Build an Agile project management plan

The purpose of this play is to provide you with a basis of knowledge in Agile and Scrum in order to determine if these methods are beneficial to the management of your project or initiative.

The Agile approach seeks to break projects down into components and work in iterations (repetitions that work towards the desired result) in order to speed up development, maximize user input, and constantly improve.

Agile is an approach to working that seeks to:

• Empower small teams of experts to solve problems and build things
• Focus on users and prioritize delivering value to users quickly and repeatedly
• Mitigate risk on an ongoing basis
• Use feedback loops - both qualitative and quantitative - to improve products and processes
• Coordinate work with your team

Traditional approaches of working focus on distinct, separate and consecutive phases of a project that culminate in the development of a single product. Any updates or changes on the final product are often at a large scale and done infrequently. 

There are several methods to implementing Agile, including eXtreme programming, Kanban, Lean, and Scrum.  Scrum is the most frequently used method by teams that are new to the Agile approach and therefore, this play is primarily informed by Scrum.

It is worth noting that you should choose to incorporate components that work for your project or initiative or mix pieces from multiple approaches like Kanban and Scrum. Resources at the end of the play provide more information on Agile and some of the methods available.

During this play, you will proceed through several steps, including:

• Determining roles in your scrum team
• Determining your product increments and backlog
• Planning your sprints
• Organizing your scrums
• Holding your sprint review 
• Holding your sprint retrospective
• Moving forward

Are you unclear on what sprints, scrums, backlogs and increments mean? Don’t worry, as you proceed through the play, these terms should become clearer.

The first step is determining the roles and responsibilities of your “scrum” team.  The scrum team and roles can differ, but generally, the following roles and responsibilities are found:

Product owner

• Represents and speaks for the objectives of the project.  The product owner will identify the “backlog” items, determine priority of “backlog” items, ensure that the project is visible and transparent, and is accountable for the project.

Scrum Master

• Responsible for maintaining momentum, helping to address hurdles, and managing the project.  The scrum master works with the product owner on determining the “backlog” for each sprint, prioritization, and organizes meetings and discussions as needed.

Development Team

• Performs the daily work.  Generally, these individuals are cross-functional and can perform multiple roles when needed.

In addition, you may also have stakeholders (anyone who may be affected by the project or who may have input in the project), but they are generally not considered part of the scrum team.

Overall, your project will proceed through several iterations - each iteration is referred to as a “product increment”. The increment can be a website, service, report, or other product that is usable. There can be several increments as a product is developed and refined. The product owner and scrum master should meet to determine foreseeable product increments and what components might make up the increments.

The components of all the increments are referred to as the “product backlog”; this is all components that would need to be completed for the product to be considered finished and is essentially your master “to do” list.

The product backlog lists all content, features, functions, enhancements and fixes that will be made for a project. Each item will have several activities associated with its development. For example, developing a title page for a report may have activities such as: developing content, working with communications on graphics, developing a mock-up, seeking feedback from stakeholders on visuals, developing a final title page.

To help create momentum for project development, “sprints” are used to organize activities that will help produce a product increment.

A sprint is a regular work cycle (typically one month) during which work is completed and made available for review.  Sprint planning is conducted in collaboration with the entire scrum team and should seek to cover the following questions:

• What product backlog items can be delivered in the upcoming sprint?
• How will the work be achieved?

A single or several team member(s) may be contributing to various pieces of the backlog during a sprint. Note: the product backlog intended to be completed during a sprint is referred to as a “sprint backlog” – this is your “to do” list for your sprint.

Scrums are frequent (usually daily) short meetings held between the scrum master and development team that plan activities and seek to optimize collaboration and performance.

Typically, scrums cover the following:

• What has been done since the last scrum meeting?
• What will be done today by the development team to help progress toward the sprint goal?
• Are there any impediments that might prevent the development team from meeting the sprint goal?

In addition, you may also want to find ways to enhance communication and collaboration in your scrum team outside of your scrums. Consider finding ways to encourage collaboration physically (by sitting together) or digitally (by using Microsoft Teams, Slack and instant messenger features over emails).

At the end of your sprint, hold a sprint review in order to be able to show the components that were completed to management and stakeholders.

In addition, at the end of each sprint, organize a sprint retrospective with the scrum team in order to discuss lessons learned and find improvements for the next sprint.

After your sprint is completed, move onto planning your next sprint.

Once you have proceeded through all the sprints required to produce your product increment, you will want to continue the planning and development process for your next product increment and sprints. This process will continue as the product is launched.

• Overview of the Agile approach: Being agile in the Ontario Public Service (Government of Ontario, 2019)
• About the Scrum approach: The Scrum Guide^TM. (Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, 2017)
• An introduction to Kanban: What is Kanban? (Atlassian, 2019)
• Interview with Todd Scanlan, agile coach and scrum master: “Agile” is not the end goal, it’s the journey” (Canada, 2019)

Materials on this website were produced and/or compiled for the purpose of providing Canadians with access to information about the programs and services offered by the Government of Canada. It is subject to the following Terms and conditions.

Various aspects of this work are derivatives of the following sources:

• The “Service Manual” by the Government of the United Kingdom, used under the Open Government License 3.0.
• “Being Agile in the Ontario Public Service”, used under the Open Government Licence – Ontario.
• “The Scrum GuideTM” produced by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0).