Agile release planning is a dynamic document that recommends a set of actions to do before releasing your final product. Because product development is difficult in and of itself, release planning necessitates using a professional development team and their skills to design a product buy-in strategy.
It is, however, relatively simple to get started with Agile release planning for your product, provided you are aware of the Agile principles for your firm. The easy stages for building a successful release strategy are as follows:
- Establish Your Objective
You and your team should determine the end aim to be reached when building the release strategy and how the release will stay connected with your product’s wider vision.
Consider the following questions: Which outcomes are more significant in the short and long run? Analyze the product roadmap and direct the product development process toward your goal.
Are you unsure how to establish your objectives? So, you’ll need to gather your products’ viewpoints and focus your efforts on determining your product deployment priorities. Please contact your stakeholders to see whether your vision aligns with their requirements.
- Go over the product backlogs
After you’ve determined your release objective, review the product backlog and prioritize your team’s work based on your product vision, starting with an MVP (minimum viable product). You must identify the product’s shortcomings and assess the backlogs at this point.
Meet your Agile team for product backlog refinement if you’re using Scrum. Break down your intended results into user stories and add them to your backlog using Scrum Board. Don’t waste time on chores that don’t help you achieve your objective.
Create user stories based on stakeholder feedback and analysis of product priorities. Make sure that the most important features are the most viable and that they are released first.
- Determine the date of the Release Plan Meeting.
After describing the product vision and prioritizing the product backlog, you must organize a sprint meeting with stakeholders and your Agile team to evaluate the proposed release plan and add, delete, or change the additional requirements as required.
The purpose of the release planning meeting is to make sure that the product vision aligns with the tasks and prioritizes one step closer to your objective. It allows you to ensure that everyone in your team is on the same page and working toward the same project objective.
The following items will be on the meeting’s main agenda:
Examine the Roadmap
The meeting’s primary goal is to go over the product vision created in the first phase and ensure everyone understands it.
Examine the structure
Before the product is delivered, it is critical to gather feedback from stakeholders on its architecture. This is the step of the release plan where you may add or remove any new information, such as dependencies, assumptions, or gaps.
Examine the iteration schedule.
The iteration schedule determines the work that has to be included in a specific release. You’ll also go through the timetable and discuss how much work will be split among the team members.
Define the term “done.”
For every release, define what “Done” means. “Done” typically signifies completing all the tasks listed in the user stories and submitting your work for evaluation to the product owner.
- Split up your releases into several sprints.
Sprints are the minor division of release planning that can be completed quickly. You can rapidly determine the number of sprints necessary to fulfill the product vision based on the team’s velocity toward the project.
Make sure that none of these sprints are overworked or underworked; they should be balanced. If you overburden the sprint with too much work, your team may be unable to complete it, compromising the quality of the delivery. If you consider too few targets in the sprint, on the other hand, your project may take months to complete, and the anticipated release date may be pushed back.
- Establish a Release Sprint
At this point of release planning, no development is done. A release Sprint is primarily for the creation of new deliverables. For each release sprint, you must concentrate on the tasks in your backlog, such as testing, user documentation, bug fixes, etc.
This step does not have to be followed in every release plan. Suppose your process involves certain activities that must be completed before the software can be released into production. In that case, arranging a second sprint to complete those tasks is a good idea.
- Set a deadline for the release.
It’s now time to present your release strategy to your team. Setting a target date is the most important aspect of a successful release strategy.
Your release strategy should be accessible to everyone on your team, including stakeholders. A defined timeframe and methodology will enable stakeholders to bet the product in the market since Agile release plans significantly influence project success.
To properly comprehend Scrum release planning, you may utilize several workspaces such as lucid chart or Jira. Project release plans and specific timelines may be viewed by team members, managers, and stakeholders without anything getting jumbled and lost in the complicated process.
- Regularly improve and update the plan.
Remember that plans are susceptible to change; therefore, you won’t be able to follow a tight strategy to have your product produced. To guarantee that the process works well and a high-quality release is deployed on time, be flexible and update the plan as needed.
In addition, take into account comments from team members and stakeholders while making changes to the strategy.
An agile release strategy is a form of art. It’s fine if you don’t get it right the first time. Just go with the flow of your work regarding the release strategy and sprint planning. Isn’t that what Agile is all about?