Summary of Chapter 7 from the Agile Project Management (Second Edition) book written by Jim Highsmith.

1. Agile Project
Management
Ch By Jim Highsmith
Presenter: Rachel Fult
7
Speculate Phase
Produces a release plan that directs feature goals,
prioritizes the work load, and also includes enough
flexibility to allow for future changes.

2. Operational Definitions
Capabilities: High level valuable product function that is
complete.
Features: Lower level valuable functionalities made up of
different small story pieces.
Stories: Small separate functionalities that add up to make
a feature.
Iteration: Iterations are short accelerated development
phases that increase quality assurance checking and
customer need alignment through rapid development and
deployment.
Feature based development: A visible collaborative
feature-based process plan between the product team,
development engineers, and customer which describes
features in user-focused terms.

3. Agile Development Life
Cycle
Envision Speculat Explore Adapt Close
Phase  e Phase  Phase  Phase  Phase
The speculate phase elaborates upon the information gathered and
outlined in the envision phase. Using that material in the speculate
phase, the agile team produces a
Release Plan

4. Why create a release plan?
Prioritizing features
Coordinating activities
Establishing cost & schedule information
Keeps focus on customer needs, business
objectives, & project goals
Collaboration between product team,
development engineers, & customer

5. What’s in a release plan?
A list of iterations focused on deploying value based functions
to the customer. These iterations are:
1. Maintained on feature-story cards
2. Prioritized based by on feature risk and value
3. Iterations and features are compiled into a product
backlog
*All features, stories, and product backlog
information are written in customer oriented terms*

6. What’s the time-frame?

7. What’s a feature-story
card?
Useful product based features written in user-
centered language that ties developer goals to
customer needs.

8. What’s in a feature-story
card?
The technical activities and relative time required
to:
Document Build
Design
Test
Develop
Deploy
Deliver

9. A feature-story card
example
Feature 1: A investment banker (user) should be
able to analyze stock XYZ.
Story A: User sees a comprised investment firm
list of opinions on XYZ.
Story B: User can click a graph to see the
performance history of XYZ.
Story C: User can choose a category of breaking
news link related to XYZ.
*Feature 1 will take relatively twice as long as
Feature 2.
*Story A, B, & C are high value with low risks.

10. A poem on stories
Some are big to tackle
Others are small
Some are high risk
Others not at all
Some should come 1st
Others we may not even bother
The one redeeming virtue is they all offer
$VALUE$

11. How do you schedule
stories?
Valu
Risk e

12. What’s the priority?
Customers decide what are the high value
features and stories!
Development teams decide upon the
technological risk & related time frames for
feature-stories.
Project and product managers take input from
both sides to determine the ROI.

13. How are priorities
arranged?
Foundational (must have) features
High Value Low
Risk
Moderate Value Low
Risk
High Value High Risk
Low Value Low
Risk
Low Value High

14. Where are all these
priorities?
They get put into
Product backlog

15. What does the Product
Backlog tell us?
The backlog list contains capabilities, features, &
stories that helps outline information to consider
when:
Planning iterations
Assigning feature tasks to team members

16. What now?
Use the release plan material (stories, prioritized
features, backlog, etc.) to evaluate scope,
iterations, and cost estimates. Then move onto
the next agile phase
Evaluate