Agile Planning: What is your story, what is the point?

Agile environments are typically volatile and subject to constant change….so how is it possible to come up with estimates and numbers that are not too far off the mark? Any business needs detailed planning that can be trusted, and this seems impossible in a project where the requirements themselves are in a state of flux. It is rarely easy to determine the complications that may arise when implementing a particular feature. Addressing these challenges is a set of Agile planning processes, that help to create estimates that the management can count upon to make project decisions.

There are many conceptual challenges that Agile teams face when estimating story points. Old habits can come in the way of the estimation process. Some teams may greatly overestimate the time required, and pad their time estimates so that they are erring on the safer side. Others may try to be superheroes and complete a task in very little time, reducing quality and creating errors.

Quite often the user stories may not be defined well, and many stories may be clubbed together as one. Team velocities may not be in sync, leading to schedule discrepancies. Excuses and roadblocks are unfortunately all too common. And of course, fresh problems arise every time the requirements undergo a change!

Such challenges can only be addressed through experience…and when you have experts with real-world experience guiding you in Agile Estimating and Planning , you cannot go far wrong!  Again, you can make use of widely used tools and features that are available in Atlassian JIRA Agile to manage your project with competence. JIRA helps you to prioritise tasks and create a ranking system for backlog issues, so that you can flag up issues that are more critical and ensure smooth flow of work at all times. This enables smooth management of backlogs- a very important component of the Agile process.