Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)

The book is exceptionally well written. People have said that a book about anything 'Agile' should be thin - well this one is - There are about 24 chapters and each one is no more than easily digestible 20-30 pages for a quick 'agile' read. However, that does make it about 300 pages of content. But here are the 'Great' things about the book: - Well written and a light read with real pearls of wisdom - Well explained concepts with examples - Good primer on Estimation - separating 'duration' from the size and showing how/why it really matters in the long run (of the project) - Explaining when to estimate and a good 'tutorial' on planning poker and Kano Analysis for prioritizing features/desirability. - Throws light on the 'Financial Prioritization' - rubbishing the claim that features in agile teams are prioritized as per the whims and fancies of the developers. - Break downs about planning at multiple levels and what details go in them - Monitoring and communicating plans - the 'how' and 'what' to do I keep referring to the book - because it's really NOT about planning & estimating 'agile projects' - it's about how to be agile with the planning/estimating activity itself. You could use a lot of ideas (especially Kano Analysis, Planning Poker etc.,) and augment it with the approach in your organization (or your own planning exercise) to help communicate the plans/ideas more effectively. Do keep in mind, however - this is NOT a silver bullet that'd end the planning woes encountered in today's software development projects. The case study in the end is too idealistic where everybody is just 'willing' to participate and do it perfectly in lock step synchrony! (It's really difficult to find such software developers in the real world). However, the intent of the case study is to elucidate the concepts covered in the book and hence is a good summary of the ideas presented. There is nothing in the book that says what to do if the client doesn't know what he/she wants? IKIWISI = I'll know it when I'll see it - It doesn't cover anything about prototyping to get the requirements/user stories - it probably assumes that you can get them elicited with ease and moves on from there. In my opinion/experience there is a great deal of concurrency/backtracking with the initial prototyping and eliciting the user stories - an iterative exercise. Once you do those you are probably a bit better off with being able to 'guestimate' the story points. Kano Analysis has known to be around for quite a while and I was aware of it's use in KJ analysis (VOC+ KJ + Kano + Conjoint analysis that is part of the 6-sigma process) - however, it was a refreshing thought to be useful for just about every software product and it could be done without much overhead (actually the overhead is there, however, if the planning is done as a team, it'd be lighter :) Creating the questionnaire for Kano analysis itself takes some time/effort - but is easier once the stories are there. But 'shortening' it to be an 'agile' questionnaire DOES take time/effort. More so based on the feedback you get you may want to update it! But it's worth knowing and probably considering during the planning and user-story elicitation - just before prioritizing! All in all a great read with REAL practical and workable advice/knowledge!

The book is well structured and easy to read. In my humble opinion, it comes with a strong "buy" rating for any Agile practitioner or a current PMI certified person who wants to contribute to the knowledge economy of ever changing requirements. The book is right sized (finish in a coast to coast trip in US). Practical in its content, it provides lots of examples and case studies, from software as well as non software fields to illustrate the concepts. The detailed case study at the end of the book is invaluable. Several chapters were much thought provoking, specially how to handle team dynamics and cross team estimation. The book did not right fully delve into any details of that, it's a topic for another time. Part I of the books sets up the context. Part II details on estimating the size, and the techniques and tools for doing that; in fact it comes with some simple tools, which can be really customized and expanded quickly. Part III caters to what I call "value add planning" planning the work by prioritizing by business value, The books touches the concepts of financial project analysis, however there are better books for that, and the author provides the references. Part IV brings in the concept of time, and the handling of "estimating for effort" and estimating for duration" is simply superb. Also an entire chapter is dedicated to Buffering and its need and for multi-team projects. Part V presents tools and motivations for monitoring and communicating. Part VI presents why Agile Planning works, and honestly I skipped it, expect the guidelines ( Page 254) which I read to validate my knowledge. If there is one thing that I would change in the book, it would be the story point example with dogs. It would be a little confusing if you have no idea how a Great Dane would be different from a Duchshund! But hey, I think the book gets the message across very well. What I would like to see in the second edition-- softcopy of some tools that goes with the book, may be some templates that can be customized...but then again, you should not be in this business unless you are able to cook these tools up yourself !!

