Six Ways the Software Development Platform can Reduce Developer Burnout

The frantic pace of digitization in the industrial internet of things (IoT) creates steep learning curves for embedded software engineers. Building, integrating and updating industrial software applications without compromising safety, security and performance can feel like working under pressure on constantly shifting sands. It can be demotivating and challenging for even the most experienced professional, impacting innovation and creativity; and burnout is a very present issue estimated to affect four in five software developers.

Reduce Barriers, Reduce Burnout

Reducing barriers without compromising on the quality and complexity of projects can be achieved by choosing a software development platform that supports even the most complex embedded applications’ performance, safety and security needs. Here are six ways that the right platform contributes to reducing developer friction.

1)Never Compromise on Throughput Performance
Throughput performance is the heartbeat of software applications, so don’t compromise on the capability criteria of a preferred software development platform.
Empowering mission-critical applications to thrive in any environment requires high overall OS throughput and near-linear scalability with increased cores. Compromise only kicks the can down the road, and settling for less will mean issues with system capability, speed, and reliability from this point on.

2)Plan to Go Big (Not Go Home)
The best practice software design should always be built for growth. However, scalability can easily be hindered by the limitations of the software development platform, be it curbing expansion or compromising safety and security for progress.
Better development starts with a platform that accommodates seamless scalability as a foundation for future innovations and opportunities. Your future self will thank you for it!

3)Know When Compromise is Not Okay
Time and precision-sensitive applications, where reliability is necessary, not optional — such as surgical and production robotics — add extra pressure for software designers. Hard real-time systems built on a microkernel platform that divides core functionality across separate spaces provide a more stable environment, with absolute reliability and no scope for latency or jitter. In contrast, if you build on a monolithic microkernel, however good the software may be, if the system goes down it all goes down.

4)State-Of-The-Art Tooling
Time pressure is a major contributor to stress and burnout for software developers and teams. Removing needles from the haystack is tiresome work, and dated toolkits can mean more rework and delays. Choosing the right developer tools can accelerate time to market, identify and resolve bugs, optimize development workflows and enhance the overall integrated development environment (IDE). Therefore, take time to investigate and find state-of-the-art tooling designed to help modern developers push the boundaries of innovation.

5)Design for the Future, Today
Feeling anxious about tomorrow’s challenges? Architecting a system with the future in mind means being confident that you have a solid foundation for safety and security now, and ensuring systems remain relevant and robust in the long term.
With today’s pace of change, if you plan to adapt your software for future needs, you will already be doing it tomorrow. And the next day.

6)Skills Development is an Industry Responsibility
The best platform technology is designed to evolve and educate, helping the software developer community to keep pace with the world around it, and offering seamless support regardless of complexity.
Explore the education and support provided by your choice of software development platform provider as a gauge of its commitment to the industry. And choose to work with those that invest in progressing industry talent, research and education, as well as minimizing integration hurdles and empowering innovation, every step of the way.

Choosing the right software development platform gives a firm foundation for getting it right the first time. That means developing with the future in mind and setting up for success, reducing stress and pressure of the work.

_{The original content of the note was published on Devops.com. To read the full note visit here}

Why And How A Minimum Viable Product Is Important For A Startup’s Future

According to a 2022 Microsoft report, 50 million startups are launched annually. This means that, on average, about 137,000 startups emerge daily—prompting a much-needed reality check.

What is an MVP?

For the uninitiated, an MVP is a basic version of the product that solves the core problem of the target audience. It is built with minimum features and demonstrates how the product will benefit customers by addressing their most important pain points. Once the MVP is built, companies collect feedback iteratively to improve the product and scale it by adding more auxiliary features that enhance the user experience.

The Lean Startup Methodology And MVP

At the core of the lean startup methodology is the concept of the MVP, encouraging incremental learning and scalable growth. By starting with a small, low-risk product iteration, businesses can gauge market interest, refine their offerings and attract early investors. Thus, an MVP enables you to get an idea of the market quickly and take the first small step as a startup with a lower financial risk.

