By Tim Cleary
Performance management and the collaboration of team members during the software development life-cycle are essential to software solutions when quality and speed to implementation is the goal. Certain Agile best practices are used to facilitate management and collaboration, and ensure a rapid software development, testing, and implementation process.
During the Agile process, a critical step to achieving team collaboration and successful performance management is Release Commitment Meetings. It’s in these Release Commitment Meetings that Product Managers, Scrum Masters, Solution Architects, and System Developers collaborate and reach agreement and commitment to move the scope of a release into the rapid development, testing, and implementation phases.
The following are the high-level steps that need to be completed in advance of the commitment for each release:
- Product Managers work with Business Analysts / the Client to ensure user stories, acceptance criteria, priorities, and return on investment are understood. Functionally is documented and completed during this time, as well.
- Business Analysts work with Solution Architects and Developers to come up with the scope of a release.
- Sizing includes architectural complexity and is estimated on a story point basis for each user story.
- User stories considered feasible are based on development capacity and marked as “Release Candidates.”
Release Commitment Meetings are facilitated by project management commitment experts to review and obtain approval of user story release candidates. User stories are then be tagged to the release after alignment, approval, and commitment by the Product Managers, Solution Architects, and Developers. In the final scope control process, the committed scope is communicated back to the business / client and moved into the development, testing, and implementation phases.
While it’s tempting to jump right into the software development process and get to work, it’s important not to skip the step of these Release Commitment Meetings to ensure all parties are involved and collaborate on the Agile process. Commitment from the team will only help set your next project up for success!
KAI Partners, Inc. staff consists of Certified Scrum Masters and other Agile approach experts. Thinking about going Agile for your next project? Contact us today at info@kaipartners.com.
About the Author: Tim is an Executive Consultant with project management, consulting, business development, and sales experience spanning business transformation, technology adoption, change management, shared services, knowledge management, learning and development, and enterprise cost reduction. Tim has more than 30 years of business system development and implementation experience focused on Energy – Utilities/Oil & Gas, Technology, Media & Entertainment, Financial, Federal, State, and Life Sciences (Disability, Medicare Claims Management, and Conservation) organizations. Tim has lectured at the university level and at business conferences focusing on technology adoption, change/knowledge management, and business issues and solutions.