think big, plan small: how to use continual planning

Think Big, Plan Small: How to Use Continual

Planning

Johanna [email protected]@jrothman.com

781-641-4046

http://www.jrothman.com

mailto:[email protected]

© 2017 Johanna Rothman@johannarothman

In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but

planning is indispensable.-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Why We Plan

• Achieve some specific result, some deliverable

• Set “expectations” for deliverable(s)

• Forecast date and cost

• Manage risks


What We Need from Plans

• Resilience

• Larger the effort, the more resilience we need

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Common Roadmap (Time-Based Wishlist)

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Different Projects Require Different Planning Horizons

• One-delivery projects (serial life cycle) have no specific feedback for replanning

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Quarterly Planning

• Plan once a quarter

• “How much can we get into a quarter’s worth of plan?”

• Can we get the project/program to commit?

• “Push” planning

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Value of Big Planning

• See interdependencies

• Create informal CoP

• Get to know each other, especially if distributed

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Big Plans Gone Wild

• Lots of prep

• Lots of people

• High meeting cost

• Time and money

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Problems with Larger Planning

• “I believe!”

• Roadmap becomes a committed plan

• Estimation uncertainty increases farther out

• Interdependency uncertainty increases farther out

• Larger planning creates less adaptability

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Assumptions Big Plans Make

• Even distribution of features across the backlogs (feature sets)

• Arrival rate is predictable for more features

• Value of all features is similar

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Reality of Plans…

• Some feature sets have more changes, more features

• Arrival rate of changes/new features is unpredictable

• Some features more valuable than others

• Leads to “more” & “change”

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Deliverables and Planning

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Small Plans Gone Wild

• Only look ahead for one week or two

• No strategic intent

• How can you tell if you’re achieving business value?

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Large efforts require small stories, small planning for faster

throughput and feedback.

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Large/Uncertain Efforts

• Need more feedback

• More releases (at least, internal)

• More integration

• More estimation required for a time-based roadmap

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Why This Need for “More” & Change?

• Guesses abound!

• Sizing

• What the PO/PM wants

• What the org needs

• Market changes

• We learn

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Invite Change with Build-Measure-Learn Loop

• Break ideas down into small chunks of value

• Build one small chunk

• Create this minimum product

• How little can you do and still validate a business hypothesis? (MVP)

• How little can you do to learn? (MVE)

• Measure the effects with data

• Learn from releasing that and integrate the learning back into the ideas


“How Much” vs. “How Little”• “How much” thinking is from

serial planning

• One delivery means everyone wants their stuff in now, because who knows when the team will be able to deliver again?

• “How little” allows for change and can create a more adaptive project

• How little can we do to deliver value?

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Product vs. Internal Releasing

• You can release internally at least once a month regardless of how frequently your customers see new product

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Rolling Wave Planning• Uses feedback from MVPs and

MVEs to create the next plan(s)

• Decide on the duration of your wave

• Plan the first chunk, part of your wave

• Create suppositions for the next bit

• As you finish the first chunk, (re)plan the next

• Maintain the wave

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Two-Month Rolling Wave

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After One Iteration…

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Rolling Waves Help Sequencing

• MVPs and MVEs allow sequencing of deliverables

• One month wave; two months look ahead


After Next Iteration• Required more change

• Much of the story breakdown work was unnecessary—for now

• Created WIP

• PO and the Team had low morale

• No one saw the value in the planning except the execs…

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Smaller the Wave, More Options

• One-month rolling wave provides more options for replanning

• Continuous planning works with continuous delivery

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Consider Continual Planning

• Continual: frequently recurring

• Start and stop, but the interval is small

• I’ve used monthly, but you might consider biweekly or weekly

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One-Month Rolling Wave

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After One Week…

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After Two Weeks…

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Team Changes Over Wave• Smaller stories

• PO worked with the team more often

• Story workshops to define MVE and MVP

• Team delivered more smaller features faster

• Cadence of planning and demos

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Continual Planning• Replan as often as the

team delivers value

• Options:

• Product Value Team meeting

• Ask everyone to plan every month

• Together and at distance

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Variety of Teams

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Product Value Team

• Strategic intent of product

• Why this product? Why now? What impact will we have?

• Impact map

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Roadmap vs. Portfolio

• The product roadmap optimizes for this product’s capabilities

• The project portfolio optimizes for the organization’s strategy

• A given product release fulfills a part of the organization’s strategy

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Product Value Team Decides on Product Value Over Time

• Strategic decisions

• Consider Cost of Delay when deciding strategy

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Product (Owner) Value Team

• Product manager

• Externally-oriented, customer-facing

• Product Owner

• Internally-oriented, team-facing

• With multiple feature teams, a PO for each team

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Product Value Team Replans

• What value has the program/project delivered?

• What would provide more value if we changed the rank, added, or subtracted?

• Are we done yet? (Have we provided enough value that we can stop?)

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Slicing vs. Curlicue Features• Less frequently we plan, the more we tolerate curlicue features

• Don’t deal with root cause of interdependencies

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Replanning as Teams• Value in monthly or biweekly

meetings:

• See interdependencies

• Consider reforming teams

• Create informal CoP

• Build the small-world network

• Not much prep or planning because meeting more often

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Common Roadmap Approach: Time-Based Wishlist

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Scope-Based Roadmap (Still Wishlist)

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Pull Assumes Plans Will Change

• Pull-based approach helps people expect change (as opposed to commitment)

• Optimizes for “How little”

• Less need for estimates, at the beginning

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Planning Questions to Ponder

• How little can we plan?

• How little can we deliver before we replan?

• Is this a strategic or tactical plan?

• How long is our rolling wave now? Is that working for us?

• Do we need more or less planning/replanning?

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Possibly Useful Guidelines• Plan/replan as often as the fastest

team delivers value

• Consider different triggers for replanning:

• Market changes

• Value delivery

• Customer feedback

• How little can you plan at one time?

• How often can you plan/replan?

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Let’s Stay in Touch• Pragmatic Managers

• Blog posts on www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd

• PO workshop

• Stay in touch?

• Pragmatic Manager: www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager

• Please link with me on LinkedIn

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http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd

http://www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager

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think big, plan small: how to use continual planning

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