Deploying The Perfect MVP Strategy

Certain clear expectations are required of your MVP. To do so, the MVP must contain a well-researched customer base, understand the pain points it needs to solve, align with the business objectives and remain the most simple and effective product built. The product owner or manager typically develops user stories and solves the problem.

Ensure adopted feedback aligns with immediate customer pain points.
From the user stories, identify and prioritize the features that directly address the most critical customer pain points. The aim is to keep the MVP as lean as possible, focusing on key functionalities that solve the main problems.

Balance what’s achievable versus what you want to achieve.
Keep it simple. Back in the day, one of my professors offered me some critical advice I follow to this day.

Make room for scaling.
Don't build everything today. Make plans to scale the product. Some features must definitely be left for future builds. This equally involves considering the technical infrastructure needed to support a larger user base as well as strategies for marketing, sales and customer support.

Few Of Many Types Of MVP And Feedback Models

Paper Prototyping
Paper prototyping is a simple and cost-effective method for creating prototypes of your product. You can sketch rough designs, flow charts and diagrams to visualize the product's features and functionalities with just a piece of paper and a pen.

Digital Prototyping
Digital prototyping involves using digital tools to create wireframes, mock-ups and prototypes of your product. Tools like InvisionApp, Figma and MarvelApp allow you to showcase how the product will work in real life and how the functionalities will be sorted.

Wizard Of Oz MVP
The Wizard of Oz MVP creates the illusion of a fully functional product but relies on manual execution behind the scenes. This approach allows you to test the product's concept and user experience without fully developing the technology.

Concierge MVP
Concierge MVPs provide users with a preview of the product's capabilities without building a fully automated system. Instead, representatives manually fulfill customer needs, allowing you to validate customer requirements and refine the business model.

Customer Interviews
Customer interviews are essential for getting insights into your target audience's needs, preferences and pain points. Product-oriented feedback is a major reason for conducting interviews with potential users.

In Conclusion

If your MVP passes the testing stage, congratulations—you can launch it into the market! Once you launch, keep the aforementioned feedback processes in place so that customers can give you constructive suggestions for improvement.

_{The original content of the note was published on Forbes.com. To read the full note visit here}

Design Thinking Fosters Social Innovation

Design Thinking could be variedly conceived as a methodology, strategy, idea or a worldview, that is essentially customer-centric in its scope and applications. On a granular level, it is borrowing the “eyes of a designer”, to “see the end user”, while developing products and services, tools and equipments and designing systems and processes. Design Thinking is iterative and non-linear in its development cycle, where feedback loops involving target users interactions and engagements are guaged using prototypes, that facilitates fine-tuning and refinement of the product, service or process, prior to commercialization.

In cut-throat businessworld, such adaptive design and development cycles, not only enhance product/service market fit and faster adoption by the target segment, but also significantly improves business agility to churn out products, services and cyber-physical systems at a faster pace, commensurate with short technology obsolescence, evolving customers needs and market dynamics.

Design Thinking hinges on three interdependent variables, firstly, the desirability of the product or service, secondly, the technical feasibility of the solution and lastly its economic viability. Practitioners have added sustainability as another variable, in consonance with a global campaign for the promotion and use of ecologically and environmentally sustainable products, which could be construed as a subset of desirability. Since Design Thinking is dynamic, agile and iterative and thereby non-linear, it accomodates wild ideas, their tinkering and testing and holds immense possibility of turning ambiguity into opportunity. Design Thinking passes through different sequential phases, from the initial discovery phase to define, develop and delivery of the solution. The dicovery and define phases constitute the problem space, whereas the develop and delivery phases are the solution space. When a problem moves from the discovery phase, it allows for brainstorming of a wide variety of ideas and solutions in the define phase, covering the broad spectrum of creativity and pragmatism. Divergent thinking is the norm for creating choices before convergent thinking of making choices. American scientist and two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, averred, “To get a good idea, you need a lot of ideas.”

