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How to Create an Agile Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Approach

April 26, 2024

After hours of development, you finally deliver the product to your client. You’re confident all the hard work will pay off, and the client will be delighted.

But there’s a plot twist! The client returns with a lot of critical feedback. The product didn’t hit the right chords. And now, you have to start from scratch. 

Sounds like a nightmare for project managers and development teams, doesn’t it? 

One way you can avoid mishaps like this is by planning projects the agile way. 

Agile project planning is an iterative approach to project management that focuses on delivering frequent and incremental value. It promotes cross-functional collaboration and encourages ongoing improvement based on stakeholder feedback. 

Unlike traditional project planning methods (the Waterfall Method, for example) that emphasize having a strict plan and timeline, agile project planning prioritizes flexibility and adaptability. 

While the former method is more suited for long-term, less complicated projects that demand a rigorous structure, agile planning works best for short-term and complex development projects that require frequent stakeholder feedback. 

In this article, we’ll cover the essentials of agile project planning to help you get the most out of it.

The Benefits of Agile Project Planning 

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With user needs shifting constantly and development projects getting more complex, switching to agile can make your dev cycles more efficient. Here are some of the benefits of agile project planning: 

• Improved usability: Incorporating feedback from users and other stakeholders ensures the software meets their need
• Incremental delivery: Agile projects are broken down into smaller, manageable increments, prioritizing the delivery of the most valuable features early in the project lifecycle for faster feedback loops  
• Continuous improvement: Agile teams regularly reflect on their processes and seek opportunities to improve efficiency, quality, and effectiveness over time 
• Adaptability: Agile offers ample room for flexibility. It encourages adapting the project plan based on changing requirements, priorities, and market conditions 

Agile Planning Methodologies 

Let’s discuss the three most popular agile planning methodologies in project management.

Scrum is an agile software development framework designed to deliver value iteratively and incrementally.  

This subset of agile emphasizes adopting a flexible, holistic product development strategy where the dev team works as a unit to reach a common goal.

Key elements of Scrum project management include:

• Sprints : Short, time-boxed work cycles where the team focuses on completing a set of deliverables from the product backlog. These cycles typically last 1-4 weeks and keep the project focused and adaptable
• Daily stand-up meetings : Also known as daily scrums, these are brief meetings (usually 15-20 minutes) held each day during a sprint. The team uses this time to discuss progress, identify roadblocks, and ensure everyone is aligned.
• Product backlog : This is a prioritized list of features, requirements, and fixes for the entire project. It’s a living document that evolves throughout the project as new information emerges
• Sprint backlog : A subset of the product backlog, it includes the specific list of items the development team will work on during a particular sprint. This list is created during sprint planning and reflects what the team believes they can accomplish in that timeframe
• Sprint review meetings : Held at the end of each sprint, the review meeting is an opportunity for the team to showcase what they’ve completed and gather feedback from stakeholders
• Sprint retrospectives : Another meeting held at the conclusion of a sprint, the retrospective is a chance for the team to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and how they can improve their process for the next sprint

This is a visual framework used in agile planning and software development. Kanban focuses on continuous delivery and encourages teams to limit work in progress (WIP) to reduce waste and optimize flow.

Kanban boards help visualize workflow, with columns representing different stages of the process. For instance, a simple, three-column Kanban board categorizes tasks under a project into ‘To-do,’ ‘In-progress,’ and ‘Done.’ 

Kanban boards also offer flexibility in managing tasks and provide visibility into the status of action items.

Lean software development (LSD) is an agile methodology inspired by lean manufacturing principles. 

Also known as the minimum viable product (MVP) approach, LSD focuses on optimizing production and minimizing waste. 

It reduces unnecessary steps in the development process, prioritizes focusing on essential features, and encourages team collaboration. 

Using this method in agile planning process helps cut costs and allows quick responses to evolving customer needs and market trends.

Here are the four main principles that determine the direction of projects in agile planning: 

1. Iterative and incremental planning

In agile planning, a project is simply broken down into small, manageable iterations or increments. 

Instead of planning the entire project upfront, teams focus on preparing for the next iteration based on feedback and insights gained from previous iterations.

2. Agile planning based on user stories

User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature or functionality from an end-user’s perspective.

They read as follows:

As a [Who], I want to [What], So that [Why]

• As a [Who] : This identifies the user or persona who will benefit from the functionality
• I want to [What] : This describes the specific goal or action the user wants to accomplish
• So that [Why] : This explains the benefit or value the user will receive by achieving the goal

Here’s an example of a user story written in the typical Scrum format:

As a fitness instructor, I want to be able to create and manage workout routines for my clients online so that I can provide them with personalized exercise plans and easily track their progress.

Agile planning revolves around creating and prioritizing user stories based on their value to the customer. These user stories serve as building blocks for planning and executing work during iterations, ensuring the end product meets customer expectations and preferences.

3. Division of agile project plan into releases and sprints

Agile projects are generally organized into releases and sprints.

Releases represent larger milestones or deliverables that contain a collection of features or functionalities. On the other hand, Sprints are short, time-boxed iterations (usually one to four weeks) during which teams work on a subset of user stories or tasks. 

This division allows teams to deliver value incrementally, each contributing to the overall project goals.

4. The role of agile in strategic management

What’s strategic management? It is the process of managing an organization’s resources to meet its goals and objectives. 

Agile principles and practices allow businesses to respond quickly to market changes, innovate, incorporate customer feedback, reduce time to market (TTM), and improve project success rates, which lead to more effective strategic management. 

How to Create an Agile Project Plan

Agile planning is all about flexibility. You can adapt the processes to fit your project’s unique needs but ensure the team stays aligned with the main objectives.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an agile plan that drives your project toward success: 

Start your agile project plan by creating a user story in the format we highlighted above, that is,

“As a [persona], I [want to], [so that].”

For example, if your team is building an e-commerce website, you can have a user story that goes like this: 

“As a shopper, I want to be able to add items to my shopping cart so I can review and purchase them later.”

Once your user story is ready, it’s time to: 

• Define the project’s goals 
• Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress
• Devise a strategy to fulfill the user story 
• Identify the key products or solutions in a product backlog

The next step is creating a product roadmap.

In agile, a product roadmap refers to a plan of action that helps you achieve your vision. It outlines how a product or solution will evolve throughout the project, along with its key features.

This roadmap offers a high-level overview of the project, keeping team members aligned and guiding them in the right direction. 

Now that you have the strategy and a tentative roadmap to reach your goals, the next step is to plan incremental releases. 

In agile project planning, release refers to the delivery of the product after multiple iterations. 

During this stage, the agile team has to identify the scope and requirements of the releases and estimate the time needed. Be flexible with the deadline—set a target to complete a release by a certain quarter to proceed with a ballpark timeline in mind. 

During this step, the agile team has to plan the deliverables for each release.

Break down the deliverables into small actionable tasks based on user stories. These tasks will help the team work on new features and update old ones based on the evolving requirements of the end user. 

In Agile Scrum , this step is known as sprint planning . You create a sprint backlog by picking specific items from the product backlog. 

During weeks one to four of the sprint, the Scrum team works on the action items of a sprint backlog. Once the sprint starts, you cannot add or remove tasks from the sprint backlog. 

Arrange daily standups or daily scrum with your agile team to facilitate continuous collaboration and improvement. 

Hold a sprint review at the end of each sprint to showcase the work the team has completed so far and ask for feedback from the stakeholders. 

Sprint retrospective is another important agile ceremony. Use it to analyze what worked well during the sprint, which areas need development, and how the team can improve in the upcoming sprints. 

Managing all these steps becomes seamless with ClickUp’s Agile Project Management tool .

From creating product roadmaps, planning sprints, and tracking progress to maintaining collaboration, this platform keeps all the moving pieces under one roof and improves the efficiency of the development process.

Let’s see how you can make the most of this platform for planning your agile project: 

• Speed up the development process with ClickUp Brain . Use AI to generate product roadmaps, test plans, technical specifications, and more in an instant 
• Set project goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) with the ClickUp Goals feature and get automated reports on project progress 

• Keep stakeholders in the loop with ClickUp Chat View , assign tasks, and collaborate by tagging team members in comments

• Stay on top of agile capacity planning with ClickUp’s Workload view feature . Assess your team’s workload capacity and time estimates and plan sprints accordingly 

• Check how far you’ve come with the project and how much work is left with Burnup and Burndown charts respectively 

• Monitor sprints based on task status, use color-coding to get a quick overview of progress, and identify bottlenecks before they become a threat with a Cumulative Flow chart 

• Visualize agile workflows and sprints the way you want. Easily sort them by status, due date, priority, and more with Board view

Whether you follow Scrum, Kanban, Lean Software Development, or any other agile methodology, ClickUp’s Project Management platform empowers you to manage all projects within a unified platform. 

No more juggling between multiple apps—ClickUp supports 1000+ integrations with popular tools such as GitLab, GitHub, Figma, Slack, and many more.

The tool helps maintain the agile principles, enhances productivity, and enables development teams to shift focus to their core task, i.e., developing stellar products. 

Agile Project Planning Templates 

Agile project planning can feel overwhelming if you’re starting from ground zero—but not when you have a ready-to-use framework for guidance! 

ClickUp’s free and fully customizable agile templates can make planning and organizing projects less stressful. 

Here are some templates to check out: 

Too many projects on your plate? ClickUp’s Project Planner Template can help you find calm amidst the chaos.

Use this agile project plan template to visualize the progress of your ongoing projects through Kanban boards, allocate resources correctly, and keep stakeholders aligned.

You can track project progress with custom statuses such as Completed, In Progress, On Hold, and To Do. Custom attributes such as Risk, Remaining Budget, Duration, and Work Progress allow you to quickly scan project data. 

The template also offers six custom view options (Project Activities, Schedule, and Budget Tracker, to name a few) to keep you updated on each project’s whereabouts. 

If you manage a non-development team and want to implement agile methodologies into your system, ClickUp’s Agile Project Management Template would be a good starting point.

Use the Form to populate the backlog with tasks and prioritize them, carry out tasks with the Board or Sprints, and schedule regular check-ins (such as sprint reviews or retrospectives) to make improvements on the go. 

Complex software development projects require a standardized system to track progress, optimize sprints, and ensure faster delivery. You can establish this system with ClickUp’s Agile Scrum Management Template .   

From identifying backlogs, sprint planning, daily standups, and sprint review to retrospectives—the template helps you take care of every step. 

Custom statuses, fields, and views ensure visibility into project progress and establish clear communication among product, engineering, and QA teams. Use the template to closely monitor your workflow, address bottlenecks early on, and improve overall efficiency and performance. 

Want to deliver top-tier results within short deadlines? Focus on effective sprint planning with ClickUp’s Agile Sprint Planning Template . 

It helps you get a detailed overview of tasks in the project backlog, keeps all stakeholders on the same page, and offers seamless progress tracking across different stages of the sprint lifecycle. 

Use custom statuses, fields, and views to tailor the framework to your requirements. Features such as time tracking, tags, dependency warnings, and emails make your job as a project manager easier, keeping your agile team more productive and organized. 

Another plus point? These project management templates are helpful for new agile practitioners and experts looking to be more efficient with project planning. 

Overcoming Hurdles in Agile Planning 

As a project manager, you must be aware of the challenges that may hit you out of the blue during agile planning. They could come in any of the following forms:

Scope creep

In agile methodology, stakeholders offer input throughout the project, and the requirements keep changing with each sprint. Such evolving project requirements often expand the work scope beyond what was initially decided.

Time crunch

One of Agile’s main priorities is collaboration. However, when the team of engineers constantly stays in the loop with testers and clients, it can take away a lot of time from their daily schedule. 

Unfit for certain projects

While agile planning works best for software development projects, it may not be suitable for projects that cannot accommodate incremental changes. For instance, agile won’t work for construction projects, as continuous feedback from multiple stakeholders can do more harm than good.

Despite challenges, project managers can maintain an amicable relationship with stakeholders, customers, users, or sponsors and negotiate like pros. Let’s see how:

• Active listening: Patiently listen to your stakeholders’ needs and concerns during the project and initiate changes accordingly, but be sure to avoid scope creep 
• Transparency: Build trust and reduce uncertainties by keeping stakeholders informed about progress, challenges, and decisions 
• Collaborative decision-making: Involve stakeholders in all major or minor decision-making processes to ensure their buy-in and better alignment 
• Conflict resolution: If any miscommunication or conflict arises between the team members and the stakeholders, address it promptly and constructively and find a mutually beneficial solution 

When you implement agile planning methodologies for project management, you can readily and efficiently accommodate changing user needs and client feedback and adapt your processes. 

You don’t have to predict the outcome—agile gives you the flexibility to figure it out as you proceed with the iterations. 

As a result, you can create high-quality products that add value to the customer’s life without worrying about wasted effort and resources. 

Ready to get started? Sign up to ClickUp and manage projects the agile way!

1. How do you create an agile plan?

To create an agile plan, start by defining clear objectives. Break them into manageable tasks, estimate effort for each task, prioritize them, and then iteratively execute and adapt based on feedback.

2. What is included in an agile project plan?

An agile project plan includes project goals, product roadmap, product backlog, sprint backlog, daily standups, release planning, and progress tracking.

3. How do you structure an agile project?

Structure an agile project by defining clear objectives, creating a product backlog, breaking it into sprint backlogs, assigning tasks to team members, conducting regular sprint meetings, iterating through sprints, and adapting based on feedback.

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What Is Agile Project Planning? An Introduction for Beginners

While agile is relatively new, it has made a big splash in the work of project management. It started in software development, but has since been adopted by other industries that have seen the benefit of agile’s iterative approach.

Those that use an agile project management framework don’t like to consider it a methodology, though some argue it is. Agile is more of an approach, and could almost be defined as a philosophy. Today we’re going to sidestep the philosophical, though, and instead focus on agile planning in project management, and specifically, creating an agile project plan.

What Is Agile Project Management?

The agile methodology is an iterative, adaptive approach to managing a project that has an emphasis on rapid change and flexibility. The reason for this flexibility is to deliver value to the customer faster. A team practicing agile works incrementally, continuously evaluates the requirements and results, and responds quickly to any changes that come up.

Agile also focuses on collaboration and keeping lines of communication open. There must be trust among the agile team, and an embrace of change. There is still a person who prioritizes tasks (usually known as the product owner ), but the agile team themselves determine how to do the project planning and get the work done. Yes—agile has self-organizing teams that direct their own work!

This approach goes back to the development of the Agile Manifesto, which was written by seventeen software developers who found consensus around twelve principles. The length of interactions, or the size of teams, isn’t defined. It’s more about adhering to the stated values, which you can execute with scrum, hybrid methodology and more.

What Is Agile Planning?

However you choose to implement the agile principles, there is one thing all approaches have in common: an agile plan. Agile work takes place during short periods of time that are called agile sprints . A sprint is usually between one and three weeks, and the team uses this time to complete deliverables.

There are certain characteristics of agile planning that deserve mention to get a full idea of what the agile planning process entails:

• First, there is the release. This is the product that an agile team works on.
• The release plan is broken down into sprints, with each sprint dictating a specific set of tasks to be completed.
• These tasks are called user stories.
• You then build a plan from these user stories, which describe the needs of the end-user.
• Then, the team works together to figure out the best way to address these user stories.

The sprint is the building block of agile planning. Agile sprints to be the same length in duration and are repeated, ending with a working feature that can be rolled out to the end-user. Due to the iterative nature of a sprint, a team will, over time, be able to better estimate how long user stories will take.

Software like ProjectManager makes executing sprints easy. Identify work that needs to be done in your backlog, prioritize it, then execute that work as a team on our kanban board. Balance resources with workload tools, and track progress with dashboards so you deliver your best work every time. Try ProjectManager today for free.

Why Planning Still Matters in the Agile Methodology

Agile planning gives an agile team a clear picture of the goals of their project. This supports the collaborative nature of agile, because everyone is on the same page. Agile plans are not obsolete and anachronistic, they define the work and help the team make decisions based on facts.

Project plans are an organization technique, and agile requires organization—albeit, much less than a project planned in waterfall. This might be why some are quick to dismiss planning when working in an agile project management framework. But that’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Agile planning is based on sprints and user stories, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the big picture.

