Managing Uncertainty in Agile Release Planning
Kevin McDaid, Des Greer, Frank Keenan, Paul A. Prior, Philip S. Taylor, Gerry Coleman · Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) · 2006
A clear and realistic release plan is central to the strategic planning activities of the firm developing the software. This paper supports existing agile methods by developing a novel but relatively simple statistical methodology to predict the real time to develop selected functionality. In so doing it provides the product owner with a decision support mechanism to determine the likelihood of completing releases on time for any combination of stories. In this way it is consistent with the best Extreme Programming (XP) practice of selecting stories of two types for a quarterly release, ones that are key and must be delivered and ones that are considered as “Slack ” and that can be developed if time permits. A case study is used to explain the proposed methodology. 1.