In a world buffeted by pernicious storms of climate change, environmental degradation, and onslaught of rapid technological advances, it is imperative that Design Thinking discipline must transition from customer-centric to human-centric to humanity-centered design paradigms. The clarion call for a circular economy is vociferous than ever before, considering the kind of environmental legacy, we intend to bequeath to our posterity. Sustainability should be at the core of every economic and non-economic activity, prioritizing the preservation of the planet, the only place humanity can call it home. Design Thinking with empathy as one of its first principles, could not only foster social innovation at scale, but also serve as a powerful enabler of social and environmental change.

_{The original content of the note was published on Countercurrents.org. To read the full note visit here}

The new product-market fit: A balanced approach for sustainable growth

In startup-land, the notion of product-market fit (PMF) has been a popular concept for the last 15-20 years at least. It has served as a milestone of sorts for product success to obtain additional funding and/or demonstrate that the company may be ripe for acquisition or an IPO.

People often think of product-market fit as a switch. You either have PMF or you don’t, and VCs often try to figure out if a company has achieved PMF.

Regardless, it is important to recognize that PMF is not a discrete event, and its definition is not precise. Below, I discuss the evolving concept of PMF and how a balanced approach to growing your business and managing spend is a sensible way to manage risk while not missing out on key competitive opportunities. While this article focuses on enterprise SaaS, the advice can be applied to other product sectors as well.

HOW THE EXPERTS DEFINE PMF

“PMF is creating a compelling product that properly satisfies the target market, such that the market embraces the product,” says Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Bussgang.

Marc Andreessen, an early thought leader on the topic, wrote: “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

CHANGING VIEWS ON PMF

The reality is—and I can say this after having founded three companies—PMF is rarely ever that linear and it’s not a one-time event. More commonly, you hit upon a target market where customers resonate with your value proposition. Over time, you expand use cases for customers and continue delivering value so that customers renew and spread the word about your product and company, leading to higher adoption rates. You can then expand to additional markets where you again must establish PMF.

PRODUCT MARKET FIT FOR 2024 AND BEYOND

The notion of product market fit is still germane because it demonstrates that you have a viable product—the goal of any startup. There are many signals from the market to watch for as you improve and fine-tune your PMF:

SIGNALS FOR PMF

-Resellers are bringing you an increasing percentage of deals, indicating efficient marketplace scale. At the same time, major brands in or adjacent to your space want to work with you, whether to resell or co-market products.
-Customers want to engage with you and provide feedback on your product.
-Customers are renewing and expanding at an increasing rate.
-Your company is getting word-of-mouth referrals.
-Customer time to value or TTV (for an enterprise/B2B sale) occurs within 60 to 90 days. A strong customer success function is intrinsic to achieving PMF.
-SaaS metrics also signify PMF: A commonly held milestone is when your business crosses the $10-$15M ARR.

A BALANCED APPROACH TO PMF

Startup founders and executives sometimes follow too closely what venture capitalists, economists, and other influencers are saying about the market. Listen but don’t let it blindly direct your strategies. The hardest part of the job is knowing when to invest in the company, how much, and where.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Product-market fit is something that all startups should strive to achieve, yet PMF is part of an overarching journey toward sustainable growth. Measure sustainable growth by how much customers expand and renew, whether the cost of customer acquisition is going down, and how the channel can help your company scale faster.

_{The original content of the note was published on Fastcompany.com. To read the full note visit here}

How To Accelerate Software Development With Generative AI

In the span of just a few years, generative AI has transformed how organizations build products, create content and resolve problems. The majority of business and technology leaders using GenAI are focusing on efficiency and cost-effectiveness gains, according to a 2024 Deloitte survey, with 91% of respondents reporting that they “expect generative AI to improve their organization’s productivity.”

It’s no replacement for human expertise and execution, but it can take the lead on mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing teams to dedicate more time and energy toward critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration.

By using GenAI tools on my own development team, I’ve discovered that they are most valuable in two key applications.

-Code suggestion and autocompletion: AI can analyze developers' code as they work, automatically generating recommendations for code snippets or complete functions based on context and input.

-Code analysis and bug detection: Generative AI can quickly review code to detect errors or bugs early in the development process.

