Skip to main content

How to plan a feature release as a Product Owner in an Agile team?

[PLACEHOLDER]

One of the questions that are often presented to a Product Owner is “When will a feature XYZ be ready for the customer?”. In this article I will walk through the process of planning and estimating a feature release in an Agile software development process. 

Let’s assume the Agile team is working on a customer lifecycle management product. The next increment for the product is to support a new communication channel like SMS. The business stakeholders identified this feature as a key differentiator from the competitors. According to the business stakeholders the release of this feature is time sensitive and consequently they would like to know when the feature will be available for the customers. This time-to-market information will be used to plan marketing campaigns to create awareness of the feature. Therefore as a Product Owner it's very important to plan and estimate a new feature. The following three steps outlines how a product feature release can be planned and estimated: 


Step 1: Identify the user stories to complete the feature
The Product Owner and the scrum team must brainstorm the user stories to complete the feature. At the end of this process the Product Owner must have a set of clearly defined user stories in the product backlog. Given that the feature is of high priority these user stories must be stacked at the top of the prioritized product backlog. This will ensure that the Scrum team creates the Sprint backlog with the user stories related with the new feature. 

The Product Owner must also collaborate with the Scrum team to estimate the level of effort required to complete each user story. The level of effort can be captured as story points.

The screen shot below describes how the user stories related to the feature is prioritized in the product backlog.

story-backlog-flow
by Beolle.com


Step 2: Use feature release map to plan and estimate
Let’s assume the Scrum team works in a 2 week sprint and can deliver on average 15 story points per sprint (this is also known as sprint velocity).  The Product Owner can map the user stories from the prioritized product backlog as shown below to estimate the number of sprints it may take to complete the feature. The screen shot below describes how the prioritized user stories can be mapped onto future sprints to estimate the feature release. In the example below the Product Owner can estimate 3 sprints (i.e. 6 weeks) to deliver the new communication channel feature.  

sprint-points
by Beolle.com

Step 3: Maintain the feature release map
The Product Owner must update the feature release map at the end of each sprint to reflect any changes to the prioritized product backlog. This may be necessary if the scrum team discovers new information that may result in additional user stories. The Product Owner can then use the feature release map to check the status of the feature development. The feature release map can also be used to collaborate with the scrum team to identify creative approaches to meet the estimated feature release timeline.

In conclusion a feature release map is a very helpful tool for a Product Owner to plan, estimate and manage a new feature release. The map can be created using easily available tools like Microsoft Word, Visio, Lucidchart, etc. However there are dedicated tools like FeatureMap that can also be used to map user stories.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Image credit:
The thumbnail image of this article is by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash
Anonymous

Trending posts

AGILE For DIGITAL AGENCIES

Introduction Some Digital agencies have a project process where waterfalls still plays a big part of it, and as far as I can tell, the tech team is usually the one suffering as they are at the last part of the chain left with limited budget and time for execution. I do believe that adopting an Agile approach could make a Digital Agency better and faster. In this article I’m presenting you just another point of view of why it make sense looking at Agile Methodology.  Why Agile for a Digital Agency? The Agile movement started in the software development industry, but it has being proven to be useful in others as well. It becomes handy for the type of business that has changing priorities, changing requirements and flexible deliverables. In the Digital Agency of today you need a different mindset. Creative will always play a huge role (“the bread and butter”). But the “big guys” need to understand that without technology there is no Digital Agency. Technical resources are
Read more

Key takeaways from landmark EU AI Act

 Recently, the European Parliament voted and passed the landmark EU AI Act. It's the first of its kind and sets a benchmark for future AI regulations worldwide . The EU AI Act lays the foundation for AI governance, and it's pertinent for organizations delving into AI systems to comply with the legislation, build robust and secure AI systems, and avoid non-compliance fines.  Photo by Karolina Grabowska via Pexels My three key takeaways from the legislation are as follows: The Act introduces the definition of an AI system: "An AI system is a machine-based system designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments" The Act introduces the classification of AI systems based on risk to society. The Act outlin
Read more

AI with great power comes responsibility

Generative AI continues to be front and centre of all topics. Companies continue to make an effort for making sense of the technology, investing in their teams, as well as vendors/providers in order to “crack” those use cases that will give them the advantage in this competitive market, and while we are still in this phase of the “AI revolution” where things are still getting sorted.   Photo by Google DeepMind on Unsplash I bet that Uncle Ben’s advise could go beyond Peter Parker, as many of us can make use of that wisdom due to the many things that are currently happening. AI would not be the exception when using this iconic phrase from one of the best comics out there. Uncle Ben and Peter Parker - Spiderman A short list of products out there in the space of generated AI: Text to image Dall.E-2 Fotor Midjourney NightCafe Adobe Firefly
Read more

Small Language Models

 Open source models will continue to grow in popularity. Small Language Models (SLMs) are smaller, faster to train with less compute.  They can be used for tackling specific cases while being at a lower cost.  Photo by Tobias Bjørkli via Pexels  SLMs can be more efficient SLMs are faster in inference speed, and they also require less memory and storage.    SLMs and cost Small Language models can run on less powerful machines, making them more affordable. This could be ideal for experimentation, startups and/or small size companies. Here is a short list Tiny Llama. The 1.1B parameters AI Model, trained on 3T Tokens. Microsoft’s Phi-2. The 2.7B parameters, trained on 1.4T tokens. Gemini Nano.  The 6B parameters. Deepseek Coder
Read more

This blog uses cookies to improve your browsing experience. Simple analytics might be in place for pageviews purposes. They are harmless and never personally identify you.

Agreed