Chapter 16. Iteration planning: the nitty-gritty details
When you plan for a release, you estimate features at a high level using story points and measuring relative size. This lets you envision the entire release and communicate the timeline to parties who have an investment in the project.
When an iteration begins, you should understand the work being pursued in detail so the team can understand the tasks and feel confident that they can deliver the features assigned to the iteration. The team will increase their confidence by estimating the identified tasks in hours needed to complete the work, and they will compare the estimates to how much capacity they have in hours available for the iteration.
A key part of iteration planning is a clear definition of what complete or done means. Let’s start our discussion of iteration planning by defining done.
When you create your feature cards, you record acceptance tests. These acceptance tests help you focus on delivering to the minimum requirement and also verifying that a feature is complete.
We suggest reviewing the acceptance tests at the start of iteration planning. The team needs to have a good understanding of what success means before breaking down the work and identifying the tasks needed to complete it.