How to Make an Agile Project Plan

A team develops an agile project plan as the product owner describes the goals for the release, which are typically to improve the end-user experience and resolve problems. Once this has been defined, the next step is to get the team together and discuss desired features.

Related: Agile Sprint Planning Template

This leads to another discussion about the details for each of those features, and what might impact their delivery. The team also identifies any risk that might negatively impact the project, as well as task dependencies. The features that are riskiest and have the most value to the end-user are usually completed first.

Step-By-Step Guide to Creating an Agile Project Plan

Now you’re ready to create a plan:

• Begin with a retrospective meeting. A retrospective meeting is where you discuss the previous sprint to learn from what went right and what went wrong.
• Run a sprint planning meeting. A sprint planning meeting looks at the release and any updates that have occurred, such as changes to priority, new features, etc.
• Create user stories: Detail the user stories as much as possible so that they are well-defined.
• Create deliverables: Break the user story down into tasks that are usually not more than a day in duration.
• Delegate responsibility: Assign tasks to team members and assign ownership to make sure they’re committed to executing them.
• Create a workflow: Put the tasks on a board, either a card on a physical board or with project management software tools, such as kanban boards.
• Track progress: Use the board to track the progress of the sprint as the tasks move from one stage of the production cycle to the next.
• Use a burndown chart: Create a burndown chart to show the number of tasks or hours left.

Related: Agile vs Waterfall and the Rise of Hybrid Projects

Agile Project Planning Terms

Here are some important agile concepts that you’ll need to know to create and execute your agile project plan:

• Product Backlog: In agile project management, a product backlog is a list of deliverables that derive from the product roadmap and its requirements. Things like new product features, bug fixes or any changes are backlog items that should be documented here.
• Product owner: The product owner is the member of the agile team who’s responsible for defining user stories and prioritizing the product backlog.
• User stories: It’s a small task within an agile plan. They’re called user stories because they’re product features described from the end-user perspective.
• Burndown chart: A burndown chart is used to show the amount of work that has been completed in an agile sprint and the number of tasks or hours left.
• Burn rate: In agile project management, the burn rate is a metric used to measure the efficiency of an agile team. It measures the relationship between the completion of user stories and the time spent on them.
• Team velocity: The velocity is the broader performance metric that measures the amount of work a team can get done during a sprint.
• Story point estimation: This is a method used to measure agile teams’ performance. A story point is a unit that is used to calculate the effort needed to complete a user story. Story points measure three factors, complexity, risk and repetition.

Now that you know the basics of agile planning, you’ll need a project management tool like ProjectManager to help you manage your agile projects.

How ProjectManager Helps With Agile Planning

To properly facilitate agile planning, you need the right tools. ProjectManager is a work management software that connects agile teams and helps them run better sprints and speed up releases.

Stay Notified on Task Changes

Connecting teams so they can collaborate on their sprints is a top priority. ProjectManager lets team members work together at the task level, giving them tools to attach files, leave comments and change task status. When a task’s status changes, a notification goes out by email as well as showing up as an in-app alert.

Create Workflows on Boards

Agile teams are self-organizing, and need a tool that gives them the autonomy to work the way they want. ProjectManager’s kanban board is designed to provide that flexibility. The board view acts as a digital organizer, with cards that move from one column to the next to represent the different stages of production.

Manage Your Resources in Real-Time

In addition, ProjectManager has resource management features, reporting tools and a real-time dashboard that provide high-level views of your sprints. Unlike other tools that make you configure the dashboard, ProjectManager’s dashboard automatically calculates data on metrics such as time, cost and more.

ProjectManager is award-winning software that organizes your backlog, helps plan your sprints and monitors your progress—perfect for agile planning. See what ProjectManager can do when making your next agile project. Try it free today.

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Agile planning: a step-by-step guide

Overwhelmingly, the world is going agile. Companies that adopt Agile methodologies see a range of benefits, from higher rates of customer satisfaction, stronger employee engagement, and primarily smoother operations.

Still, despite all the positives related to Agile planning, many businesses haven’t adopted the practice. Whether out of hesitance for change or a desire to keep things status quo, companies who aren’t using Agile planning risk falling behind the competition.

In this blog post, we’re going to dive into what the approach is and the steps you can take to apply it to your own workflows.

What is agile planning?

Agile planning is a part of the Agile methodology, which is a project management style with an incremental, iterative approach. Instead of using an in-depth plan from the start of the project—which is typically product-related—Agile leaves room for requirement changes throughout and relies on constant feedback from end users.

With Agile planning, a project is broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks with the ultimate goal of having a defined image of a project’s vision. Agile planning involves looking at different aspects of a project’s tasks and how they’ll be achieved, for example:

• Roadmaps to guide a product’s release ad schedule
• Sprints to work on one specific group of tasks at a time
• A feedback plan to allow teams to stay flexible and easily adapt to change
• User stories, or the tasks in a project, capture user requirements from the end user’s perspective

Essentially, with Agile planning, a team would decide on a set of user stories to action at any given time, using them as a guide to implement new features or functionalities in a tool. Looking at tasks as user stories is a helpful way to imagine how a customer may use a feature and helps teams prioritize work and focus on delivering value first.

Essential characteristics of Agile planning

A whopping 71% of organizations have adopted agile planning methodologies, and 60% of those companies increased their profits after doing so. However, implementing Agile methodologies is important and can dictate the success of this new project management format in your company. Before implementing any project planning method, whether it’s Kanban boards, Gantt charts, or Scrum, it’s important to understand the basics. Here are four essential characteristics of Agile you should be aware of.

An agile project plan is divided into releases and sprints

Agile planners define a release as creating a new product or substantially updating an existing product. Each release is broken down into several iterations called sprints. Each sprint has a fixed length, typically two weeks, and the team has a predefined list of items, or user stories, to work through in each sprint.

Task creation and planning is based on user stories

As mentioned above, a user story is a task that caters to an end-user’s needs. For example, when working on a software product, teams may work on features based on user stories, such as:

• “As a team member, it’s helpful for me to receive a notification telling me which new tasks are assigned to me.”
• “As a team leader, I need to receive an email when a task is stuck or behind schedule so I can keep my project on track.”

Unlike other project management methodologies, like waterfall , in which teams would create detailed technical specifications of exactly what they would build, with Agile planning, teams focus on documenting what users need. Throughout the sprint, team members figure out how to address specific user needs in the most efficient way possible.

Planning is iterative and incremental

All sprints are of equal length, and an Agile team repeats the same process over and over again, like Scrum ceremonies, in every sprint. The result of each sprint should be working features that can be rolled out to end-users.

An iterative process allows the team to learn what they are capable of, estimate how many user stories they can action and finish in a given timeframe, and discover problems that impede their progress. Then, newly discovered problems can be addressed in subsequent sprints.

Work estimation is a collective effort

A focal point of Agile planning is that development teams should participate in planning and estimation, instead of solely management deciding on the work scope. In the sprint stage, Agile planning allows teams to determine the complexity of user stories to carry out a plan, called a story point.

For example, a team can assign 1 point to a simple user story, 2-3 points for a moderately complex one, and 4-5 points for a bigger story based on their understanding of the work involved. Then, user stories that aren’t actioned or assigned points on the current sprint are put into the project backlog.

The 6 levels of Agile planning

Agile planning is a multi-level process, with each stage representing a different part of the planning process. Often, people refer to the Agile planning process as an Agile planning onion for its different layers, each one giving way to the next. When looking at Agile planning like an onion, we start with the outer layer first and slowly get closer to the core, going from less frequent on the outside to more frequent stages as we move in.

( Image Source )

Let’s take a closer look at each layer of the onion, what it entails, and when it’s used.

• Strategy: This is a high-level approach to planning, often done at the beginning of a project when organizations define their long-term vision and identify resources and capabilities to reach strategic objectives
• Portfolio: In this stage, the focus is on managing a portfolio of projects or products, including prioritization, resource allocation, and alignment with business objective, ensuring that resources are applied effectively
• Product: In the product planning stages, teams define overall product strategy, decide on a development approach, and set dates, themes, timelines, and prioritize features to meet project goals and respond to market needs
• Release: Release planning breaks down the product roadmap into specific releases, focusing on which user stories to prioritize, each story’s timeline, team capacities, and the features or functionality to be delivered in each release
• Iteration: Iteration planning, also known as Sprint planning, defines the work to be done in a short iteration or sprint, usually spanning 1-4 weeks and involves breaking down user stories into tasks and estimating the effort required
• Daily: In the final layer, teams use the daily stand-up or scrum meeting to plan daily tasks and discuss progress and impediments, helping keep the team aligned and focused on the immediate tasks at hand

Agile planning process: Step-by-step

Agile project planning involves multiple steps. Each step is meant to propel your project forward while maintaining an organized approach to managing your product and workforce. The steps can be adapted to your team’s specific needs, and some need to be maintained on an ongoing basis, but overall, following the steps below will help you successfully implement an Agile plan for your next product launch.

1. Define vision

Your first step in Agile planning is to start by defining the vision for your project or product, which includes overall goals and objectives to be achieved.

2. Set clear expectations on goals

Next, you should set clear expectations on what you want the output to be so that all team members and stakeholders are on the same page. Even if tasks or certain plans change due to feedback cycles and new iterations, the expectation should remain constant.

3. Define and break down the product roadmap

After setting expectations, it’s important to build a high-level product roadmap to highlight milestones and deliverables, giving your project more of a strategic direction. Then, the roadmap should be broken down into releases or increments, each with a defined set of features to include.

4. Create tasks based on user stories

This step should be more ongoing as project and user needs evolve over different iterations, but the idea is to create actionable tasks based on real user stories so that team members can work on adding new features, updating existing ones, or creating more functionality in your product.

5. Populate product backlog

Your product backlog is a collection of tasks and user stories that should be worked on over a project’s lifecycle. It includes tasks that aren’t a part of the current sprint but may be a part of future ones and can operate as a place to collect new tasks that arise as a result of feedback, roadblocks, or problems that need to be solved. Tasks in the backlog should also be prioritized according to user needs or a project’s timeline.

6. Plan iterations and estimate effort

For each release, it’s important to plan a series of iterations or sprints. In this process, you want to define each iteration’s goals and objectives while also estimating the effort and time it may take based on the current sprint’s tasks. This helps gauge a sprint’s complexity so you can create an interaction plan based on current workfloads, deliverables, and timelines.

7. Conduct daily stand-ups

Daily meetings, often called stand-ups, are a helpful Agile ceremony that allows teams to discuss any pressing issues and plan the day’s work. Daily stand-ups are short and focused and involve very short-term planning to tackle a task currently being worked on.

8. Monitor and adapt

Finally, with Agile planning, it’s always important to monitor progress against overall goals, iteration plans, and your product roadmap. Track any deviations from the plan so you can find immediate solutions. At the end of each sprint, you can identify areas for improvement and implement them in future iterations.

These eight steps involve a lot of scheduling, planning, and communicating to implement effectively. To keep this process organized and running smoothly, many teams use a platform like monday dev, which is built on the monday.com Work Operating System (Work OS). Platforms like monday dev help teams run their projects, communicate between themselves, and track all updates in real-time.

Implementing monday dev for effortless Agile planning

Agile planning’s structure and iterative approach to work make it the perfect complement to development teams, though any team can use this method. Once you have an understanding of how to use and maintain this methodology, take your Agile planning to the next level on monday dev . Not only will you always have a clear view of each sprint, but you’ll also be able to reinforce Agile principles such as transparency and agility every step of the way. Here’s a closer look at some monday dev features that are ideal for the Agile planning process.

Agile templates

monday dev makes it easy to start quickly with ready-to-go templates for Agile planning. Whether it’s an Agile Project Management template or a Sprint Management template , you can set up your project instantly and customize the template to fit your needs.

Automations to seamlessly implement Agile planning steps

Automations in monday dev help Agile projects flow more seamlessly by putting manual tasks on autopilot. Build your own custom automation formulas to trigger reminders, notifications, communications, or other actions to ensure tasks are kept on time and nothing falls through the cracks.

Advanced reporting and insights for stronger iterations

Agile planning is all about making adjustments to improve the flow of your project, and with monday dev’s advanced reporting capabilities, you can make sure you have all the insights you need to make informed decisions. From burndown charts to performance insights and everything in between, monday dev helps you stay consistently on top of your work.

Planning for better Agile projects

The more planning that goes into a project and all its tasks, the more likely the project is to go smoothly. Hiccups can always happen, but when a project is planned according to Agile practices, roadblocks are easier to manage. Agile planning is made even easier by using an intuitive platform like monday dev so that your entire team are aligned while staying on top of their individual tasks and working collaboratively towards the same goal.

What is the Agile method of project planning?

The Agile method of project planning is a flexible, iterative approach involving different planning stages, focused on delivering value to customers through ongoing improvements and iterations.

What is the difference between strategic planning and Agile planning?

Strategic planning focuses on long-term goals and objectives, while Agile planning is more focused on short-term, iterative planning with the purpose of achieving an overall goal in a changing environment.

What is the difference between Agile and sprint planning?

Agile planning focuses on breaking down work into small, manageable tasks and prioritizing them based on effort and value, while sprint planning is a specific type of Agile planning that occurs at the start of each new sprint where teams decide on the work that will be done.

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Project Management

Guide to agile planning in 2024: processes, tools and templates.

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If you’re looking to move away from the overflow of documents and strict planning guides that traditional project management methodologies require in favor of adopting a free-flowing, adaptable method that encourages communication, agile planning is for you.

Last Updated: 17 May'24 2024-05-17T16:07:58+00:00

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• An agile approach to planning can help make teams more adaptable, flexible and accepting of change during any project stage.
• Agile planning encourages teams to communicate openly with each other, with stakeholders and with clients, which can increase the chances of project success.
• Many project management software platforms exist for those wishing to adopt agile planning approaches. Our top three picks are monday.com, ClickUp and Zoho Projects.

Facts & Expert Analysis About Agile Planning

• Scrum is king: Scrum is by far the most popular agile framework, with an estimated 61% of companies employing this framework to help deliver projects on time. 2
• Greater success: More projects planned with an agile approach are completed successfully (64%) than projects planned with the traditional waterfall method (49%). 1
• Increased revenue: According to a report from 2022, companies using agile planning techniques saw an average growth in revenue of 60%. 1

Agile project management has grown in popularity in recent years. In fact, at least 71% of U.S. companies 1 use agile planning methods to map out their projects. It should be no surprise that companies are finding success by utilizing the best project management software and adopting agile approaches.

If you want to increase project success but aren’t sure what agile is , you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll break down agile planning and explain the stages of the agile process. We’ll explain the difference between traditional planning and agile planning, discuss the key components of agile and cover what the agile manifesto says about planning. Let’s jump in.

Definition: What Is Agile Planning?

Traditional project management methodologies like waterfall use project plans that are set in stone. However, agile planning — which is generally (but not always) used for software development projects — enables project teams to formulate a plan of attack for upcoming projects while also allowing room for changes as the projects progress.

In agile project management, software development and other projects are broken down into chunks of work that lead to a product vision. Agile planning involves sitting down with stakeholders and clients at the beginning of the project, after each sprint and at the end of the project so feedback on iterations can be shared and changes can be implemented frequently.

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Methods & Techniques in Agile Planning

Below, we’ll examine several popular agile planning methods in more detail so you can better understand how each method works.

What Is PI Planning in Agile?

Project increment (PI) planning in agile relates specifically to a version of planning used in the SAFe method , which is a type of scaled agile. PI planning is similar to sprint planning in the scrum framework. In SAFe, agile release trains (a large team comprising many small scrum teams) use PI to plan large-scale sprints that last between eight and 12 weeks. 

What Is Sprint Planning in Agile?

Sprints are a key component of scrum. Sprints are time-boxed events that last one to four weeks. During a sprint planning meeting, the product owner and the development team create user stories (tasks) to work on, and create definition of ready (DoR) and definition of done (DoD) strategies to ensure that the items being worked on are in the best shape possible.

What Is Capacity Planning in Agile?

Capacity planning is a popular method that many agile teams use. Thanks to the reports that many of the best agile tools provide, project managers, scrum masters and product owners can see how much work their team has been able to finish (known as team velocity) in time-boxed events.