Strategies For Implementing AI In Software Development

To maximize the benefits of AI in software development, I recommend the following four strategies.

1-Test And Evaluate Different Tools

2-Create Better Prompts

3-Review Code Carefully

4-Protect Sensitive Data

Set realistic expectations, and use AI tools strategically and thoughtfully—in conjunction with human expertise and oversight—to deliver software solutions more efficiently than ever before.

_{The original content of the note was published on Forbes.com. To read the full note visit here}

The growing importance of software product marketing managers

Making great products is not enough in software these days. The “build it, and they will come” mindset will no longer lead to success in this ever competitive space. As software products become more sophisticated and customers more discerning, the path to market acceptance has become much more complicated. Companies need different capabilities to navigate this more challenging environment, with sustainable success increasingly requiring a role devoted to understanding and priming the market—one known in the industry as a product marketing manager (PMM).

In this new era, where more and more companies are embracing product-led sales, PMMs can take some of the risk and guesswork out of successfully bringing a new product to market. They provide essential orchestration and expertise at each stage of the commercialization journey, both before and after the product gets into the hands of customers.

This shift in capabilities comes as software investors are changing how they measure success. From 2022 to 2023, 84 percent of publicly traded software companies saw their valuations drop,1 with more than a quarter experiencing a decline of more than 50 percent.

McKinsey examined the relationship between robust product marketing functions and revenue growth among the top 100 software companies by revenue. The findings affirmed the pivotal role of PMMs in helping their companies’ products propel growth. Companies in the highest revenue growth quartile have a formalized PMM function and exhibit, on average, a 25 to 30 percent higher ratio of PMMs to product managers (PMs) compared with those in the bottom growth quartile, averaging approximately one PMM for every 1.6 PMs. These PMMs also come from diverse professional backgrounds, with an average of roughly 11 years of experience across disciplines.

Despite the similarities in their abbreviations, the emerging PMM role in no way reduces the importance of the core PM job. But as that position’s responsibilities have expanded greatly and shipping software has become more complex, PMMs have started to play a key support role, acting as a strategic connector between the various functions involved in launching a new product. Based on our market experience, research, and interviews with a number of industry executives, we believe this role is poised to become a differentiator for the most successful software providers. This article examines the shifting market environment that has fueled the PMM’s growing importance, how the role can make a significant impact for companies, and what it takes for an organization to reap the benefits of the PMM capability from the outset.

_{The original content of the note was published on McKinsey.com. To read the full note visit here}

Why developers should exchange a roadmap for a mud map

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that businesses that can adapt quickly are in a better growth and sustainability position than those that struggle with change.

WHAT WE LEFT IN THE PAST

I would not characterize software development projects in the 1980s and 1990s as adaptable.

The long-form documentation that guided software development projects of the past were slow.

In the glacial pace of the ’80s and ’90s, this was just fine. Many misunderstandings and issues were resolved in the famous and shifty ‘warranty’ period and, at some point, the software was deemed good enough and accepted.

For nearly 20 years now, the software development industry has largely practiced Agile software development as a methodology that threw away slow, rigid models in exchange for iteration and adaptability. This method has evolved slightly over the years, but is largely unchanged because it works.

The iterative nature of Agile gave birth to the software road map, which is typically a rough plan for what features will be considered to enhance an application in the coming two to four quarters.

WHY I’VE PIVOTED

Unless we’ve met in person or you’ve heard me speak on a video or audio recording, you might not know that I am Australian.

According to Wikipedia, “mud map is an Australian term for an informal map, intended to assist, but with no pretensions to accuracy or completeness. The term originates in such a map drawn in mud or dust with a stick, perhaps in response to a query by a stranger.”

I started introducing the mud map concept to my team as a replacement for the road map, and I feel like it has tremendous applicability in today’s fast-paced software development environment.

When I think of a roadmap, I think of clean, crisp, and pristine lines. Routes on a roadmap are drawn with precision to exact specifications, and they take passengers on a journey with a fixed start and end point.

