think big, plan small: how to use continual planning
TRANSCRIPT
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Think Big, Plan Small: How to Use Continual
Planning
Johanna [email protected]@jrothman.com
781-641-4046
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© 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
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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
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“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
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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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