During planning meetings, tasks are assigned values like story points to determine which resources are required to finish the job. An agile team can also use various agile estimation techniques , like planning poker or t-shirt sizing, to estimate the effort required to complete a task. Capacity planning leads to well-planned sprints and time-boxed events.

What Is Adaptive Planning in Agile?

Project leaders who embrace adaptive planning can quickly change the team’s direction to meet new requirements and goals that stakeholders and clients set and request. Adaptive planning is flexible, welcomes feedback and is the backbone of agile methodologies and frameworks.

What Are the Stages in the Agile Planning Process?

The stages of agile projects can vary depending on the framework and technique you use to lead your team. Below, we’ll examine the popular agile planning onion technique.

Agile Planning Onion

The agile planning onion is a project visualization tool that can help project managers navigate through six planning stages: strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily. Each layer of the onion relates to a portion of agile planning. 

When using the agile onion, you start with the outer layer and work your way in. The outer layers represent items or tasks that occur less frequently, while the inner layers represent more frequent processes. Below, we’ll look at the stages in more detail.

The onion’s outer layer represents the overall strategy that agile project managers want to use and the project’s goals. During this stage, senior leaders, stakeholders and clients create a project charter (project scope) that defines the vision. Project resources and ways to reach project objectives are also discussed.

During the portfolio part of the onion process, project leaders manage their portfolio of projects and discuss prioritization, resource allocation and how the project visions align with business objectives. Project roadmaps are also developed.

When teams reach the product layer, the senior leaders decide on which software development approach to use, and timelines, due dates and themes are set. Feature priorities are also finalized.

Teams hold release planning discussions to decide how many sprints or time-boxed events there will be, determine which product features (user stories) will be included in each sprint and set team velocities (capacities). 

The fifth layer, iteration (sprint planning), is when the product owner and development team meet to discuss and define the definitions of ready and done, as well as the acceptance criteria. In addition, teams assign story points to each task or use other agile estimation techniques to determine how complex a user story is. Delegation poker can also be used to assign tasks.

The innermost layer, daily, represents the daily meetings during which teams discuss the project, the tasks they’re working on and any issues or successes they’re experiencing. Daily meetings are one of the most critical agile project management practices, as they help teams stay focused on the project.

Agile Planning vs Traditional Planning

Traditional project management approaches differ significantly from agile methodologies and frameworks. In traditional methodologies like waterfall or the critical path method (CPM), projects are planned down to the last detail before work begins. Teams do not deviate from the plan, and product testing is one of the final steps.

Agile methodologies easily meet the changing needs of stakeholders and clients. If the market changes or a key new feature is needed, teams can easily stop, pivot and realign themselves with new goals. Agile teams also frequently test each new iteration of the software or product they’re working on to iron out bugs and issues.

Agile Planning Tools & Software

Fortunately, the days of using sticky notes on a whiteboard are behind us. Now, many project management software platforms can help us plan, track and manage projects with ease, like these free project management software options. Below, we list five of our favorite agile project management tools to help modern teams get the job done.

• monday.com : Our favorite agile project management tool is capable of supporting all agile frameworks. monday.com is easy to use, is loaded with features and offers affordable plans. Learn more in our monday.com review .
• ClickUp : A powerful platform for agile methodology, ClickUp is unmatched when it comes to collaboration tools and has easy-to-use task management features. Find out more in our ClickUp review .
• Zoho Projects : This is the ideal platform for new project teams due to its intuitive, agile-friendly interface; integrations with other Zoho products; and powerful chat tool. Read our Zoho Projects review to learn more.
• Trello : Trello features the best kanban boards in the industry. Its drag-and-drop mechanics and customizable task cards are unmatched. Trello also supports unlimited integrations. You can learn more in our full Trello review .
• Jira : Perhaps the best tool for agile software development, Jira’s backlogs, issue trackers and boards are unmatched. Check out our Jira review for more details.

Agile Planning Template

Project management software can help you plan and execute projects, but you can find yourself in a bind if you don’t know how to get the most out of the software. Fortunately, platforms like monday.com come with numerous templates that can help you quickly get projects up and running. Below, we’ll take a look at some popular monday.com agile planning templates.

Software Development Templates

monday.com is ideal for agile project teams working on software development projects. monday.com offers many templates that can help the entire team execute a project, move through the iterative process and realize the project vision. You can find templates for sprint planning, sprint retrospectives , product roadmaps, features, releases and more.

Human Resources Templates

Many human resources teams have switched from traditional project planning to agile planning, and for good reason. monday.com knows this and supplies templates for kanban boards to help human resources professionals breeze through the recruitment process, onboard new employees and much more.

Marketing and CRM Templates

monday.com tops our list of the best project management software for CRM because of its templates. There are templates for event management, social media campaigns, content calendars, marketing activities, customer onboarding and sales. You can activate the templates with a single click and use them as they come or customize them to your liking.

Browse through the extensive list of templates. You’ll find solutions for freelancers, startups, content production, education, real estate and many more industries. If you’re a project manager, scrum master or team member who wants to get a head start when it comes to managing projects and strive for continuous improvement, templates are the way to go.

How Does the Agile Manifesto Address Planning?

The agile manifesto , created by a group of software developers who were tired of the restrictive waterfall project management method, is quite clear about how to approach planning with the agile methodology. In agile projects, you put the customer first in everything you do.

The manifesto champions the idea of welcoming changes, even late in the development process; frequently delivering functional software; using working software as the main method of measuring progress; and promoting daily collaboration among developers. It also states that teams must meet regularly to reflect on progress and adjust their behavior accordingly.

Key Components of Agile

Now that you know what agile planning is, it’s time to take a more in-depth look at some key components of the agile planning process. We list four important components that should never be overlooked.

Face-to-Face Meetings

No matter which agile framework or method you use, you should expect to participate in face-to-face meetings. The agile manifesto makes it clear that for projects to be successful, open and honest discussions between team members, stakeholders and clients should frequently take place. Communication and collaboration are the keys to any agile project plan.

Backlog Refinement

Backlog refinement is the process of updating, prioritizing and analyzing user stories and tasks to work on in upcoming sprints and time-boxed sessions. By ensuring that user stories are complete, that new client and stakeholder requests have been added, and that every development team member is in agreement, sprints and work periods run smoothly. 

Agile Tools

We’ve discussed project management software and how it can help you set project goals, but kanban and scrum boards are worth mentioning. These agile boards give leaders a global overview of a project. Easy-to-read columns that house task cards can show which part of the development process a task is in and whether team members are being over- or underutilized.

Sprints and Time-Boxed Events

A key component of agile planning is breaking down large projects into small, easily manageable periods of work that last from one to four weeks. By breaking down projects, teams can focus on high-priority tasks and managers can efficiently track team velocities. Time-boxed events allow development teams to frequently deliver working software and product iterations.

Characteristics of Agile Planning

Agile planning can greatly enhance the probability of project success. Once your team has adapted to the process, you can expect the following benefits.

• Increased collaboration: Thanks to the nature of agile, teams are encouraged to communicate openly and work together to solve problems. Increased collaboration leads to better end products.
• Higher-quality products: Teams can create higher-quality products for their clients thanks to improved collaboration and communication, better user stories and concise definitions of ready and done.
• Continuous feedback: In agile frameworks, stakeholders and clients become part of the team. This increases the amount of input they can give the team, which means the client has a greater chance of ending up with the product they envisioned.
• Continuous improvement: Teams that adopt agile approaches are more likely to continually learn thanks to frequent meetings and feedback loops.
• Improved customer focus: Frequent meetings with stakeholders and clients help the team understand exactly what the customer or stakeholders want. The customer-first approach to product development appeases clients and drives customer value.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt that abandoning traditional project management practices and adopting an agile approach to planning can pay off in a big way, especially in the product and software development industries. Agile frameworks allow teams to pivot quickly, factor in requests that are outside of the original project scope, collaborate efficiently and plan better. If you want to know more about Agile, you can read our list of Agile interview questions.

Have you considered adopting an agile planning approach? Do any agile frameworks (scrum, kanban, XP) pique your interest more than others? Have you discovered any other benefits since switching to agile planning? Let us know in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading.

FAQ: Agile Strategic Planning

The six levels of the agile onion method for planning are strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily.

The stages of agile planning are the same as the levels of agile planning: strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily.

The agile method for project planning adopts a highly adaptable, flexible and iterative approach. After creating an initial project scope, agile frameworks allow for significant changes throughout all project stages.

Agile strategic planning borrows many elements from agile software development, such as creating product visions, embracing change, holding frequent meetings for reviews and self-reflection, and being open to continuous feedback from stakeholders and clients.

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What Is Agile Planning? 

Agile planning is an iterative approach to managing projects avoiding the traditional concept of detailed project planning with a fixed date and scope. Based on the principles rooted in the Agile Manifesto, Agile project planning emphasizes frequent value delivery, constant end-user feedback, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Unlike traditional project planning, Agile planning remains flexible and adaptable to changes that may emerge at any project lifecycle stage. 

Why Is Agile Planning Important? 

Agile planning is crucial because it offers a flexible approach to project management that focuses on adaptability, meeting customer needs, and continuous improvement. Agile teams utilize regular feedback loops to share knowledge and align project goals with customer requirements, resulting in 59% of Agile adopters reporting increased satisfaction due to enhanced collaboration.

Medium and large organizations often measure success by predictability, while smaller companies focus on the value delivered. This trend underscores the importance of evaluating ideas based on their impact on business goals and return on investment.

Agile planning allows for real-time adjustments and work prioritization based on new information, promoting frequent delivery of small work increments and early risk mitigation. Recent data shows that 33% of organizations have adopted Agile planning tools for large-scale projects in the last three to five years, highlighting a significant shift towards Agile methods.

Agile Project Planning vs. Traditional Project Planning

In the past, business leaders spent considerable time crafting detailed long-term plans. This approach worked well until the late 20th century, when dynamic markets required more frequent changes, and a flexible planning method became necessary.

With the rise of knowledge work, Agile project planning emerged as a critical approach. Unlike traditional (Waterfall) planning, which is linear and rigid, Agile planning is iterative and adaptive to change.

Both methods have their merits. Traditional planning is ideal for projects like construction, where detailed, step-by-step plans are crucial, and changes can be costly. In contrast, Agile planning is suited for knowledge work, allowing for adjustments at any stage to meet customer needs. Agile focuses on short-term detailed planning, enabling easy modifications as needed.

Agile Planning Is NOT Scrum Planning

You will often read that Agile planning is the same as Scrum planning. However, this is far from the truth. Scrum is a prescriptive framework for software development that proposes one concrete way to plan. It is prevalent in the software world, but it is often the subject of severe criticism.

The 6 Levels of Agile Planning

The "Agile Planning Onion" is a great way to visualize the various levels of planning in an Agile project lifecycle. Let's explore each level from a product development perspective.

• Strategy : The outermost layer represents the organization's strategic vision and goals. Senior leadership defines how these objectives will be achieved.
• Portfolio : Here, senior managers plan the portfolio of products and services that will support the strategic vision set at the strategy level.
• Product : Teams create a high-level plan and break it down into key deliverables, focusing on features and functionalities that align with the strategic objectives.
• Release : At this level, key features are scheduled to be delivered within a specific time frame, usually about a month.
• Iteration : This level manages work over a few weeks. Teams select tasks or user stories from the backlog to deliver in small, manageable batches.
• Daily : Daily planning meetings allow teams to discuss their tasks, progress, and any roadblocks. They create an action plan for the next steps in project execution.

Agile planning is crucial at every level of the onion. It's not just for day-to-day team activities (Daily, Iteration, Release); it also applies to product management, portfolio management, and strategic planning . Being agile in your strategy defines true business agility .

Agile planning is iterative, meaning you continuously develop and adjust your plan as needed. The goal is to invest time in planning at the optimal moment and to adapt easily to changes during execution.

Key Characteristics of Agile Planning

Irrespective of the level at which you operate, your Agile project plan will have similar characteristics. Let’s explore them in no particular order.

The Goal from the Eyes of a Customer (Value)

An Agile plan must focus on delivering exactly what the customer wants, which is defined as value. The plan should clearly outline how and when this value will be delivered. Outcome-focused planning is crucial. Instead of detailing activities, prioritize the value produced. It's more important to measure results than to track individual tasks.

Lack of Detail Whenever It Can Be Avoided (Commit as Late as Possible)

Agile planning embraces flexibility by avoiding excessive detail early on, like preparing for an unexplored mountain expedition where you estimate food and water needs but cannot pinpoint exact camping spots. Many knowledge work projects share this uncertainty. While managers often demand strict, detailed plans, it's more practical to delay commitments until the last responsible moment, allowing for adjustments based on new information and circumstances.

Frequent Deliveries and Fast Feedback Loops (Small Batch Size)

Agile planning emphasizes frequent deliveries and explicit feedback collection, integrating feedback into subsequent plan iterations to enhance project success. While projects are inherently large, delivering them in smaller batches allows for early customer previews and alignment with expectations.

Suppose the project team misunderstood the requirements and set off to work on something completely different from what you envisioned as a customer. Would you rather give them feedback early on or wait until the project deadline? It is more than natural to have frequent feedback loops early in the cycle and prevent wasting precious time and resources.

Date Ranges instead of Single Date Estimates (Probabilistic vs. Deterministic)

Instead of providing a fixed date for project completion, offer a date range. Many customers appreciate this approach, as it is more realistic. Using historical data and forecasting methods to create date ranges in Agile planning allows for more accurate timelines, aligning better with the principle that it's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

Focus on the Work and Not the Worker (Team Is the Owner)

In Agile planning, focus on the flow of work rather than individual worker utilization. Assigning work too early can lead to inefficiencies. Instead, allow self-organizing teams to manage projects, even if it means some team members are underutilized at times.

Address dependencies realistically rather than trying to eliminate them entirely. Manage dependencies with a holistic view of your organization and value streams. If a team's progress blocks customer value, prioritize resolving that issue over keeping another team busy. This approach requires a shift in thinking but is essential for effective Lean and Agile project planning, emphasizing issue resolution over worker utilization.

No Separate Phase for Quality Assurance (Build Quality in)

In Agile planning, quality should be incorporated throughout the execution phase rather than in the final quality assurance phase. This approach, inspired by Toyota's principle of "Build quality in," ensures that quality is maintained consistently, avoiding issues at the end. A final quality check should be an exception, not the norm, as it indicates neglect of quality during the project.

Two-Tiered Plans (Plan Only the Initiatives and Not the Work Items)

An effective Agile plan focuses on high-level deliverables (initiatives) and allows teams to break these down into tasks . Unlike traditional Gantt charts, Agile plans do not assign start and end dates to individual tasks unless necessary.

This approach lets teams pull new work when they have the capacity, following the pull system principle from Toyota. Setting dates for initiatives but not for their subtasks keeps planning flexible and empowers teams to make optimal decisions based on their technical expertise.

Data-Driven Decisions (Use Historical Data to Plan the Future)

Using historical data, Agile planning employs statistical methods like Monte Carlo simulations for forecasting. These simulations use past throughput and cycle time data to predict project outcomes, providing probabilities for completion dates or work delivery.

For example, they might forecast an 85% chance of project completion by July 2nd or a 95% chance of delivering 200 tasks by the deadline. This method, integrated with tools for continuous forecasting, offers real-time project status updates, reducing the need for detailed task-by-task estimation.

Continuous Forecasting

Agile project management tools integrate continuous forecasting with two-tiered plans to provide managers with real-time updates on project status and deliverables. Businessmap's software extends this capability to the portfolio level, allowing for real-time forecasts of all projects in the portfolio . To achieve this, simply run daily tasks on a set of team boards and connect them to the parent projects.

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Agile Project Plan Example

As we’ve already discussed Agile planning characteristics, let’s look at a practical example of building an Agile plan and how we do it at Businessmap.

Defining Major Project Deliverables or Releases

Let’s say we have to plan the creation of a new website. As the scope for that is quite big, the first thing that we would do is define different functional parts (deliverables) that will be continuously released to the market.

Here, we should note that we won’t plan the deliverables in detail. An Agile project plan leaves this for the "last responsible moment" and includes it progressively throughout the project. This will save us the otherwise wasted time of unnecessary planning and help us retain agility for any emerging changes.