In fact, it inherently fluctuates.

Rather, they allow for the inherent fluctuations in our businesses, and in our world. They give our customers a glimpse of what’s to come, but let them know that we are willing to adapt and shift as needed to accommodate change.

I’ve always hesitated to share our roadmap with customers since it implies a contract and communicates expectations.

_{The original content of the note was published on Fastcompany.com. To read the full note visit here}

B2B Leaders, Here’s How To Capitalize On Experience-Led Growth

Despite building yearly growth plans that they believe to be achievable, many B2B organizations fall short. Executives face the frustrating disconnect between ambition and execution, with teams entangled in competing priorities and internal resistance. This “growth gap” often results from:

Building on quicksand. Chasing quick wins without understanding the journey to exceptional buyer and customer experiences, organizations stumble, miss goals, and require resources that they didn’t foresee.

Chasing the wrong values. Disconnected teams chase individual metrics, delivering fragmented experiences instead of a unified, value-driven journey.

The illusion of collaboration. Rushing into planning without shared goals fosters a false sense of collaboration. Silos create plans in isolation, clashing in execution. This lack of strategic coherence fractures experiences.

Why Experience-Fueled Growth Matters

Providing exceptional experiences is a winning growth strategy. Experiences powered high-growth enterprise companies’ successes in 2022 and remained the primary strategy to grow during 2023, as global B2B marketing decision-makers reported in Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2023. Experience-fueled growth thrives on complete alignment across the organization, with unified customer-obsessed values and operating principles serving as the blueprint for success. This means:

Marketing aligns initiatives with buyer and customer outcomes. Prioritize digital engagement with user-generated content, intuitive tools, and clear information throughout buyers’ and customers’ journeys to empower independent research and decision-making.

Product leads a culture of continuous innovation and agility to deliver market-competitive solutions and frictionless experiences. Early involvement with customers helps validate ideas and gather usability insights.

Sales enables buying decisions by leveraging portfolio knowledge and fostering customer-valued personal interactions. Customers can connect their research through conversations with executives, product experts, or industry analysts that sales facilitates.

How To Implement Experience-Fueled Growth

Experience-fueled growth thrives on strategic, incremental advancements. It’s an iterative journey that demands an unwavering commitment to deep customer understanding, cross-team alignment, and continuous optimization of interactions. Marketing leaders can drive this by:

Charting the customer’s course. Start by truly knowing your customers, their needs, expectations, and pain points. Uncover their values, motivations, and decision-making processes.

Aligning around a customer-obsessed vision. Break down silos and build a collaborative culture where every team member prioritizes the customer experience. Foster a shared vision that translates into action across departments.

Sparking positive customer experiences at every touchpoint. Invest in crafting positive experiences at every stage of the customer journey. From pre-purchase interactions to post-sale support, ensure that each touchpoint reflects your customer-first focus.

Navigating data-driven optimization for continuous growth. Harness the power of data and analytics to track progress, measure impact, and identify areas for refinement. Use customer insights to continuously iterate and optimize your experience strategy.

High-performing leaders prioritize experience-fueled growth, strategically aligning sales, product, marketing, and customer teams around a customer-centric vision. This supports a growth engine powered by technology optimization and deep customer understanding. This data-driven approach builds brand loyalty, boosts buyer and customer reputation, and unlocks consistent, profitable growth in 2024 and beyond.

_{The original content of the note was published on Forbes.com. To read the full note visit here}

The Myths and Realities of Being a Product Manager

Product management has become the dream job for many people working in tech.

To increase their chances, many applicants follow the advice circulating on social media from a cadre of “product management influencers.”

In my experience, the advice they offer is often incomplete and inaccurate, and tends to present an over-glamorized picture of the day-to-day reality of the product management role. For example, the influencers depict the PM as CEO of the product, seamlessly leading cross-functional teams, and spending most of their time developing product strategy and vision. This image doesn’t always align with reality — and it glosses over the harsh realities of a role that comes with intense pressure, dealing with uncertainty, managing complex stakeholder relationships without authority, and being deep into trenches with engineering and design teams on the smallest of details.

