Agile Product Management
A place for product managers to learn and share tips on working with agile development teams
Question
Guys, I need some guidance with Agile. I'm fairly new to it and unfortunately didn't have the chance to learn it from someone with experience, so I'm kind of doing my best.
My question is around Requirements, and in particular the Timing in which you should get into details.
I understand the first step is to build the Backlog, which is the list of Stories about the project you are about to work on. Then I understand how you break down this Backlog into a Release Backlog and further more into an Iteration Backlog.
The question I have is at what point are you suppose to DESIGN in detail the requirements for each of the Stories? The whole idea of Agile is that you don't "waste" time attempting to design in advance the whole system, but rather get right away into working in the solution thru code. HOWEVER, at some point you must do some designing, so you can explain your developer what is that they have to work on, is that right?
To elaborate further, if you are working on the Release Backlog for example, and you still don't have detail design, how do you know the Story Points needed to complete the story if you don't know exactly what is that is needed?
If you wait for the Iteration Backlog, and you have your meeting to kick-off the Iteration, do you explain each of your developers what is that they need to do in that meeting?
I'm struggling in general understanding when is that you are supposed to DESIGN, then how do you DEFINE the Story Points for a Story and how do you communicate this to the developers. All I'm reading is 15 min. for Standup Meetings everyday and everybody is supposed to know what is needed.
I'm sorry if this is so basic for you guys, but I figure I posted to the experts to get in track. Please provide me with some books suggestion PARTICULLARY on Agile Development Cycle that hopefully explains the "thinking" on this.
The other big issue I have is testing (TDD) but I'll leave that for a second post.
Thank you in advance for all your help and advice
Regards
Comments
My short answer is that you should try to design in the most lightweight way that is reasonable, as close as is possible to when development is being done. Very small stories can be designed right in iteration planning, or even at development time. More complex, cross-cutting stories need to be thought about in advance.
For examples, if you're designing an overall navigation structure for a web application, you might want to start thinking about design months in advance of the iteration where it's going to be implemented. If you're designing a page, you might start weeks in advance. A small feature, days in advance.
As a product owner, it's your job to do the right amount of advanced planning so your team can smoothly move through its iterations. This is probably a lot less than you do in a traditional environment.
As for estimating in story points, the development team needs to do the estimating, not the Product Owner.
There's a great book on these topics - "Agile Estimating and Planning" by Mike Cohn.
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Alex, thank you for your feedback. I have a couple of new questions:
1. You mention that the development team is the one doing the estimation (story points). Is this something that happens during the Iteration Planning meeting?
2. If this is the case, is it during that meeting that you break down the User Stories onto Tasks?
Let me know, thank you again for your help!
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My team estimates the backlog on an ongoing basis, as items are added.
If you're looking for more information about what activities happen when in the Agile planning process, check out Hubert's whitepaper on Five Levels of Agile Planning. He's articulated it all more clearly than I can do here.
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