Breaking Down Deliverables into Tasks

Once we have the major functional parts of the project visualized in a roadmap-like view, our next step would be to break them down into individual work items. As we progressively elaborate on our Agile plans, we will start with the most critical deliverables at this point.

You can use a dedicated work board to visualize the tasks and their flow to completion. In our platform, we connect the Agile timeline containing the project roadmap and the kanban board .

This gives an unmatched view of the entire project's progress from concept to fruition. As a result, we can see which deliverables are currently in progress, their status, and who is working on what at any given moment. This setup also allows us to collaborate with one another when tasks get stuck in the process and resolve issues faster.

Through the concept of " just in time " planning, we can retain agility for any last-minute changes, emerging requirements, or shifting priorities. This allows us to satisfy customer needs better when delivering our projects.

Businessmap is the most flexible software platform

for outcome-driven enterprise agility.

Agile planning is a new, flexible way of organizing future projects and adjusting to changing requirements without generating waste. These are the most important characteristics of a good Agile plan:

• A goal from the eyes of a customer
• Lack of detail whenever it can be avoided
• Frequent deliveries
• Date ranges instead of single date estimates
• Focus on the work and not the worker
• No separate phases for Quality Assurance
• Two-tiered plans
• Data-driven

Nikolay Tsonev

Product Marketing | PMI Agile | SAFe Agilist certified

Nick is passionate about product marketing and business development and is a subject matter expert at Businessmap. With expertise in OKRs, strategy execution, Agile, and Kanban, he continues to drive his interest in continuous improvement. Nick is a PMI Agile and SAFe Agilist certified practitioner.

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Adopt Agile Project Planning to Deliver Value and Stay on Track

By Kate Eby | July 12, 2016 (updated December 31, 2023)

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Agile approaches prioritize customer needs. Learn the foundations of Agile project planning and best practices from the experts. Also, get tools, templates, and tips to help your team deliver real business value that satisfies customers and teams.  

In this article, you’ll learn the steps in the  Agile project planning process and variations such as hybrid practice. Experts explain how  Agile differs from other project planning methods and share  best practices . You’ll also view a  project plan example that shows how Agile works. Download an Agile project planning starter kit .

What Is Agile Planning?

Agile planning is a phased, continuous improvement method to control projects. Agile’s built-in flexibility accommodates changes during project development. This type of planning produces results faster than traditional practices such as Waterfall.  Agile is a project planning and management philosophy formally launched in 2001. Seventeen technologists drafted the  Agile Manifesto  to speed up software development times and quickly bring new products to market. Agile project planning applies to various business environments because the methodology is a guide to developing a nimble mindset and problem-solving behaviors. Almost all disciplines can benefit from teams who build in quality, with less waste, at every project step, which is the goal of Agile.   

Alison Braun , Agile Coach, Scrum Professional, and Solutions Architect, finds that although most of her career has involved software projects, “Agile planning is valuable in non-software projects, too. For example, I’ve consulted on internal HR and training projects, including how to train people to interview and act as mentors for a talent administration firm. We used a Kanban system instead of a Scrum team in this situation. Kanban works well in the talent acquisition and HR space where you're limiting your work in progress and moving through the system in time increments – doable chunks – that make sense for the project. For example, there might be a diversity training segment or training around legal issues broken down into work packages that show success and a pattern of teaching information.”  

Alan Zucker, author and Principal of  Project Management Essentials, LLC , has used Agile's project management philosophy to drive financial services and non-software development large-scale projects. “Agile values apply: deliver value early and often, adaptation, customer collaboration, and putting people first makes sense for most projects, particularly change management and enterprise-wide initiatives. In a recent financial services project, converting legacy data out of an old system into a new one, we were simultaneously developing workflows, screens, communications, and other efforts, and the project involved hundreds of people. Agile and the breakdown into user stories and smaller teams was invaluable in bringing the project to a successful completion.” Agile planning works well within marketing project management contexts and has its own  Agile Marketing Manifesto , formalized in 2012. The Manifesto contains elements to apply Agile methodology to marketing products and services. The Manifesto highlights seven values and 10 principles to better plan and execute the delivery of valuable products and services.

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What Is Agile Project Planning?

Agile project planning aims to deliver business value early. The goal is to improve the project’s product and process continuously. Agile emphasizes scope flexibility, team input, and delivery of a well-tested product that reflects customer needs.

In contrast to working from a comprehensive plan at the project outset, which is typically product related, Agile makes allowances for requirement changes and banks on regular feedback from end users. Agile planning and project management are the software development standard because they are more successful than the traditional  Waterfall approach . The 2020 Standish Group Chaos Study found that Agile projects are three times more likely to succeed than Waterfall projects. Breaking projects down into increments, checking for problems, and making timely adaptations and corrections reduce the risk of failure. Read this article on  Agile project management to learn more about the methodology and practice. 

Sprints are at the center of the Agile project planning methodology. During sprints, teams work on user stories or goals. Sprints repeat until the project or product is complete. After sprints, team members are responsible for checking what’s working and what isn’t, adapting and making changes, or starting to improve the project or product.

Roles in Agile

Agile governance relies on specific roles for each team member. The roles in an Agile team aren’t jobs or positions. Instead, they define a set of responsibilities that one or more people take. In some cases, one person might fill multiple roles and switch between them. Every role works to achieve common goals and respond to changing client and business needs and any emerging issues. 

Typical team member roles and responsibilities in Agile include:  

• Product Owner:  The person in this role defines the product vision and manages stakeholders. They can make critical decisions and ensure the team works on the correct items. The product owner needs to understand what customers want and make adjustments accordingly, so effective communication with stakeholders is essential.  
• Stakeholders:  Anyone with an interest in the project. Internal stakeholders work for the organization developing the product, and they can be employees, managers, and senior leaders. External stakeholders can include customers, investors, partners, and suppliers.
• Scrum Master (in Scrum):  Scrum masters act as coaches to the rest of the team. They lead daily standup meetings and watch over sprint planning meetings to keep the team on track and to guard against scope creep. They manage sprint reviews, compile feedback, and remove productivity roadblocks. Learn what it takes to  become a Scrum Master .
• Team Leaders (in Kanban): In Kanban Agile projects, team leaders ensure the use of Agile and facilitate effective team communication.
• Team Members:  Usually a cross-functional group of 10 or fewer people with the skills to define, build, test, and deliver value to the customer.
• Integrator (Larger or Long-Term Projects):  Integrators are tasked with larger projects that have multiple separate teams and sections, as well as integrating these different aspects into a cohesive unit. Typically, this Agile team role is only necessary for larger groups creating complex systems or multiple teams collaborating on a more substantial project.

Key Elements of Agile Planning

Agile planning elements revolve around empiricism, lifecycle, mindset, and the framework. All of these aspects focus on placing customer needs first and applying that to every decision, functionality, and problem.

As you work on Agile project plans, keep these vital elements in mind:  

• Agile Lifecycle: A product goes through a series of stages called the  Agile software development lifecycle . The six stages of Agile are concept, inception, iteration, release, maintenance, and retirement. Learn more about the  Agile software development lifecycle .
• Transparency:  Everyone on the team and stakeholders present the facts as they are in their interactions. Trust is essential, and all involved share the bad and good news. Everyone collaborates for the common organizational objective with no hidden agendas.
• Inspection: Inspection is the responsibility of everyone on the team. Inspections apply to the product, processes, people aspects, practices, and continuous improvements. 
• Adaptation:  Adaptation supports  continuous improvement , meaning adaptation based on inspection results. Use Agile values to increase ROI, make faster time to market, and create less waste. For example, achieving a faster time to market increases return on investment through value-based delivery, which reduces the total cost of ownership and improves customer and employee satisfaction.  
• Respect: You must have respect for the product, for customers, and for colleagues at every level of the business or organization. It’s also important to  respect all team members.
• Collaboration: Facilitating collaboration through tools, environmental surroundings, and behavioral norms can improve team discussions. 
• Improvement: There is always a way to improve processes and products. Building on knowledge is fundamental to Agile philosophy.
• Learning: Individuals share what they know and are encouraged to take risks – even if they fail. These activities increase the group’s knowledge throughout a project’s progress.
• Pride in Ownership: Everyone owns success in Agile. Team members should take pride in what they deliver collectively and strive to provide the highest quality of work.
• Delivering Value: The goal of Agile teams is to deliver value to the customer. The team focuses on what is the greatest value at the time and works with the knowledge that others in the organization will help remove roadblocks.
• Adapt to Change: If the customer calls a few hours following a meeting and demands changes, the team accommodates them.  
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.  
• Agile Terminology:  Agile practice has a unique language to describe stages and techniques in the planning process. Newcomers to Agile need to familiarize themselves with the full  array of project management terms for effective communication.

Steps in the Agile Project Planning Process

Steps in the Agile project planning process can be broken down into three sections: preparation, sprint, and execution. Preparation includes forming a vision, building a roadmap, and release planning. The sprint phase is the core of the planning process with its daily Scrum meetings and sprint reviews. Execution phase is when the release and sprint retrospective occur.   

Preparation Phase  

• Vision:  The vision provides the overview and purpose of the project. It describes the market, customer segments, and end-user needs. The vision sets the boundaries and context for features, requirements, and other work.
• Project or Product Roadmap: A product roadmap is the action plan to show how the solution or product will progress over time. Download this  product roadmap template to use as a framework to create a plan.
• User Stories: A user story is the term Agile uses for work requests. This brief, straightforward description is written from the customer’s perspective and stresses the client’s objectives and needs. The Agile team looks at the details in a user story to determine a realistic time frame to complete the project. Read this  guide to user stories to see how to use them in Agile planning. 

Sprint Phase  

• Release Planning: This plan is a dynamic document that covers how and when the organization will release a solution or product’s functionality and features. The plan incorporates prior iterations' feedback and the details of each release's scope, time, and resources. The team will use the plan to guide what they can deliver in each iteration and timeframe. Release plans are a way to communicate product status and progress with cross-functional teams, leaders, and stakeholders. 
• Sprint Planning: The Agile product owner, development team, and a Scrum master use a visual workboard to track status to plan project iterations. A whiteboard with sticky notes or a basic  Kanban board can serve this purpose. The team assigns story points to each task through Agile planning sessions. When requests are added to a project, it creates outstanding stories or a backlog, which is a prioritized list of deliverables. Stories from the backlog move into the sprint for completion. Learn more about  sprint planning and get  tips for managing a product backlog .
• Standup or Daily Scrum:  Every day, the team meets for 15 minutes or less to discuss the previous day’s completions, daily priorities, and roadblocks. These meetings assist the team in completing their work before the end of the sprint and discuss any needed changes. Learn how to  set up a daily Scrum meeting . 
• Sprint Review: The sprint review evaluates and demonstrates the shippable and valuable functionality completed during the sprint. The product owner gathers feedback and revises the backlog. The sprint review is open to all interested parties who want to review the sprint’s accomplishments. 

Execution Phase  

• Sprint Retrospective:  The  sprint retrospective meeting is an opportunity for the entire team to review the preceding sprint and explore ways to improve the next one. For example, they might want to improve upon the environment, collaboration, processes, practices, tools, and skill sets to improve morale, outcomes, work output, or velocity.
• Product Release: The solution or product is given to the customer. The release can be an initial release of a solution or product or adding features or changes to a previous release.

Agile Project Planning Starter Kit

Download the Agile Project Planning Starter Kit

We’ve created this Agile project planning starter kit to help you plan and organize your projects. This kit includes customizable templates to create your own product roadmap, a Scrum meeting kickoff checklist, an Agile Manifesto cheat sheet, an Agile poker planning deck, and more. Download the kit as a whole, or each template individually based on your needs.

Included in this kit, you’ll find the following templates:  

• An Agile Manifesto cheat sheet for Microsoft Word to quickly reference the four values and 12 principles of Agile.
• An Agile poker planning deck template for Microsoft Word to print your own  planning poker deck to prioritize tasks with your team.
• An Agile product roadmap template for Excel to help guide your product development process. 
• An Agile project plan template for Excel to help plan, track, and execute your next project using Agile best practices.
• An Agile capacity planning template for Excel to help manage the team’s bandwidth within a sprint.
• A Kanban board spreadsheet template for Excel to display your sprint plans on a Kanban board for easy viewing.
• A Scrum meeting checklist template for Microsoft Word to get your next Scrum meeting up and running as quickly as possible.
• An Agile sprint backlog template with burndown chart for Excel to keep track of story points, completed tasks, and remaining backlogged tasks within a sprint.
• An Agile retrospective template for Microsoft Word to review your Agile projects after their completion.

Agile Project Plan Example

This Agile project plan example is a repeatable framework you can customize and use for any future Agile project. See how the plans focus on sprints and releases. Decomposing releases results in iterations or sprints. Each sprint has a set time frame, and the team has a predefined list of items to work through in each sprint.  

Download the Agile Project Plan with Gantt Example Template for Excel

Agile Project Planning Best Practices

Agile project planning best practices aim to support the values and principles of the Agile manifesto. The goal is for a cohesive team to produce a successful project on time and on budget, and to deliver value to the customer.  

Best practices for the preparation phase include:  

• Know Your Roles:  Agile Coach Braun explains, “Not understanding roles in Agile results in what I call  bad Agile – and it's pretty common. Many organizations think they are Agile, but in practice, they aren’t. It's essential that each role is defined and that everyone involved understands how they will participate and the realities of Agile.”
• Whole Team Responsibility:  Shared responsibility and working toward mutual success is a cornerstone of Agile that needs to be emphasized throughout the project. 
• Think Small with User Stories: “The beauty of Agile is that by making the work small,  the faster you go through the project process, and the easier it is to validate the work,” shares Zucker.  Best practices for the sprint phase include:  
• Backlog Management and Timeboxed Meetings:  Keeping meetings timeboxed ensures there is time to create the end product. A rule of thumb is that if you have a week-long sprint, meetings should last less than two hours and no more than four hours for a two-week sprint. “One of the keys to well-used Agile is managing the product backlog efficiently,” notes Zucker. “This is where to make trade-offs with requirements prioritized as high, medium, and low priority in meetings.” 
• Progressive Elaboration: “Agile is about continuous improvements known as progressive elaboration, and it is the goal of mature Agile practice,” notes Zucker. The goal is to use more detailed and specific information to form more accurate estimates as the project progresses, so each iteration becomes more accurate and complete based on accumulated knowledge.
• Play Planning Poker:  In planning poker or Scrum poker, group members make estimates to complete user stories by playing numbered cards face-down instead of speaking them aloud. The turned-up cards reveal estimate times, and team members discuss the estimates and their reasons. It makes sense to use the Fibonacci sequence instead of doubling each subsequent value; simply doubling the effort of each subsequent task would result in overestimating timeframes. “Using the Fibonacci sequence to estimate the workload and break user stories down more accurately is invaluable in planning and backlog refinements and timeboxing,” stresses Zucker. The Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical sequence in which each subsequent number is determined by the sum of the two previous numbers, or 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. The cards establish a scale or standard of comparison for estimating and increasing the accuracy of estimates. 
• Be Flexible: The way to learn and improve the quality is to remain nimble and make some (fixable) mistakes. “Be flexible. Rigidity is the death of Agile,” warns Braun. 

Best practices for the execution phase include:  

• Don’t Skimp on the Retrospective:  “An important best practice is to have retrospectives and take them seriously,” Braun notes. “Clients sometimes tell me,  ‘Oh, there are too many meetings; why do you have so many?’ First, short meetings are an important part of Agile. Clients who don’t want retrospectives, I stress that you must take the time to reflect on the work and what people are doing so you can learn and improve. Have actionable things come out of a retrospective.”

The Importance of Agile Project Planning

Agile project planning has made achieving customer satisfaction easier because of its simplicity and flexibility. Project managers can use this methodology to deliver products faster, produce higher-quality goods, and continuously improve operations.   

“One of the promises of Agile is built-in quality and not cutting corners. Also, we don't goldplate,” shares Agile Coach Braun. “In old systems, you beef something up and keep working on it to build additional functionality that no one asked for because it seems like a good idea. We'll do this. We don't say, oh, we accept defects. No, the best state is to have the built-in quality, and you test and fix it and then push it out. This is also the reason why iteration, especially in software development, is so powerful — when you're putting out stuff in small batches, you can fix things that go wrong more quickly rather than having a system down. At the same time, you troubleshoot a monolithic release.”   