After having read many books on agile software development, this is the book that finally made the entire system hang together for me. Cohn walks through all of the various aspects of agile planning, providing reasoning about why various approaches are taken as well as how to go about executing them. While the flow of the book can be a bit jarring at times, jumping from one topic to a seemingly unrelated one between chapters, I still came away from the book with a much better understanding of the end-to-end agile planning process. The book only briefly covers multi-team planning so further reading regarding this may be warranted if you have that need. There are also sections of the book that gloss over some rather large topics (Kano studies, as an example) but the light coverage and accompanied references can lead to jumping off points for those who want more information. A few sections do contain essentially throw-away recommendations (such as the section on task breakdown of stories) but such sections are often in areas that real-world teams will have experience anyhow so it wasn't a big detractor for me. Lastly, if you're looking for advice on running an agile process with a distributed (off-shore) team, this book doesn't touch on any of those challenges. As with most books on agile, this book carries on the tradition of focusing solely on the people processes without any recognition that certain *engineering* processes or practices (test-driven, continuous integration, etc) are necessary for long-term sustainability of an agile process. This is my number one complaint with all agile process books, and I've yet to find one that states, let alone defines, a certain level of software engineering organizational maturity is necessary before embarking on an agile process. Despite these few drawbacks, this book did succeed in finally making the entire agile planning process click for me personally. After reading several of Ken Schwaber's books on the same topic I understood agile in the abstract but this book really brought it all together into a cohesive, pragmatic approach for me.

"What is your estimate for analysis, development, and testing of these features?" No question filled me with more feeling of exposure and dread in my early days as a developer. Repeated many times, it would result in the project plans that would be held over our teams' heads for the months. Uneasiness about the plan started immediately, and only increased as reality unfolded. This became my main motivation for becoming a project manager- "there must be a better way", I would think. This is certainly one. "Planning is everything. Plans are nothing." These words of Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke introduce the first chapter, and their importance and relevance to software projects is clear throughout. This book is a well-organized, smooth-flowing read that simplified for me the mysteries of project and release planning. As the title declares, the book was written for agile projects, but I believe that the lessons inside can serve various purposes- to provide a pragmatic, repeatable framework for planning in changing project environments, as well as to debunk misconceptions that agile projects are short on planning (in fact the opposite is true). I've used the techniques recommended herein on several projects- and will do so on every one in the future- they've helped everyone I've worked with understand planning and do a better job at product development in general. George J. Schlitz, PMP, CSM

I really enjoyed reading this book. It covers the planning, feature management, estimation, and schedule management aspects of agile in a clear and comprehensive way. The author does a great job of spending just the right level of detail on each section and I didn't feel that anything was missing. The book is aimed at individuals new to agile project management and is not aimed at developers or testers though I found it useful as a developer. The last chapter is a case study that summarizes the contents of the book as it applies to a fictitious game development team who is adopting agile for a new project. The chapter was a good read and I recommend it for anyone who doesn't have the time to enjoy the entire book. Very good book; glad I spent the time reading it and I heartily recommend it.

A lot of books on agile do a lot 'talk the talk' and fall short on 'walk the talk'. This book is rich from practical standpoint and is indispensable for all interested professionals especially if you have the hard job of selling agile development to your management. Mike Kohn, as the author, is simply a master in teaching 'how to' behind whole agile development methodology. He does not take any fancy to any one methodology ( be it XP or SCRUM or Crystal) but drives towards an unified view of the principles and delivers practices that can be put to use directly. Agile does not ignore planning. It just advocates adaptive planning and execution. Knowing the fact that you can only foresee to the extent, it provides a formula for how often to plan, how to refine, how to setup a release plan, how to engage the team and whole gamut of release management from agile standpoint. One book that should be read before jumping on agile bandwagon and before putting 'pedal to the metal'. The book is one of the finest books on agile in a world that has been flooded with many books on the subject. This stands out as a real jewel. A case study, which mimics a real organization trying to adopt agile methodology, drives home many subtle points very effectively. This case study runs from beginning to the end and illustrates complete life cycle of the product development.

