Agile Estimating & Planning Training

Upcoming Public Courses

Date	Location	Taught By	Price	To Register
May 29, 2008	Stockholm	Mike Cohn	SEK 14 500 includes User Stories class	Register now
Jun 5, 2008	Washington D.C.	Mike Cohn	$600	Register now
Jul 31, 2008	La Jolla	Mike Cohn	$600	Register now
Oct 10, 2008	London	Mike Cohn	£700 + VAT	Register now
Oct 16, 2008	San Jose	Mike Cohn	$600	Register now
Dec 5, 2008	Oslo	Mike Cohn	NOK 7 000	Register now

The Importance of Planning for Agile Development

One of the most important aspects of agile development training is planning and estimating. Yes, these are important, even for agile software development. For those who think that agile teams don’t plan, we will correct that misguided assumption. Although agile is a fluid and interative process, that doesn’t mean that planning doesn’t have a place in agile programming and agile project management.

Unfortunately, we've all seen so many worthless plans that most of us would like to throw planning out altogether. But the good news is that it’s possible to create an agile project plan that can be accurate and useful for agile programming and agile testing -- and can be usedfor projecting forward from six to nine months. Our agile software training course entitled Agile Estimating and Planning will teach you how.

If your teams view planning as something to be avoided, or your organization uses planning as something to hold against the development teams, this popular agile project management training can help your company break both of those attitudes and cycles.

In this session, participants will also learn how to break that cycle by learning and practicing skills that will help create useful plans that lead to reliable decision-making. Course attendees will leave with a solid understanding of and experience at agile release planning and iteration planning, aand a new understanding of the agile Scrum process and the practial applications of agile software development.

About This Agile Estimating and Planning Course

Agile Estimating and Planning (AEP) teaches skills that will help create useful plans. Course participants learn and practice in such a way that they leave the training with a solid understanding of agile release planning and iteration planning, as well as actual experience in these processes. This popular training for agile projects examines various approaches to estimating including unit-less story points and ideal time.

The course will also describe four techniques for deriving estimates, including how to use the popular Planning Poker technique. We will look at techniques to create a plan that dramatically improves the project's chances of on-time completion.

The Critical Questions

Two of the most important questions asked on any project are "When will we be done?" and "How soon can I have everything I've asked for?" These are not impossible questions. By taking an agile approach to estimating and planning, teams can learn how to create useful estimates that lead to reliable plans.

Onsite Availability

Don’t see a date and location you like? Want to train a team or department without the hassle of travel? This agile course is available for onsite delivery. Contact Mike Cohn at (720) 890-6110 or by e-mail at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com.

PMPs: This course counts for 8 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

Partticipants Will Learn

Agile development training participants will learn:

The importance of estimating size and deriving duration
The differences between story points and ideal time
The advantages of an abstract measure of size
Techniques for estimating
When and how to re-estimate
How and when to perform release and iteration planning
Tips for communicating about estimates and plans

Download a PDF brochure with additional information.

Who Should Attend

This course is equally suited for managers, programmers, testers, or anyone involved in estimating or planning a project. Participants will be able to return to their jobs with specific recommendations and actions they can perform to improve their current plans and projects.

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This course is also available onsite. For information Contact Mike Cohn

Agile Estimating and Planning – The Book

Agile Estimating and Planning is an enormously useful guide for estimating and planning agile projects. More information on the book is available on this site. The book guides readers through the agile estimating and planning process with step-by-step coahing and plenty of real world applications. Agile Estimating and Planning supports any agile, semiagile, or iterative process, including Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Unified Process, and many more.