Agile project planning offers multiple key benefits, including:  

• Continuous Improvement:  Continuous improvement, or Kaizen, grew out of the Agile model. It is a method for identifying opportunities for streamlining work and reducing waste. 
• Faster Delivery:  Agile project planning and management focuses on minimizing waste and providing incremental delivery to achieve higher revenue. This approach helps the project team move the product into the market faster than traditional project management.
• Better Risk Management and Less Costly Failures:  Earlier and more frequent opportunities, usually every few weeks, make it easier to detect failure and reduce the high costs related to it. The project management cycle can include several risks. If you use traditional project management, you could have problems identifying them before they affect the project. Agile management focuses on incremental releases and can bring such risks to bear during product development faster, and the project team can quickly respond. 
• Quick Response to Changes and Challenges: It is difficult to respond to or incorporate changes under traditional project management. Thus, achieving optimal customer satisfaction is almost impossible. However, project managers don’t need extra time to implement such changes under Agile, so businesses can offer a more feasible product to the target clientele, putting the company in a better position among its major competitors.
• Non-Productive Task Reduction:  The number and length of meetings are limited. There are fewer presentations and much less process documentation (except in hybrid practice).  Using collaboration platforms and direct communication in daily standup meetings outweighs the use of email.
• Better Communication:  Agile promotes improved connection between consumers and the project team. It creates an avenue for sustained interaction with clients, thereby delivering feedback more efficiently and at a faster pace. New ideas can be adopted easily and at a quicker rate.
• Improved Team Performance:  The traditional project management method has a long development cycle. Long time frames and extended product release periods aren’t desirable in today’s fast-evolving marketplace.
• Shorter Development Cycles:  Agile project planning shortens the development cycle. Teams can now easily adopt product changes without using substantial resources, making it easier to alter a project’s scope quickly.

Understanding the Difference Between Agile and Other Methodologies and Techniques

There are common misconceptions about what Agile is and isn’t. For example, Agile is not Scrum, but Scrum is always part of an Agile project plan.   

Various  project planning and management practices and frameworks live under the umbrella of Agile. They each have their place in Agile project planning and execution. The most commonly used are Scrum, which breaks work down into short cycles; Kanban, which visualizes workflow; and Hybrid, which combines Agile and Waterfall.  

Agile Planning vs. Scrum Planning

Agile project management philosophy employs a basic set of values or principles that focuses on continuous iteration. Scrum is an Agile framework that teams use to facilitate a project and deliver value in the shortest time frame.   

Leadership plays a vital role in the Agile process in collaborations and face-to-face interactions between cross-functional teams. Within the Scrum framework, teams are self-organizing and cooperative, thanks to daily standup meetings.

Agile Project Planning vs. Traditional Waterfall Project Planning

Agile project management is a 21st-century philosophy reliant on smaller groups and interactive releases throughout a project. Unlike Waterfall project planning, which is rigid and paces through defined phases, Agile leverages team collaboration, outside feedback, and flexibility to be successful.

“In Agile, the shared responsibility and self-management are simple, elegant, and hard for people to grasp,” notes Agile coach Braun. “In my practice, I must keep overcoming the cognitive dissonance between vertical and horizontal project planning – people are so used to being told what to do. The information is moving horizontally across teams instead of vertically. People are comfortable with the command and control in top-down Waterfall practice, so it takes training and guidance to unlearn.”

Long-Term Agile Project Planning

While it may seem contradictory, long-term Agile project planning is possible. Projects decomposed into smaller work packages make sense in short and long time-framed projects.  Agile planning is about generating ultimate value based on company strategy.

“The roadmap is key,” says Project Management Essentials’ Zucker. “Planning for many years as you work incrementally for interim goals and releases is possible. When working on projects with a long time horizon, review periodically to ensure you are still on the right track based on conditions.”

Long-term Agile planning makes sense because its frameworks and tools can deal with a future that will be different. Zucker comments, “Despite Agile’s ability to cope with more frequent and dynamic changes, long time frames offer quality time to invest in a true strategic conversation. Group desired outcomes into similar buckets, and map outcomes that will match overall success metrics in alignment with the organization's goals.”

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What Is Agile Project Management? | An Ultimate Guide

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Agile project management is an iterative and collaborative method that divides larger projects into smaller, more manageable tasks and shorter time segments. These smaller phases are called sprints or iterations.

Agile project management has grown in popularity in recent years as teams strive to tackle project management challenges in a more flexible and dynamic manner. Read on to learn more about the benefits, history, and implementation of Agile project management. 

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What is Agile Project Management?

Agile project management is a methodology that focuses on breaking the larger project lifecycle into more approachable portions of time and smaller tasks. Rather than delivering project deliverables and products at the conclusion of a project, Agile project management prioritizes the delivery of a working product throughout the process, allowing the project team and stakeholders to work closely together during the course of the project execution while providing feedback—not just during the project post-mortem. 

Compared to other more traditional methods of project management, Agile project management is less rigid, which gives teams the ability to pivot in new directions as needed and adapt to changing circumstances or project needs.

Key Agile Principles 

According to the Agile Alliance , there are 12 foundational principles of Agile project management:

• Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development . Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
• Deliver working software (or products) frequently , from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale .
• Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals . Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done .
• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation .
• Working software (and products) are the primary measure of progress.
• Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
• Simplicity —the art of maximizing the amount of work not done— is essential .
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams .
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Read more: Agile Software Development Methodology & Principles

Comparing Agile to Traditional Project Management

Agile vs waterfall: fast facts.

Agile and Waterfall are two of the most well-recognized project management methodologies today. The two methods are often referenced as opposites, but the relationship between Waterfall and Agile is more complex than that. 

Here are a few fast facts about Agile and Waterfall:

• The Agile methodology was created as a response to some of the limitations that fast-moving project teams faced when navigating projects using more traditional methods, namely, Waterfall.
• Teams are not exclusively limited to the use of one methodology over another. While one project may require the rigid structure of Waterfall, another may require the flexibility of Agile.
• Moreover, hybrid approaches are possible in project management. In select circumstances, project teams may find great success in combining specific guidelines from Waterfall and Agile.

Overall, there are 6 main factors to consider when comparing Agile and Waterfall.

Read more: Agile vs Waterfall: What’s the Difference?

Popular Agile Frameworks

Defining frameworks in project management.

Project management frameworks represent a smaller subset of project management methodologies that provide more room for application. Whereas project management methodologies represent rigid rules and practices for completing a project, frameworks operate as a subset of methodologies, offering more flexible adaptations of how those rules can be applied in project management. Kanban

The Kanban framework is based on the Japanese word kanban , meaning visual card. Fittingly, the Kanban framework uses a card-like layout to represent each task within a project, dividing the project as a whole into three categories: to-do, in progress, and completed. As tasks hit milestones, they are moved under the category that reflects their current status, which makes it easy for project teams to visualize where individual tasks are in the larger project lifecycle. 

Whereas Kanban largely focuses on project visualization and task management strategies for applying Agile, Scrum breaks down projects into smaller “sprints” of time that are isolated from the rest of the project. Once these periods of time are divided, a unique form of project manager, called a Scrum Master, helps guide the team through each Sprint. The Scrum framework also outlines other unique meeting types, roles, and more. 

eXtreme Programming (XP)

XP is an Agile framework geared toward software development teams that aims to help teams overcome common challenges in creating software. XP has 12 supporting processes that help outline the framework: 

• Planning game 
• Small releases 
• Customer acceptance tests 
• Simple design 
• Pair programming 
• Test-driven development 
• Refactoring 
• Continuous integration 
• Collective code ownership 
• Coding standards 
• Metaphor 
• Sustainable pace

Pros and Cons of Agile

History of Agile Project Management

Agile project management came about as a response to the 1990s technology boom when developers of new technologies realized the limitations of methodologies, like Waterfall, that were not designed to produce a tangible product quickly. 

In response, a group of 17 developers met in Snowbird, Utah, to discuss ideas together as “organizational anarchists” seeking to find a better way. After three days of discussion, they settled on the foundational ideas of modern Agile project management. 

Read more: What is Project Management?

Who is Agile best for?

While Agile may not be the best choice for every team or every project, there are a variety of situations where Agile practices can be a great fit:

• When project parameters are uncertain or rapidly changing
• Ongoing projects without a predetermined timeline
• For projects or teams that need a high degree of flexibility
• Software development teams and product developers who need a working product ASAP
• For teams who are facilitating collaboration between multiple teams (such as developers and marketing personnel)

When should Agile NOT be used?

Agile is a powerful methodology, but it isn’t the best choice in every situation. Here are some examples of situations where Agile should not be used:

• Projects or teams that need a very predictable project timeline
• Projects or teams that need clear project outcomes and a high level of documentation
• Projects with strict budgets
• Teams that struggle to self-organize or struggle with unpredictable staffing

Can I use the Agile methodology in combination with another methodology?

 In short, yes. Hybrid approaches to projects often happen when a team wants to include certain parameters of a project management methodology, but not others.

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Agile Planning: Step-by-Step Guide for Agile Projects and Sprints

Agile Project Management Definition

What is planning in agile, scrum approach in agile project planning, agile project planning steps, agile sprint planning steps, agile planning: why you need it.

Many companies implement Agile methodologies in their projects, seeking to increase overall productivity. Eventually, Agile-based projects are more successful than traditional ones: while the success rate of Agile projects is 42%, for traditional Waterfall projects, this rate is about 14% .

In this article, we’ll uncover the definition of Agile, the planning steps, the differences with Scrum planning, and some templates and software to use while planning your Agile projects.

Agile is a flexible approach to project management . Originally applied to the development process, nowadays, Agile is widely used by many teams and industries. Without digging into Agile principles, we can define its main idea as the ability for projects to easily adapt to changes and new requirements.

The idea of change management affects Agile-based projects throughout their whole lifecycle. It means that when you plan a project, you should leave a space for changes. So, before starting a project, take some time to learn materiels and Agile planning essentials.

First of all, let’s handle some terms.

Agile planning is a widely-used management style. In a nutshell, it implies an iterative approach, so the project is divided into several phases, called iterations. In each iteration, there are a few sprints. Sprints are barely planned up ahead before starting a project. In most cases, Agile planning means that you’re adding changes and requests from stakeholders or owners to the work, so it’s impossible to plan what’s inside each sprint and interaction before starting working on a project.

Planning in Agile is based on feedback, requests, and user stories. Basically, we can split Agile planning into two phases: project and sprint planning. These phases require different actions and consist of different steps. We’ll analyze each phase separately in the paragraphs below.

Agile has multiple planning strategies and methodologies . One of the most popular is Scrum planning. However, even Scrum can be considered as one of Agile methodologies, Agile and Scrum planning are a bit different.

Scrum is very similar to the Agile planning approach, but there are some concept differences between them. In simple words, Agile is a framework with core ideas and principles, while Scrm is just one of multiple methodologies to follow the Agile planning process.

In some paragraphs above, we mentioned sprints. Sprint is a common practice in Scrum. It helps to avoid in-depth planning when starting a project, so you can quickly adapt to new requirements and changes before starting a new sprint. The core planning tool in Scrum is a backlog. The backlog is the place where all requests, user stories, and other possible features are stored. Tasks in the backlog can be prioritized, divided into different categories, and literally segmented by any parameters. It helps to plan one sprint once the previous is finished. If some tasks are not completed within a sprint, they’re taken to the backlog, and they’ll be marked as the top priority in the next sprint.

In general, the Scrum approach to project planning outlines the following principles:

• Plan not an overall project, but each sprint.
• Start planning a new sprint only when the previous one is finished right away.
• Review your results after each sprint.
• Handle the retrospective meetings after a sprint or two to review the results of the whole team.

To learn how Scrum planning differs from Agile, let’s go to the main steps of the Agile planning process.

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Each project has its own schedule. Traditional Waterfall projects have strict steps and deadlines, but that’s not an option for flexible Agile projects. However, Agile projects have their own scheduling, and each step requires planning. But wait, this planning is not the same as in traditional projects, mostly because you don’t need to plan everything before the project starts.

Step 1. Form clear expectations for the final delivery of a project

Before starting a project, you must have a clear understanding of the final output. In Agile-based projects, the result depends on requests from stakeholders, users (or clients), and owners. Even if their needs are changing, you can plan actions iteratively to apply changes.

Step 2. Define the details and scope of work

You can’t say exactly when you’ll finish the task unless you know its details and the factors that can influence the ETA. Understanding how much work needs to be done is one of the steps of proper Agile planning.

Step 3. Form tasks based on user stories

User stories are problems that need to be solved. In most cases, stories are complex and need to be broken down into smaller tasks. Sometimes, it’s difficult to form an exact task, and you need to complete multiple activities to solve a problem instead. Such a sequence of tasks is epic and it can last more than one sprint.

Step 4. Populate the backlog

Once user stories are split into tasks and epics, it’s time to populate the backlog. Create tasks with clear titles and descriptions, so each teammate can understand what to do. When all tasks and epics are in the backlog, set priorities, assign responsible people, and estimate the effort of each task in story points.

Step 5. Plan sprints

Typically, each sprint is equal to the iteration. Sprints also have strict timelines, for example, two or three weeks. You simply can’t put all your tasks into one sprint, that’s exactly why you need backlog planning and priorities. Tasks that have a higher priority take to the sprint first, then come older ones.

Step 6. Make up documentation

In documentation, explain the main principles and rules of a project. It helps both teams and stakeholders understand the focus of a project and request only possible changes. Documentation can change from time to time as well, but as a whole, it needs to be clear and meaningful from the beginning.

We figured out what Agile planning is, and now it’s time to dive into sprint planning. You might think that it's a completely different topic, but in fact, sprint planning is a part of an overall Agile planning. Here are steps that Agile teams follow to plan a new sprint:

Step 1. Schedule a retrospective meeting

Once a sprint is completed, it’s time for a retrospective. Retrospective is a regular team meeting where all teammates discuss tasks, difficulties, and issues that happened during the sprint. Such meetings help to prevent future mistakes and understand which tasks need to be taken to the upcoming sprint.

Step 2. Discuss user stories

After each sprint, you’ll probably be receiving requests and reports from users, stakeholders, and owners. As we mentioned earlier, there are user stories. Discuss all recent user stories with teammates to decide if they need to be taken to the next sprint or if maybe they’re worth working on in the latest development stages.

Step 3. Split stories and epics into smaller tasks

Sometimes it happens that you can’t cover the user story or a task during one sprint, so it becomes an epic. Split complex activities into smaller tasks and assign them to your teammates. But it’s also important to consider who was responsible for the original complex task. Maybe it is worth assigning this person as a responsible follower to this task?

Step 4. Analyze your efforts

Analytics is an important part of planning. Before planning a new sprint, analyze the time taken to complete previous tasks, their estimates in story points , and the number of teammates who participated. It will help you to wisely manage both human and time resources while planning upcoming activities.

Step 5. Tools for Agile Planning and Project Management

There are many different tools for Agile team management . Starting with a simple whiteboard and sticky notes in the 90's, Agile tools made huge progress. Now, you don’t need to physically have everything around you, and you don’t even need to work with your teammates in one office.

Here are some basic Agile planning tools to use in Flowlu:

As it was stated before, backlog is a place where you create tasks, set priorities, and analyze if the task is worth taking to the sprint. In Flowlu, you have a backlog for each of your projects. It prevents a project from being messy and uncategorized.

• Interactive Board

All teams and companies have different requirements, so it’s important to have the possibility to set custom stages, manage tasks’ cards and visualize the whole workflow. In Flowlu, you can manage your projects with a handy Kanban board. On the board, you can filter tasks by sprints, assignees, priorities, etc..

• Burndown Chart

The burndown chart is a widely used tool among Agile teams. This chart allows you to see how fast your team is closing tasks. In comparison to traditional charts, burndown charts show positive results if they go down because they reflect the number of tasks that need to be done.

• Gantt Chart

The Gantt chart was taken from traditional project management methodologies. However, in Flowlu, you can see it as a part of the Agile module as well. It helps to understand how much time was taken to complete each sprint or epic.

