration (as well as Scrum?); RUP plans the next 
>> iteration in the end of current iteration (as well as XP?).
>>
>> Did I understand correctly that the beginning of an iteration is now 
>> preferred time to plan the iteration? Why?
>>
>> I understand Scrum case where you have fixed time frame 4 weeks for every 
>> iteration however in case the iteration planning also sets an iteration 
>> deadline it sounds quite strange to start an unclear iteration. Moreover 
>> it is good practice to have also planning meetings time-boxed (we get 
>> this in case of planning in the end of iteration inherently from the 
>> concept iterations are time-boxed), on the other hand if you start an 
>> iteration with the unclear deadline you can easily give in the "enough 
>> time syndrome":-)
>>
>> Can you please clarify this?
>>
>> Roman
>>
>
>