My Journey into Product Management

I was one of those non-product folks who fell for the influencer hype when transitioning into my current product management role at Amazon in 2021. My career had taken me from software engineering in India and brand management in Africa to analytics consulting at Amazon in the United States. I decided that shifting to a PM role was my chance to make a big impact.

In the end, it was my persistence in networking and highlighting my transferable skills that paid off.

Since moving into a product management role, I’ve found that’s only partially true. PMs have limited authority over any of the design, engineering, customer support, or other crucial teams responsible for successful development and launch of the product or the feature.

Cross-functional engagement — that is, working as the person who bridges multiple teams to make the product a success — is often touted as a PM’s “greatest asset.” Here’s how

Kasey Hobson, director of the product platform at Solifi, puts it: “There is a level of interdependency in successfully launching new products and functionality across teams within your organization. So, establishing strong relationships with these teams is essential for collaboration and ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goals.”

This is apt advice, but it’s often misconstrued as a PM must work hard on being liked and admired by all the stakeholders they work with. Armed with this advice, I initially focused on being well-liked by cross-functional partners, until my manager reminded me that product quality and customer needs should take precedence over intra-company relationships.

But I soon realized that force-fitting frameworks, rather than deeply understanding customer needs and business vision, led to flawed prioritization.

The Reality Check

While influencer advice isn’t all wrong, it often overlooks the realities and nuances of the PM role.

Here’s what influencers often miss:

Frameworks are supplements, not substitutes: There are many prioritization frameworks like Jobs to be Done, RICE scoring, and CIRCLEs that product influencers constantly promote. A PM’s real job is identifying customer needs to solve through research, mastering the problem space, and using frameworks to validate hypotheses and assumptions. No framework can substitute the time spent on customer interviews, surveys, secondary research, and studying internal documents on product and business vision.

Domain knowledge is the most crucial trait of a good PM: Top PMs live and breathe their product domain. They stay on top of industry trends by reading the latest blogs, publications, and constantly learning to maintain a relevant product roadmap.
B2B and B2C skills differ: A lot of advice on social media is offered as generically applicable to all domains. But as a B2B PM who has talked to fellow B2C PMs, I’ve realized the techniques for user research, prioritization, and product testing vary significantly across the two groups.

Deep understanding of technical architecture is crucial to building trust with engineering: Working hand-in-hand with engineering teams requires PMs to have a strong grasp of technical concepts and the ability to discuss trade-offs without shying away from complex issues. (I have a background in engineering, and there are days when I’d be hard-pressed to do my job well without it.) This collaboration fosters trust with the engineering team — your most critical partner.

Understanding design concepts and nuances are critical to work with designers: Understanding basic design principles and wireframing enables PMs to better communicate their vision and facilitate more effective collaboration with designers, especially for complex projects.

Exceptional writing skill is key to get stakeholder alignment: A PM’s core responsibility is selling the product vision across the organization.

Diving deeper into the data and getting your hands dirty is critical to extract actionable insights: In our AI/ML-driven world, data skills are table stakes. PMs must be proficient in SQL to perform exploratory data analysis and make data-driven decisions, particularly in B2C products where customer needs often live in the data.

Cross-functional stakeholder needs must be balanced with product priorities: One key skill heavily promoted on social media is being adept at cross-functional engagement. A good PM must prioritize working backwards from customer needs and then focus on product quality and velocity for career success. This often means saying “no” more than “yes” to feature requests that are misaligned with your product and business goals.

Effective time management prevents burnout: As you grow into the PM role and take on more responsibilities, prioritizing opportunities aligned with product and career goals becomes crucial to preventing burnout and maintaining quality output. Therefore, you’ll need to protect your time to be able to carve time for writing requirements docs and doing customer research – which are the bread and butter of this role.

The Bottom Line

While influencers offer some valuable insights, aspiring PMs must be cautious about taking their advice as gospel. The role demands a multifaceted skill set beyond frameworks and cross-functional affability.