• Retrospective Template

Retrospective is a must-have for all Agile teams, but barely any managers know how to run such meetings. If you don’t have any ideas what to ask your team, Flowlu’s retrospective template builder will help you plan questions and the whole meeting.

Planning your project according to the Agile method can help you easily adapt to changes and implement new ideas or technologies into your workflow. Why is it worth it? Simply put, it keeps all your teammates engaged and provides transparency to all processes, so you can understand the reason for difficulties and quickly handle them.

Agile project planning is an iterative approach to project management that focuses on delivering working software in short cycles.

• Flexibility:  Agile projects are more flexible than traditional projects because they can be changed as needed to meet the needs of the customer.
• Speed:  Agile projects can deliver working software to the customer more quickly than traditional projects because they are broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks.
• Quality:  Agile projects typically produce higher-quality software than traditional projects because they involve continuous feedback from the customer.
• Customer satisfaction:  Agile projects are more likely to satisfy customers because they involve close collaboration with the customer throughout the development process.
• Getting buy-in from stakeholders:  It can be difficult to get buy-in from stakeholders for Agile projects because they require a different way of thinking about project management.
• Managing scope creep:  It can be difficult to manage scope creep in Agile projects because the requirements are constantly evolving.
• Keeping the team focused:  It can be difficult to keep the team focused on a specific set of tasks during a sprint, especially if there are distractions or interruptions.
• Measuring progress:  It can be difficult to measure progress in Agile projects because the requirements are constantly changing.
• Set clear and concise goals
• Prioritize the work
• Break down the work into small tasks
• Estimate the effort required for each task
• Communicate regularly

What is scrum?

Scrum is a lightweight framework designed to help teams collaborate on complex products iteratively and incrementally to deliver high value. It is built on the principles of empiricism and lean thinking.

How it works

Scrum values, empiricism and iteration.

• Explore certifications

What is the scrum framework?

Scrum is a lightweight yet incredibly powerful framework. Scrum relies on cross-functional and self-managing teams to deliver products and services in short cycles, enabling:

• Fast feedback
• Quicker innovation
• Continuous improvement
• Rapid adaptation to change
• Delighted customers
• Reduced time from idea to delivery

The term scrum comes from a 1986 Harvard Business Review article ( The New New Product Development Game ) in which authors Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka made an analogy comparing high-performing, cross-functional teams to the scrummage used by rugby teams. Ken Scwaber and Jeff Sutherland first introduced scrum as a framework at the Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications (OOPSLA) conference in 1995 in Austin, Texas.

Though it has its roots in software development, today scrum is used in almost every industry so that teams can solve complex problems and deliver innovative products and services that truly delight customers.

Scrum essentials in under 10 minutes

Scrum is the most widely used and popular agile framework. The term "Agile" describes a specific set of foundational principles and values for organizing and managing complex work based on the Agile Manifesto . The creators of the manifesto also considered the words "lightweight" and "adaptive," and eventually all agreed that "agile" was the most effective term for their purposes. The Agile Manifesto was published on February 11, 2001.

Scrum embodies agile principles by enabling teams to adapt quickly to changes (in market requirements, conditions, new regulations, etc.), prioritize customer feedback, and deliver work in manageable increments. Scrum is considered agile because of the agile principles and values it supports:

The Agile Manifesto explains how its creators came to value:

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

Scrum benefits

Practicing scrum offers several advantages, including:

• Minimized risk
• Enhanced ability to manage changing priorities 
• Ability to uncover bottlenecks in teams and organizations that get in the way of value delivery
• Increased transparency for stakeholders by delivering working product increments frequently
• Opportunities to inspect and adapt, thereby making course corrections based on what is learned

This framework incorporates inspection and adaptation at regular intervals, helping teams to continuously improve their interactions, reduce time to market, and increase customer satisfaction through regular feedback loops. Moreover, scrum's emphasis on transparency and collaboration fosters a more engaged and motivated team environment, which can lead to higher productivity and better outcomes.

Scrum teams inspect each increment of functionality as it is completed and then adapt what will be done next based on learning and feedback, minimizing risk, and reducing waste. This cycle repeats and continuously gives the stakeholders, business, and the scrum team the opportunity to adjust to changing market conditions, competition, and other reasons for pivoting.

Scrum's effectiveness lies in its simplicity and flexibility, described later in this page. While it is possible to practice scrum without embodying the scrum values and empiricism (i.e. mechanical scrum), the true benefits of adopting scrum can only be achieved when the scrum team and the organization embody the scrum values and empiricism. Along with organizational and culture shifts catalyzed by adopting those values, the framework has practices based on three core components: Scrum consists of: 

• Accountabilities
• Events 

These core components, along with a few simple rules, work together to create a cycle of continuous improvement and adaptation, ensuring that the teams and the organizations can respond swiftly to changes and deliver high-value products effectively.

Scrum accountabilities

Scrum has three accountabilities (previously called "roles") ensuring that every aspect of the shared work is managed effectively.

• Developers: Professionals in the scrum team who work together to create any aspect of the product. They create the product increment(s) during the sprint. People with any skill needed to build the product take on the accountability of a developer. Depending on the nature of the product, the skills will be different. 
• Product  owner : The product owner develops and communicates the product goal, owns the product backlog, and ensures the team is always addressing the highest value work. They also balance the needs of stakeholders, customers, and the team. They know and understand the domain, the market for their products, and they are passionate about delivering results that customers and users want and need.
• Scrum  master : The scrum master leads and guides the organization in its scrum adoption and practice. The scrum master helps the team build the product and become the best team they can be by guiding them to use scrum and embody agile principles. They coach the team toward effective use of the events and artifacts. Their day may include helping the team manage impediments, and they are often essential to the growth of the team as a whole as well as individuals. 

There are also many ways scrum masters serve the organization, including coaching the organization and stakeholders in scrum adoption and empiricism.

The scrum team is made up of these accountabilities. A team has one scrum master, one product owner , and the developers. The size of a scrum team is usually fewer than 10 people. The team is self-managing and cross-functional. Many responsibilities of a traditional project manager are divided between the accountabilities while other project management responsibilities may become unnecessary.

Scrum events

There are five events in the scrum framework. These events are valuable opportunities to inspect and adapt the product or the way the team works together (and sometimes both).

• The sprint : The core of scrum, a timeboxed period (less than one month long and frequently 1-2 weeks) during which one or more increments are created. The sprint contains all of the other events.
• Sprint planning : The entire scrum team establishes the sprint goal. The developers forecast what work they believe they can accomplish during the sprint to support the goal, and how the chosen work will be completed. Planning should be timeboxed to a maximum of 8 hours for a month-long sprint, with a shorter timebox for shorter sprints. Based on the sprint goal and the forecast, an initial plan is also created. The scrum team may invite other people to sprint planning to provide advice or input on relevant work.
• Daily scrum : During daily scrum, the developers inspect the progress toward the sprint goal and adapt plans as necessary. It's a brief daily event led by the developers to inspect and adapt. It is timeboxed to 15 minutes. Daily scrum is not the team's only opportunity to adapt their plans; they often communicate about needed pivots outside of this event. In daily scrum, the team may synchronize their daily work, identify blockers, and discuss collaboration that needs to take place. Daily scrum helps the team understand if their latest plans will get them closer to achieving the sprint goal and they pivot if needed. 
• Sprint review : The entire scrum team inspects the sprint's outcome with stakeholders and determines future adaptations. Stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on what that scrum team has achieved so far and on the future direction of product development. The product backlog is adapted based on these conversations.
• Sprint retrospective : The conclusion of the sprint, the retrospective is the team's opportunity to inspect their own interactions, collaborations, processes, tools, and any other factors they deem relevant to their ability to continuously improve.

Product backlog refinement

Refinement is a continuous activity used to prepare product backlog items for the upcoming sprint plannings. Teams may adjust details such as description, order, and size. It is not a scrum event. Some teams prefer a recurring meeting, usually done once or twice per sprint. Other teams prefer to refine backlog items as needed. 

While the product owner is ultimately accountable for the state and the content of the product backlog, they can delegate product backlog management to others (but cannot delegate the accountability). The buck stops with the product owner.

Scrum artifacts

Scrum artifacts enable transparency, inspection, and adaptation. They provide visibility into the work being completed so that anyone—the team, stakeholders, managers, etc.—can inspect the results and identify areas where an adaptation may benefit the product.

• Product backlog : An ordered or ranked list of everything that might be needed to improve the product, along with the product goal. The product goal is the commitment to the product backlog and is part of the product backlog.
• Sprint backlog : It consists of the sprint goal plus the set of product backlog items the product owner and developers have forecasted they can complete during the current sprint (they may not finish them all), plus a plan for delivering the increment and achieving the sprint goal. The sprint goal is the commitment for the sprint backlog and does not change during the sprint (while the “scope of work” may actually change). As the plan changes (during the sprint or during daily scrum) those changes are reflected on the sprint backlog. 
• Increment: When a product backlog Item is completed (as per the quality attributes defined for the product - captured usually in the Definition of Done) in such a way that it delivers value and is usable, it becomes an "Increment." Each increment is additive because it does not break what has been previously completed and will continue to work indefinitely into the future when new PBIs are completed. The commitment to the increment is the definition of done.

Scrum artifact commitments

In the scrum framework, each artifact is accompanied by a specific commitment that ensures the work focuses on delivering quality and value. 

• Definition of Done for the increments : The Definition of Done establishes the quality measures for the product that the product backlog items must meet to be considered complete. Once a product backlog item meets the definition of done, it becomes an increment. 
• Sprint goal for the sprint backlog: A specific and singular goal for the sprint that clarifies the sprint's purpose. The sprint goal is the commitment to the sprint backlog. This goal helps everyone focus on the essence of what needs to be done and why. The sprint goal must allow the developers to be flexible about the exact "scope" of work that is done. The sprint goal brings cohesion to the work done during the sprint. 
• Product goal for the product backlog : A clear understanding of the product's overarching objective is essential for teams to effectively organize the work.The product may have multiple product goals over its lifetime, but only one at a time.

How it all works together

Scrum accountabilities, artifacts, and events work together within the sprint. The product owner defines the direction of product development with a product goal using information from stakeholders and users. They identify and define pieces of value that can be delivered to move closer toward the product goal.

The product owner ensures that the product backlog is ordered so that the team knows what is most important. The developers can help the product owner further refine what needs to be done, and the product owner may rely on the developers to make trade-off decisions. This is where refinement becomes an important practice for the scrum team.

Getting started

While the framework defines the bare essentials, here are some considerations to get started:

• Define the "product" and the "boundary" of the product
• Form new scrum teams
• Define product goal and a few product backlog items 
• Create a definition of done

During sprint planning, the scrum team collaborates to create the sprint goal. Based on the sprint goal, the developers pull work (usually from the top) of the product backlog and decide how they will complete it. The team has a set time frame, the sprint, to achieve the sprint goal. They meet at the daily scrum to inspect progress towards the sprint goal and plan for the upcoming day. Along the way, the scrum master keeps the team focused on the sprint goal and can help the team improve as a whole. 

Wrapping up the sprint

The scrum team shares its sprint results with stakeholders in sprint review. They may adapt the product backlog as part of that review and in sprint planning. 

The team has a sprint retrospective to discuss what went well and what didn't go well during the sprint. They may discuss collaborations, tools, communication, and practices that supported or hindered their ability to achieve their sprint goal. They develop action items based on what they discussed in order to improve future sprints.

In sprint planning, the team chooses the product backlog items for the next sprint and the cycle repeats. 

Transitioning to an agile framework such as scrum requires a new mindset and overall cultural adjustments. And, like all change, it doesn't come easy. But when teams and organizations fully commit to scrum, they'll discover a new sense of flexibility, creativity, and inspiration—all of which will lead to greater results.

The scrum value of commitment is essential for building an agile culture. Scrum teams work together to support each other in their pursuit of the product goal and sprint goals. This means that scrum teams trust each other to follow through on what they say they are going to do. When team members aren’t sure how work is going, they ask. Scrum teams only agree to take on tasks they believe they can complete, so they are careful not to overcommit.

Courage 

The scrum value of courage is critical to a scrum team’s success. Scrum teams must feel safe enough to say no, ask for help, and try new things. Agile teams must be brave enough to question the status quo when it hampers their ability to succeed.

Focus 

Every member of the scrum team focuses on the work at hand to support the sprint goal.

Openness 

Scrum teams consistently seek out new ideas and opportunities to learn. Scrum teams are also honest when they need help and open with their team and stakeholders about the challenges they face.

Scrum team members demonstrate respect to one another, to the product owner, to stakeholders, and to the scrum master. Scrum teams know that their strength lies in how well they collaborate and that everyone has a distinct contribution to make toward completing the work of the sprint. They respect each other's ideas, give each other permission to have a bad day once in a while, and recognize each other's accomplishments.

Scrum operates on core elements that make it exceptionally suited for handling complex, evolving projects. This framework facilitates a balance between structure and adaptability, enabling teams to efficiently tackle changing demands and deliver quality outcomes. Through its elements, scrum provides a lightweight set of enabling constraints for teams to follow as they work through uncertainties and aim for continuous improvement in their work.

The three pillars of empirical process control

Scrum is based on the theory of empirical process control, which relies on transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Transparency

Effective decision-making requires transparency of the process and of the product's progress and a shared language among participants to ensure everyone understands what they're seeing. 

The five scrum events provide appropriate opportunities for transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Regular inspections of ongoing work are essential for maintaining the intended process and achieving the desired outcome. Integrating these inspections seamlessly into the workflow prevents any disruption. 

Sprint review and sprint planning offer an opportunity to inspect progress toward the product goal, and retrospectives offer opportunities for the team to inspect their teamwork, collaborations, and processes. This process promotes continuous improvement while ensuring progress continues unhindered.

Adaptation involves making timely adjustments to the process or product whenever deviations arise. Scrum teams have the flexibility to adapt the product backlog, product, and their future plans every sprint. This ensures that any necessary changes can be implemented as rapidly as the balance of demands and capacity allows.

Iterative and incremental product management

Scrum combines iterative and incremental approaches.

Iterative 

In an iterative process, teams repeatedly cycle through rounds of delivery to arrive at a desired outcome. Each iteration brings the team closer to its goal, allowing for adjustments based on learning and feedback. This cycle of iterative improvement is a key characteristic of scrum, allowing teams to systematically make progress with each iteration.

Incremental

Incremental refers to a series of small improvements to an existing product or product line that usually helps maintain or improve its competitive position over time. Incremental innovation is regularly used within the high-technology business by companies that need to continue to improve their products to include new features increasingly desired by consumers. The way scrum teams deliver pieces of functionality into small batches is incremental.

Explore scrum certifications

Scrum Alliance certification courses offer in-depth training by leaders in agile and scrum. Choose from courses that focus on a specific scrum team accountability or an agile skill. Foundational role-based courses like the Certified ScrumMaster and all of the skill-based courses have widely applicable training that you can implement right away, no matter your role.

Agile Planning: A Beginner’s Guide To Planning & Executing Iterative Projects

With more customers looking at reducing project risks and realizing value faster, more teams are adopting agile methods. According to a PMI survey , over 70 percent of businesses report using some form of agile to plan and execute projects.

In this article, we’re going to guide you through the concepts of agile planning. We’ll look at how you can structure and execute your projects in a way that delivers great results!

Specifically, we’re going to give you an insight into:

What is Agile Planning?

• What are the Levels of Agile Planning?
• Tips for Planning Projects, Sprints & Daily Tasks
• Agile Planning in Toggl Plan

So, if you’re looking to increase your knowledge of agile ways of working, as well as hear some real-life examples, this article is for you!

Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started! 

Traditional project planning follows a ‘big bang’ approach whereby all of the change is co-ordinated and delivered at one fixed time. This often comes at the end of a project, after a lengthy period of detailed up-front planning, designing, and testing.

The agile planning process provides a more iterative approach. By delivering the project in smaller chunks, customers can realize the benefits quicker.

It might be easier to explain in an example… so here’s a case study!

Imagine you’re running a project to build a website. The website has 10 different pages, each serving a different function.

The development team estimates each page will take one week, meaning your website will take 10 weeks to build.

