Project Timeline Planning

Once you have a product roadmap that the customer likes, there is a short but effective “rubber hits the road” exercise that helps you plan a high-level project timeline. This helps clarify what your team can actually deliver by when and with how many developer resources. Some would argue that a timeline is counter to Agile. I personally believe that a timeline is key to maintaining focus so that development has a clear aim that they are working to hit, and the business takes a disciplined approach to adding and changing requirements mid-stream.

Here is a link to a project planning spreadsheet that I’ll use as a reference. If you’d like a soft copy, email your request to aaronhsmith@gmail.com. Here are details required to come up with a high level project timeline:

1. Story Estimates – Add estimates to your story backlog as explained in the article on story estimates. Read more about estimating user stories.
2. Milestone Assignments – Assign each user story to a milestone, using your roadmap as a guide. At this point the spreadsheet automatically sums the Dev Units that are assigned to each milestone.
3. Iterations Per Milestone – Enter the expected number of iterations for each milestone.
4. FTEs – Take a stab at the number of developer FTE. The spreadsheet now calculates your team’s Capacity (I assume 2-week iterations, you can modify the calculation to your preferred iteration length) and Net Bandwidth.
5. Estimated Start Date – Enter your Estimated Project Start Date.The spreadsheet now calculates Estimated End Dates for each milestone. You may need to edit the calculation if you typically have a “hardening” period at the end of milestones or if the whole team will be out for a conference or vacation.

You can now adjust the variables (milestone assignments, iterations per milestone and FTEs per milestone) until you have a feasible plan, then review with the customer and tweak until happy. Just as when you defined the product roadmap, this exercise will further help you refine priorities, identify dependencies, and confirm the path forward.

As you complete detailed requirements for an iteration or milestone, circle back to this spreadsheet and see if the updated estimates affect your timeline. Hopefully they are close to the original estimates, but if not, it is time to communicate!