A 5 star review just doesn't mean anything anymore. There are some good ideas in this book, but large stretches of this book are just absurd. This thing reads like homework that was finished on the bus (you can almost see the bumps in the road). The structure of the book is completely haphazard. One minute, we are talking about doing estimates. The next minute we are trying to figure out how a project will pay for itself, then, it's on to how to split up stories that got too big. I was waiting for a sidebar with a recipe for a great chiffon cake. At the end of the chapter on estimating value, the author recommends another book and says that's where his content came from (citational plagiarism is called 'plugging,' Youngster). Then, the chapter on splitting stories made me laugh out loud in places. Things like 'split stories along data lines,' or 'split stories along priority lines' or one of the funniest 'split it along CRUD lines.' Come on. The good part of this book is the one chapter on estimation and discussion of things like using Fibonacci for bucketing of estimates into story points, the importance of seeing estimates as relative, and the idea of doing planning poker. In short: again, it's an article that was turned into a book by a set of expansion techniques that are astounding for not being illegal, let alone questionable. And all this inside a fortress of testimonials that makes Fort Knox look lightly defended.

If I am able to implement a quarter of the advice from this book, I will be able to make a significant improvement at my work. The advice for estimating projects alone is highly valuable, and the pragmatic delivery of the information made it very easy to read and absorb. The little pieces of easily actionable advice was amazing. For instance he recommends not concluding iterations near the end of business quarters, and managers are going to need as much revenue as possible at that time and could increase pressure to "just get it done." Very insightful, and the sheer number of "ah-ha" moments that I experienced was staggering. Much of the general advice he gave I had heard before, but his ideas for implementation was where this book really shines. I got this book on my Kindle, and then bought a paper copy to loan to peers because I liked it so much.

É uma a leitura bastante agradável e didática. Entretanto, se você achava que não precisava de gestão de projetos é um soco no estômago. Não que seja adotado um modelo de gestão de projetos tradicional, mas, no meu entender, nos desilude quanto o tempo necessário para acompanhar o projeto. É um overhead muito grande de trabalho para gerir/acompanhar o projeto. Quando se imaginava que não precisaria de um nível de gestão de projetos tão grande. São atividades conhecidas no Scrum (burndown, por exemplo), mas feito tanto para a sprint quanto para a release ou até mesmo todo o projeto. Eu imagino uma sobrecarga muito grande para o Product Owner. Acaba sobrado pra ele, no meu entender. Enfim, o livro é muito bom e deve ser lido mais de uma vez para aceitar certas orientações. Se já leram e conhecem outro livro melhor neste assunto, não esqueçam de recomendar!

At last, a pragmatic and insightful book on Agile Planning

One only has to read all the comments from the leaders of agile thinking to know that this is an excellent book. It's definitely in my top 10, probably in my top 5 list of essential 'agile' reading. This book takes the agilist into areas often neglected; those topics traditionally dealt with by the Business Analyst; the person who shapes the product being produced, who has his finger on the pulse with respect to value and desirability of all the possible features that may be incorporated in a product; the person who knows which products should be prioritised for development. It brings to this person a toolbox of modern techniques that allow him to interact with a modern product development team. With a good few years experience in BA-like roles, this book taught me quite a few things that I should already have known but did not. However, this book is not just for BAs and their ilk; as other reviewers have stated, it is also very instructive for developers and project managers. Mike's style is very accessible without skimping on technical detail; this is a reasonably easy read for those who do cover-to-cover, and also a great book for those who want a desktop reference.

Very good and comprehensive book to learn in depth on Agile Estimation and planning

Ein gutes Buch zur Prüfungsvorbereitung