In traditional project management , you would only put the website live once all 10 pages have been completed. This would mean waiting the whole 10 weeks before your customers could get any value from your website – that’s way too long!

When applying agile principles , you may structure your website project to deliver two pages every 2 weeks. The project will still take 10 weeks to complete of course. But after only 2 weeks your customers can start accessing the website and start receiving value!

This is how it may look at the project-level, but how does this fit into the wider business landscape?

6 Levels of Agile Planning (or The Agile Planning Onion)

When making changes at pace, it’s important to plan effectively. The agile planning process happens on 6 different levels, and is often referred to as the Agile Planning Onion . Let’s take a look at how it works! 

1. Strategy Planning

This level of planning will usually be conducted by the senior leadership team. Here they’re laying out the strategy for the organization; specifying how they’re going to achieve the corporate objectives.

For example, the senior leadership team in a retail organization decides to invest in a new digital strategy. The goal is to increase revenue by 20%. This strategy is long-term and will be realized over the next 2 years.

2. Portfolio Planning

At the next level down, consider how to plan out the portfolio of products/services to achieve the strategy. Again the responsibility lies with senior members of the organization, typically at the head of department level.

Based on the strategy, the different portfolio teams come up with ways to make purchasing faster. The digital team decides to introduce a new mobile app to its portfolio. This will be a great way to connect customers to a new buying experience from home.

3. Product Planning

Here, plan how the product will evolve and change in the medium-term. This level of planning will start to involve team members such as Project Managers, Product Managers, and Research Managers to understand the roadmap for change.

A product team is assembled for the new app. They use market research to devise a roadmap of features for the app. They spend time planning out, at a high-level, the effort for each feature, and which ones to deliver over the next 12 months.

4. Release Planning

With the roadmap of changes identified, then manage how to release those changes to the customers. Set the business framework for that to happen. Here, Project Managers/Delivery Managers work with technical leads to plan the processes to support technical release.

Technical teams assemble to place structure around the deployment of the initial app features. They also plan ahead, detailing how they will manage the integration of further features moving forward. They’re planning in 2 monthly cycles for each release.

5. Iteration Planning

This is where small teams of developers/designers/testers really start to come together. An iteration, sometimes referred to as a sprint, is a single period of time to make the changes. Here, the planning is somewhere between 1-4 weeks ahead and will involve all team members understanding what needs to be achieved in that time.

Based on the first targeted release in 2 months’ time, the team breaks down the features from the product roadmap and divides them into development iterations. These will be 2-weekly, with set sessions scheduled to re-plan and assess performance at the start and end of each iteration.

6. Daily Planning

When working through iterations, plan for the day ahead. To do this you must understand what each team member has achieved, what’s on the schedule for the next day, and assess any problems they’re currently facing.

Each day, the team will get together to communicate their individual progress towards the completion of that iteration. Each team member can input what they have completed, what they have left to do, and raise any issues. It will be the role of a Project Manager/Delivery Manager/Scrum Master to facilitate that session and ensure progress remains on track.

When using Toggl, you’ll probably focus on Levels 3, 5 & 6 of the onion.

Let’s look at some of the common methods for planning and executing at each of these levels.

Level 3 Agile Planning – Building a Product Backlog

Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion is all about planning at a product level. Specifically, this is where we identify and plan the features we want to bring to our product.

There are multiple techniques you can use to build a product backlog. Let’s look at exactly what a backlog is and how you can start building your own!

What is a Product Backlog?

A backlog is a list of changes, new features, bug fixes, or any other activity that a team might deliver.

To build a backlog, you need to add each feature as an individual ‘backlog item’. As you add items into your backlog, you need to do three things:

• Define the backlog item
• Estimate the backlog item
• Prioritize the backlog item

Using User Stories to Define a Backlog Item

Backlog items are the requirements of customers or stakeholders. They are often written in the format of user stories .

A user story captures the description of a software feature from the end user’s perspective. They can be written in different formats, but the most common is the ‘who’ ‘what’ ‘why’ format. Here’s an example:

• “Who” – As a website user
• “What” – I want to login to my account
• “Why” – So that I can view my orders

At this stage, you should keep your requirements broad. The exact detail will be defined during the development iteration.

The process of defining requirements is often undertaken by a Business Analyst or a Product Owner. In practice, requirements may come from customer feedback or customer-facing team members, e.g. Customer Success Managers.

Once you’ve got your list of requirements, it’s time to work out how long each will take to deliver.

Estimating a Backlog Item

With your backlog defined, it’s time to estimate exactly how long each item will take to build.

There are different ways to do this but two of the most common methods are:

• T-shirt sizing
• And, Agile planning poker

Here’s how they both work:

‘T-shirt sizing’ uses familiar terms from clothing to understand the size of a requirement. As a team, you have to estimate if a requirement is a small, medium, large or extra-large piece of work. There will need to be common effort metrics underpinning your sizes. For example, you might agree beforehand that a small piece of work is equivalent to 2 days effort.

‘Agile planning poker cards’ work in much the same way. But instead of using t-shirt sizes, you’ll use the numbers on playing cards. As with t-shirt sizing, you need to agree on how much effort each number represents e.g. a number 4 may represent 4 days effort.

How Does Agile Estimation Work In Practice?

• The Business Analyst/Product Owner gets the team together for an estimation session.
• Read each user story out in turn. Each member of the team then writes down their opinion of the t-shirt size or shows the card they believe its worth.
• There will probably be differences in opinion! As a group, discuss your thoughts until you come to a consensus.
• Each user story will now have a documented estimation. Be sure to also capture any stand-out notes detailing why it is that size.

Great, you’ve now estimated all your user stories!

Prioritize the Backlog

You’ve defined the user stories and given them an estimation. Now the final question you must answer is: Which one do we do first?

For this, you need to prioritize each item to understand what will bring the most value.

Unfortunately, prioritization isn’t an exact science. The reason a certain user story may be more important than another will be unique to your business.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when prioritizing backlog items:

• How much value will this bring our customers?
• How many customers receive that value?
• Could this item directly increase business revenue? If so, by how much?
• Does this item fit into our long-term strategy?
• What are the costs to build this item?

However you chose to prioritize, you now arrange your backlog items accordingly. This helps answer the question of which item(s) to do first!

Managing your backlog isn’t a one-off task. As a product team, you need to constantly add/update/remove items as customer and business needs change!

So, that’s planning at Level 3 of the Agile Planning Onion. In practice, there’s a lot more to mastering the process – but these are the high-level principles.

Product Level Agile Planning in Toggl Plan

Creating a product backlog is super easy in Toggl Plan – here’s how it’s done:

Step 1 – Create a new plan in Toggl selecting the ‘Boards’ view to begin creating your own agile planning board. Give it a name you’ll easily recognize, such as ‘Website Product Backlog.’

Step 2 – Create some custom statuses. We’ve gone for ‘Backlog’, ‘In Progress’, ‘Ready for Release’ and ‘Done’, but create what works for you.

Step 3 – Start creating tasks against your backlog status. Give each task a unique number and name, use tags to record your size estimation and prioritization, and utilize the notes area to put the detail of the user story.

Step 4 – You can now view all of your backlog items in one place. Remember you can drag and drop them into the correct order as well as using the filter tags function to sort further.

You’re now a backlog expert and you’ve got it all set up in Toggl!

Level 5 Agile Planning – Planning a Sprint

With product-level planning complete, we can move onto planning at Level 5 – iteration planning!

Iterations are commonly known as sprints within certain agile frameworks and we’ll use both terms interchangeably.

Before committing to delivering backlog items, we have to answer the following question: How much work can be achieved in this iteration?

Understanding Sprint Capacity & Velocity

As your team matures, you will understand exactly how much work you can achieve in a certain time period.

When answering the question of ‘how much’ there are two different terms thrown around: capacity and velocity. Here’s what they both mean:

• Capacity – When planning your iteration, understanding your team’s capacity means looking ahead to see what each member can achieve. Here, you’re looking for events such as holidays, long-term illnesses, and training days. You need to identify events that may prevent work from being completed.
• Velocity – For mature teams, velocity looks back at how much work you’ve been able to complete previously. If we cast our minds back to t-shirt sizing, we may say the velocity of our team is equivalent to 3 ‘large’ items per iteration.

So, as we begin to plan our iteration we can look forward (capacity) and back (velocity) to understand what we can achieve.

Let’s take a brief example:

You’re the Project Manager working with a team of 5 people to plan your next iteration. From previous iterations, you know you can typically complete 10 small-sized work items per iteration.

You look at the calendar. You notice one of your team members will be on holiday for the whole iteration. This means your team capacity is down to 80%.

Therefore, when planning forward you should also adjust your capacity down to 80%. This means you will only commit to 8 small-sized items for this sprint (10 x 80% = 8) instead of 10.

Sprint Plan Meeting

So far, you have prioritized items in your backlog with associated time estimates. You have also forecast your team’s capacity.

Now you need to marry up the two during a formal sprint planning meeting.

As a team, select which backlog items you can complete in this iteration. To avoid missing deadlines don’t exceed your capacity allowance.

Once the backlog items have been selected, you’re ready to go!

Sprint Planning in Toggl Plan

There are different ways you could manage this in Toggl depending on the size, scale, and complexity of your team.

Here’s a simple way to set up your sprint!

Step 1 – Bring your team together for an iteration planning session. Get your Website Backlog Plan up for everyone to see.

Step 2 – Once you have selected an item, open it up on the task view.

Step 3 – From here, update the item. Change the status to ‘In Progress’ and assign attributes such as segment, assignee, and from-to dates.

Step 4 – You can also add further to-do activities. This will help you better track its completion.

Step 5 – Now you have a view of which items have moved from your backlog ready for this iteration!

The backlog items have been selected and the iteration has been planned. Now it’s time to make sure it gets delivered and for that, we need daily planning! 

Level 6 Agile Planning – Daily Stand-up Meetings

With the iteration underway, you need to keep everything moving smoothly.

The project manager, delivery manager, or scrum master has to keep an eye on progress. There are many ways to do this; using to-do lists, assigning sub-tasks, and arranging demonstrations. But there’s one activity that underpins daily agile planning – the daily stand-up.

What is a daily stand-up meeting?

The daily stand-up is a 15-30-minute session where everyone in the team reports their progress. Specifically, each member will discuss the following:

• What they completed yesterday
• What they plan to complete today
• Any blockers they are facing

Daily Stand-ups in Toggl Plan

The daily stand-up isn’t task-/item-specific, so you need to record it generically rather than by task. 

Here’s one way to manage it:

Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan and create a new status. Give it a name that isn’t related to your main work process – we’ve chosen ‘Admin’.

Step 2 – Create a task under this status to document your daily stand-up. Give it an appropriate title, tag, and assignee and use the notes area to record the minutes of the meeting.

Step 3 – Remember you can also use to-dos to track tasks or attach relevant files.

What About Release Planning?

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice we’ve missed out Level 4 from the Agile Planning Onion – release planning.

Depending on the organization, a single release may comprise multiple iterations’ worth of work. This will need its own separate process.

We could write a whole article about it, but instead here’s a simple way to pass the work over to a release team once it’s complete.

Step 1 – Open your Website Backlog Plan. Once an item has been completed, simply drag it to the ‘Ready for Release’ column. Your release team can clearly see the items they need to pick up!

Step 2 – From here, the release team can either move the item to ‘Completed’ once it’s been released or they may want it in another plan. If so, they can open the item and by selecting the ‘plan’, re-assign it to the correct place.

Agile planning offers an exciting new way to deliver change. Giving more flexibility and allowing stakeholders to feel the benefits sooner, it’s no wonder it’s such a popular method!

Whether it’s building and prioritizing a backlog, managing your iteration capacity, or simply recording day-to-date plans, Toggl can help.

If you’re new to agile planning, Toggl Plan Boards can offer all of the elements you need in one concise platform, meaning you can spend more time focussing on the things that matter. Or if you’re an agile planning expert, why not use Toggl Plan Boards to take your planning skills to the next level?

Either way, Toggl gives you and the team a clear and visual way to plan, collaborate, and track your work to help guarantee great results for your customers!

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What is agile  project management?

Agile project management  is an  iterative  approach to delivering a project throughout its  life cycle .

Iterative or agile life cycles are composed of several iterations or incremental  steps towards the completion of a project. Iterative approaches are frequently used in  software development  projects to promote velocity and adaptability since the benefit of iteration is that you can adjust as you go along rather than following a linear path.

One of the aims of an agile or iterative approach is to release benefits throughout the process rather than only at the end. At the core, agile projects should exhibit central values and behaviours of trust, flexibility, empowerment and collaboration.

Did you know that developing an agile mindset can enable project success? Read the latest research on Dynamic Conditions for Project Success

Common myths and misconceptions around agile, do you know your scrum from your sprint find out about different agile methodologies, read our handy glossary of popular agile terminology to find out what they mean, why do we need agile project management.

We need agile project management because it helps us focus on what matters. Becoming more agile through organisations and team’s brings flexibility to change and allows us to deliver value often with continuous feedback.

The goal is not to ‘be agile’ the goal is to improve. With an incremental and iterative approach, we increase predictability and control risk.

Read the blog here.

Traditional project management vs agile project management

What are the principles of an agile way of working?

The agile management philosophy concentrates on empowered people and their interactions, and early and constant delivery of value into an enterprise. 

Iterative or agile project management  focuses on delivering maximum value against business priorities in the time and budget allowed, especially when the drive to deliver is greater than the risk. Some agile principles include:

• The project breaks a requirement into smaller pieces, which are then prioritised by the team in terms of importance.
• The agile project promotes  collaborative working , especially with the customer. 
• The agile project reflects, learns and adjusts at regular intervals to ensure that the customer is always satisfied and is provided with outcomes that result in benefits.
• Agile methods integrate planning with execution, allowing an organisation to create a working mindset that helps a team respond effectively to changing requirements.

Becoming agile

The move to becoming an agile organisation brings change. It impacts on the traditional culture and introduces new ways of working on projects – so not everyone will be convinced. What does it take to successfully introduce that change?

This is a member only resource. Not a member? Join today

Three common myths debunked

When approaching agile project management for the first time, it becomes apparent that there are various trains of thought. Some people believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Others are less convinced, seeing it as an excuse to wreak havoc on tried-and-tested delivery processes. We clear up some of the main misconceptions and share a holistic view of what agile project management is (and crucially, what it is not).

Watch: The practical adoption of scaled agile

Interview with Sue Clarke

This APM Research Fund study builds on the APM North West Volunteer study on the practical adoption of agile methodologies  which provided a review of approaches at a project level, this study aims to investigate the level of practical adoption of those programme and portfolio components addressed by   scaled agile  methodologies.  

The objective of the study was to understand the extent to which scaled agile tools, techniques and roles are practically in place in corporate portfolio, programme, project and development management methodologies, to determine the level of corporate commitment to exploiting scaled agile, e.g. pilot, full use, selective based on need, as well as drivers for selection or deselection of the framework based on the overheads.

What are the differences between an agile and waterfall approach?

These four aspects highlight the difference between agile and waterfall (or more traditional) approaches to project management:

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Individuals and interaction over process and tools
• Responding to change over following a structured plan
• Prototyping/working solutions over comprehensive documentation

What are the benefits of agile working?

Agile approaches empower those involved; build accountability; encourage diversity of ideas; allowing the early release of benefits; and promotion of continuous improvement.

Agile helps build client and user engagement because changes are incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary: it can therefore be effective in supporting cultural change that is critical to the success of most transformation projects.

Agile allows decision ‘gremlins’ to be tested and rejected early: the tight feedback loops provide benefits in agile that are not as evident in waterfall.

What are agile techniques?

There are various iterative or agile techniques that can suit any project method, they’re not limited to agile. You also don’t have to use them all; choose the ones that work for you, your team and the project.

This infographic is brought to you by the interactive APM Learning module.

APM Podcast

Agile or agility a valuable addition to the project toolkit.

Emma meets Adrian Dooley, who has 45 years’ experience in project management. He is the founder and lead author of the Praxis Framework.

In this podcast, he shares how, in his experience, many fads rise to prominence and then become integrated into good practice. He believes agile will follow that same path.