As I learned firsthand, influencer advice can overlook the day-to-day realities, focusing on the glamorous aspects while glossing over the critical thinking and hard work required. By embracing the full scope of product management — from technical depth to influential leadership — early-career professionals can set themselves up for true, impactful success in this dynamic field.

_{The original content of the note was published on Hbr.org. To read the full note visit here}

Guide to Agile Planning in 2024: Processes, Tools and Templates

Agile project management has grown in popularity in recent years. In fact, at least 71% of U.S. companies1 use agile planning methods to map out their projects. It should be no surprise that companies are finding success by utilizing the best project management software and adopting agile approaches.

If you want to increase project success but aren’t sure what agile is, you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll break down agile planning and explain the stages of the agile process. We’ll explain the difference between traditional planning and agile planning, discuss the key components of agile and cover what the agile manifesto says about planning. Let’s jump in.

Definition: What Is Agile Planning?

Traditional project management methodologies like waterfall use project plans that are set in stone. However, agile planning — which is generally (but not always) used for software development projects — enables project teams to formulate a plan of attack for upcoming projects while also allowing room for changes as the projects progress.

Methods & Techniques in Agile Planning

Below, we’ll examine several popular agile planning methods in more detail so you can better understand how each method works.

What Is PI Planning in Agile?

Project increment (PI) planning in agile relates specifically to a version of planning used in the SAFe method, which is a type of scaled agile. PI planning is similar to sprint planning in the scrum framework. In SAFe, agile release trains (a large team comprising many small scrum teams) use PI to plan large-scale sprints that last between eight and 12 weeks.

What Is Sprint Planning in Agile?

Sprints are a key component of scrum. Sprints are time-boxed events that last one to four weeks. During a sprint planning meeting, the product owner and the development team create user stories (tasks) to work on, and create definition of ready (DoR) and definition of done (DoD) strategies to ensure that the items being worked on are in the best shape possible.

What Is Capacity Planning in Agile?

Capacity planning is a popular method that many agile teams use. Thanks to the reports that many of the best agile tools provide, project managers, scrum masters and product owners can see how much work their team has been able to finish (known as team velocity) in time-boxed events.

What Is Adaptive Planning in Agile?

Project leaders who embrace adaptive planning can quickly change the team’s direction to meet new requirements and goals that stakeholders and clients set and request. Adaptive planning is flexible, welcomes feedback and is the backbone of agile methodologies and frameworks.

What Are the Stages in the Agile Planning Process?

The stages of agile projects can vary depending on the framework and technique you use to lead your team. Below, we’ll examine the popular agile planning onion technique.

Agile Planning Onion

The agile planning onion is a project visualization tool that can help project managers navigate through six planning stages: strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily. Each layer of the onion relates to a portion of agile planning.

Strategy

The onion’s outer layer represents the overall strategy that agile project managers want to use and the project’s goals. During this stage, senior leaders, stakeholders and clients create a project charter (project scope) that defines the vision. Project resources and ways to reach project objectives are also discussed.

Portfolio

During the portfolio part of the onion process, project leaders manage their portfolio of projects and discuss prioritization, resource allocation and how the project visions align with business objectives. Project roadmaps are also developed.

Product

When teams reach the product layer, the senior leaders decide on which software development approach to use, and timelines, due dates and themes are set. Feature priorities are also finalized.

Release

Teams hold release planning discussions to decide how many sprints or time-boxed events there will be, determine which product features (user stories) will be included in each sprint and set team velocities (capacities).

Iteration

The fifth layer, iteration (sprint planning), is when the product owner and development team meet to discuss and define the definitions of ready and done, as well as the acceptance criteria. In addition, teams assign story points to each task or use other agile estimation techniques to determine how complex a user story is. Delegation poker can also be used to assign tasks.

Daily

The innermost layer, daily, represents the daily meetings during which teams discuss the project, the tasks they’re working on and any issues or successes they’re experiencing. Daily meetings are one of the most critical agile project management practices, as they help teams stay focused on the project.

_{The original content of the note was published on Cloudwars.net. To read the full note visit here}