Practice: Release Planning |  |
The Release Planning practice embodies the concept of high-level planning for the complete project scope (macro-) and low-level (micro-) planning for the immediate and next increments or iterations.
Relationships
Content References | How to Adopt the Release Planning Practice Metrics Project Plan Plan Project Project Burndown Staffing a Project
Inputs | [Project Work] [Technical Specification]
Purpose
### Why adopt this practice? Release Planning improves the accuracy of project planning, the ability to predict resource usage, and the ability to meet established delivery dates. In adopting this practice, the project team can better manage scarce resources and focus on delivering scope with higher quality and value to the organization. In some development approaches, project managers would plan the whole project at project initiation, and then execute the plan, with little or no modifications to the original project plan unless there were significant scope changes or risks that derailed the project. These approaches depend a lot on the project managers' personal knowledge of the scope, and the resources available to deliver the scope. In many cases, these plans would become inaccurate and useless after the first one or two phases. At that point, many project managers would simply manage the milestones and abandon the detailed tasks. Even seasoned project managers can benefit from Release Planning. As more and more software developers move to iterative methods for delivering software, the need to perform just-in-time project planning is critical. Planning for the next few weeks is always more accurate than planning for the next few months. The goal of this practice is to balance the high-level and low-level planning such that detailed (low-level) planning occurs just-in-time to support the successful delivery of the software products.
Background
Project planning is very inaccurate when you attempt to plan beyond the initial phases of work for any project. The Release Planning practice ensures that your planning efforts are iterative in nature, aligned with the software delivery to ensure a more accurate estimate of work efforts. In many cases, the planning horizon for a software project is a hard concept to understand. Software development project managers tend to want to plan the entire project, and then let the team work the plan, resisting changes to the plan as it executes. The Release Planning practice emphasizes the need to plan the next iteration in detail, while planning the whole project at a high level. This practice also encourages the project manager to feel comfortable with re-planning as needed to ensure accuracy in delivery dates and costs based on events that impact the project.
How to read this practice
The best way to read this practice is first to get familiar with its overall structure: what it is in it and how it is organized. Start with the available work products: Project Plan Risk List Also, check the work product templates and reports. See: Project Plan template Project Burndown Report example Finally, get more details on how to perform project planning and staff a project by looking at the following: Plan Project task Staffing a Project guideline See more information on How to Adopt the Release Planning Practice.
Additional Information
### Additional Resources For more information on the Release Planning approach, see the following: Kroll, P. and Kruchten, P. The Rational Unified Process Made Easy, Addison Wesley, 2003. Chapter 12: Planning an Iterative Project.
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the Eclipse Public License V1.0, which accompanies this distribution. EPF Copyright.