Agile project management glossary

Iterative or agile terminology can be confusing. We have compiled a list of the most common agile terminology you may come across, and their definitions:

• Agile  – a project management approach based on delivering requirements iteratively and incrementally throughout the life cycle.
• Agile development  – an umbrella term specifically for iterative software development methodologies. Popular methods include Scrum, Lean, DSDM and eXtreme Programming (XP).
• Agile Manifesto  – describes the four principles of agile development: 1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. 2. Working software over comprehensive documentation. 3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. 4. Responding to change over following a plan.
• Backlog  – prioritised work still to be completed (see Requirements).
• Burn down chart  – used to monitor progress; shows work still to complete (the Backlog) versus total time.
• Cadence  – the number of days or weeks in a Sprint or release; the length of the team’s development cycle. 
• Ceremonies  – meetings, often a daily planning meeting, that identify what has been done, what is to be done and the barriers to success.
• DAD  ( disciplined agile delivery ) – a process-decision framework.
• Daily Scrum  – stand-up team meeting. A plan, do, review daily session.
• DevOps  (development/operations) – bridges the gap between agile teams and operational delivery to production.
• DSDM (dynamic systems development method)  – agile development methodology, now changed to the ‘DSDM project management framework’.
• Kanban   – a method for managing work, with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery.
• Kanban board   – a work and workflow visualisation tool which summarises the status, progress, and issues related to the work.
• Lean  – a method of working focused on ‘eliminating waste’ by avoiding anything that does not produce value for the customer.
• LeSS (large-scale Scrum)  – agile development method.
• RAD  (rapid application development) – agile development method; enables developers to build solutions quickly by talking directly to end users to meet business requirement.
• Requirements  – are written as ‘stories’ that are collated into a prioritised list called the ‘Backlog’.
• SAFe  (scaled agile framework enterprise) – agile methodology used for software development.
• Scaled agile  – agile scaled up to large projects or programmes, for example by having multiple sub-projects, creating tranches of projects, etc.
• Scrum  – agile methodology commonly used in software development, where regular team meetings review progress of a single development phase (or Sprint).  
• Scrum of scrums  – a technique to operate Scrum at scale, for multiple teams working on the same product.
• Scrum master  – the person who oversees the development process and who makes sure everyone adheres to an agreed way of working.
• Sprints  – a short development phase within a larger project defined by available time (‘timeboxes’) and resources.
• Sprint retrospective  – a review of a Sprint providing lessons learned with the aim of promoting continuous improvement.
• Stories  – see Requirements.
• Timeboxes  – see Sprints.
• Velocity  – a measure of work completed during a single development phase or Sprint.
• Waterfall  – a sequential project management approach that seeks to capture detailed requirements upfront; the opposite to agile.
• XP  (eXtreme Programming) – agile development methodology used in software development; allows programmers to decide the scope of deliveries.

Related reading

Read more about agile management tools and why we need them.

Directing Agile Change

Directing Agile Change is the first ‘how to’ agile guide published by APM .  It seeks to recognise that agile is not limited to software development but can also be applied to many aspects of an organisation.

A Guide to Assurance of Agile Delivery

This guide shows how undertaking traditional assurance reviews can be adapted and adopted to ensure assurance activity of agile projects is both effective and valuable.

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The beginner’s guide to scrum and agile project management

What can help you build a car, save your marriage, code software, write a book, or even renovate a house?

A whiteboard and a pad of sticky notes (the analog OR digital kind!).

Well, and the knowledge of how to use them, of course.

If you work in tech (or spend any amount of time with engineers), you’ve probably heard about “Scrum” and “Agile.” It’s a system mentioned in reverent tones by tech types and seems to have its own strange language. Terms like “planning poker,” “stand-ups,” and “sprints” are thrown about by its proponents.

It can all be a bit intimidating to the uninitiated.

I know because I’ve been there. During my first week working at a tech company I was introduced to Scrum through our software development team, and I was instantly hooked. The way they were able to take complex problems, prioritize them into individual tasks, then delegate those tasks to the team member best suited to solve each one was incredible.

But was this just for engineers? Could us non-code-wizards really benefit from something like Scrum? If so, how do you even get started?

Buckle up, because we’re about to “ sprint ” through an intro to Scrum (you’ll get that joke by the end of this article, I promise).

What is Scrum and Agile?

Things can get a bit confusing to newcomers in regards to nomenclature. “Scrum” and “Agile” seem to be used interchangeably when you first enter this world, but there is an important distinction.

Agile refers to a set of “methods and practices based on the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto ,” which includes things like collaboration, self-organization, and cross functionality of teams.

Scrum is a framework that is used to implement Agile development .

A good analogy would be the difference between a recipe and a diet. A vegetarian diet is a set of methods and practices based on principles and values. A recipe for chickpea tacos would be a framework you can use to implement your vegetarian diet.

This is similar to the relationship between Agile (the diet) and Scrum (the recipe you follow).

Agile was born out of the techniques utilized by innovative Japanese companies in the 70’s and 80’s (companies like Toyota, Fuji, and Honda). They started working via the kanban method to improve the speed and flow of work.

In the mid-90’s, a man by the name of Jeff Sutherland found himself frustrated by companies who were continually plagued by projects that were behind schedule and over budget. He sought to find a better way.

His research brought him to these Japanese companies and their Agile methods. Basing his work on this, Sutherland created the Scrum framework. After a series of successes using his new methods, Scrum began to quickly spread throughout the product development world.

Who Can Benefit From Scrum?

You could be forgiven for thinking Scrum was something limited to engineers or developers. But the framework can be beneficial for other types of projects too.

“Scrum can be used for any sort of complex project, the caveat is that it works best when there’s a concrete product being produced,” says David Matthew , a Certified Scrum Master for Incentive Technology Group , “If you work in marketing and need to write copy for a project, it could definitely be beneficial for your team.”

Scrum has been used by everyone from the FBI , to marketing agencies , to construction crews. Any time you’re producing some sort of product, be it software or an email campaign, Scrum can help you organize your team and get more work done in less time.

The People and Parts of Scrum

T o understand Scrum, you’ve got to know the people and parts of the framework. The good news is, you don’t need any special experience or certifications to start.

“You don’t need much to get started with Scrum,” says Matthew, “You really just need a place to organize your thoughts, or your Backlog . That could be software like Trello, or even just a whiteboard. You need the different roles, like the Product Owner and the Scrum Master . The actual tools you need are not as big as the roles involved.”

Let’s break down the pieces and parts that make Scrum happen:

• Scrum starts with a Product Owner . This is the person who represents the final user’s best interest, and has the authority to say what goes into the final product.
• If I were using Scrum to design a car, items like “Must have an engine” would be near the top of my prioritized list, because the car can’t work without it. “Must be painted red” would be lower on my priority list; it might still be important to me, but it’s not a requirement for the car to run.
• Next up is the Sprint . A Sprint is a predetermined timeframe within which the team completes sets of tasks from the Backlog. The length of time depends on the needs of the team, but two weeks is pretty typical.
• Teams meet every day to give progress updates in the Daily Scrum . Many people also call these “Daily Stand-Ups.”
• Each Sprint ends with a review , or Retrospective, where the team reviews their work and discusses ways to improve the next Sprint.

As you can see, there’s not really any special equipment or training you need to get started. The hardest part is learning the lingo, and staying true to the rules and guidelines that make Scrum work.

“Scrum is kind of like poker; you can learn the rules in 10 minutes, but it takes a long time to get great at it.”

Starting a Basic Scrum Framework

If you’re tired of your current methods of project management, why not give Scrum a shot?

Since you don’t need special training to get started, it’s really just a matter of learning the ropes on your own. Sutherland and his co-creator, Ken Schwaber, make this super easy by making the official guide freely available on ScrumGuides.org .

Learning the basics of getting started is easy. Mastering the technique is the hard part.

Here’s Scrum Master David Matthew again:

Still, don’t let that deter you. One need not be a master to start making their work lives happier and more productive.

Here are some basic steps to get started:

• Download and print the PDF version of the official Scrum Guide : Read it on your commute or during your lunch break with a highlighter in hand. Highlight the phrases and roles that are new to you and start working on memorizing what each one means.
• Pick your roles: You need a Product Owner (speaks for the user, final say in what the project needs), a Scrum Master (helps the team move along based on the principles of Scrum), and team members. Remember, there’s no room for egos in Scrum. Scrum runs on a “servant leader” model.
• Create your product Backlog: The Backlog is where you list out everything the project needs, ordered by importance. Keep in mind that the Backlog is never complete. As the project takes shape and new needs emerge, you will add to this. The Product Owner takes primarily responsible for this.
• Plan your Sprint: Next, it’s time to pick tasks from the backlog to be completed in your first Sprint. Sprint’s are time-limited. You can decide a time length that works for you, but they are always less than one month. During the Sprint Planning, the team decides what tasks to include in this Sprint and who will be responsible for them.
• Get to work! Time to start working on that Sprint! Team members work on their tasks, and everybody checks in on their progress at the Daily Scrum Meeting. This meeting lasts no more than 15-minutes and answers three questions: What did you work on yesterday? What will you work on today? Is there anything blocking your work today that you need help with?
• Review your work: At the end of the Sprint, the team reviews the work accomplished and presents their completed tasks.
• Review your process: During the Retrospective meeting, you’ll review how the actual work process went and plan ways you can improve your work and be more efficient next time.
• Repeat! With your first Sprint complete, it’s time to start over again. Pick more tasks from the Backlog and repeat the process.

Making It All Visual

A n important principle in Scrum is the idea of transparency. All team members involved should be aware of what everyone else is working on, progress being made, and what the team is trying to accomplish.

That’s why making things visible for all to see is so important.

A big piece of this is the Scrum Board . This is a place where you can organize your Backlog, as well as tasks that are being worked on in the current sprint and their progress.

Scrum Boards can be as simple as a whiteboard with sticky notes for each task, or as complicated as specialized software, with charts and task tracking features.

For my personal Scrum Board, I use Trello.

My Trello Scrum Board is broken up into seven lists (inspired by this blog post ), representing the workflow of my tasks.

• Resources: In this list, I keep all tasks that are recurring. That way I don’t have to make a new card every time I need to build a landing page for a webinar. Just move that card out from the Resources list.
• Backlog: Here’s where I keep my Backlog of tasks to be worked on. When my boss tells me he has something he needs help with, I add it to my Backlog list.
• To Do: When I plan my Sprint, I pull tasks from the Backlog to this list. This is the current Sprint I’m working on.
• Doing: When a task has been started, it gets moved here.
• QC: Quality check. As tasks are completed, they get moved to “QC.” At the end of the week, I review this list to make sure everything is up to snuff.
• Done: Passed quality check, ready to be shipped! No more edits or reviews necessary, it’s scheduled and ready for action.
• Blocked: When something is preventing me from completing a task (maybe I need to purchase something first and need approval from my boss), I move it to “Blocked”, along with a comment about what the blocker is.

Trello is an effective tool for this, because I can throw my board onto a monitor that’s visible for anyone to see, share access with my entire team, and put every detail needed on each and every task in the form of comments, checklists, due dates, and attachments.

I can assign different team members to these tasks and integrate it with our marketing Slack channel , too. That way, when a team member moves a task from “Doing” to “QC,” I know they’re ready to move onto the next task.

My end goal here is that anyone assigned a task should have everything they need to complete it on that card. There should be no reason they need to come to me with questions, or wait for me to give them something. When tasks are clearly outlined before assignment, work moves significantly faster.

The Importance of Iteration and Improvement

One of the core features of Scrum, and what makes it so potentially powerful, is the idea of iteration and improvement. This is in regards to both the product being worked on, and the efficiency of the team itself.

At the end of each Sprint, the work delivered should be ready to deliver to a client. This does not mean that it’s a finished, complete project. Far from it. Rather, it means that the work should be complete enough to show some sort of Minimum Viable Product (MVP, in startup parlance).

If it were a car, you should be able to drive it. Maybe it doesn’t have a radio or A/C, but it can drive.

Why is this so important?

Because it lets you collect feedback from users early on, helping guide development of the product to ensure a good fit with the user.

I think everyone has experienced those moments in life where you worked for hours on a project, only to find out the person you’re delivering it to had something else in mind completely.

Imagine spending thousands of dollars and many months developing a product, only to find out it doesn’t actually solve the user’s problem.

Going back to our car analogy, if we deliver the car to the user in small, iterative chunks, it’s not such a big deal when they say “Gee, you know what? After driving it around a bit, I think I want it to be a convertible instead.” Learning this after the final product is delivered would be a huge problem.

Scrum is built on iterative deliveries of your product. Rather than waiting until the project is 100% complete to deliver it to the user, you deliver useable chunks of the project over time. This helps avoid wasted efforts when needs change or things get lost in communication.

But beyond the importance of iterations and improvements for the product, Scrum also focuses on improving the process with each new cycle.

During the Retrospective meeting, team members discuss areas where their efficiency could be improved. Maybe it’s a tech limitation holding them back. Maybe one team member is overloaded with tasks. The team decides how to fix these problems, with the intent of improving their efficiency in the next Sprint. Theoretically, the team should be more efficient and produce more work with each new cycle.

Wait a Minute…MORE WORK?!

When I first started looking at Scrum, there was something that scared me a bit: this whole idea of completing more work.

More work? I’m overworked already!

But the idea behind Scrum is not to “do more work,” it’s to work smarter and thus accomplish more.

Sutherland has a great quote about this in his book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time:

“Think about your job. How much of your time is wasted while you’re waiting for someone else to finish their work, or for information to be delivered, or because you’re trying to do too many things at once? Maybe you would rather be at work all day – me, I’d rather be surfing.”

Scrum doesn’t measure you by the hours you logged, but by the tasks you accomplished. Who cares how long a task took if the result is the same?

With Scrum, you’re not creating more work for yourself; you’re being more efficient with your time so that you can spend less of it at the office and more time with the people and things you love.

How’s that for work-life balance?

More Resources

Scrum is hard to fit into a single blog post, so I highly recommend doing some further reading on the topic if it interests you:

• Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half The Time, by Jeff Sutherland – This book was my first deep dive into Scrum. Everything is laid out in an entertaining manner, with stories to back each and every aspect of the framework. A great read.
• Our Agency’s Epic 200% Productivity Secret, by Adam Steele – I came across this blog after watching the developers at my company work with Scrum and wondering if any marketers are using it. The answer? Yes, and in a big way.
• The Scrum Guide, by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber – The basic guide you need to get started.
• Scrum Glossary , from the Scrum Alliance – Definitions of all the people and pieces in Scrum
• Scrum Certifications , from the Scrum Alliance – If you want to dive deeper into Scrum, check out some of these certification courses.

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What are Agile Methodologies? How & When To Use Them [+Example]

Agile methodologies represent ways of working that prioritize people, team members, and teamwork over the use of specific processes. Learn how to put them to work on your project team.

Agile methodologies are a set of flexible and iterative approaches to software development and project management. The core principles of agile methodologies prioritize collaboration, adaptability, and customer satisfaction. Instead of following a rigid, linear plan, agile embraces change and focuses on delivering smaller, incremental improvements over time.

What Are Agile Methodologies?

Agile methodologies represent ways of working that prioritize people, team members, and teamwork over the use of specific processes, and prioritizes results over sticking to specific deliverables or contracts.

They also prioritize flexibility and creating work iteratively and in increments, rather than segmented and rigid phases (a characteristic of waterfall —read more about agile vs waterfall ). 

Project planning happens continuously throughout the project, rather than all at once at the beginning. The goal is to deliver working software at each iteration or development cycle. Both software development teams and project teams more generally might choose to work this way.

The Benefits Of Agile

Some of the major benefits of agile ways of working include:

• It creates engagement between clients and end users, and increases customer satisfaction
• It can often support culture changes within organizations
• It provides more flexibility, which allows for more project control and the ability to pivot to changing customer needs or business needs
• It reduces waste in the form of meetings and activities that waste time and don’t offer value to the project or end product
• It supports faster detection of bugs and other issues, meaning a quicker turnaround time when it comes to fixing them
• It allows for more accountability and diversity of ideas

Agile Methodologies, Frameworks, & Approaches

In this article, I touch on the following methodologies, frameworks, and approaches, all of which are rooted in the agile principles .

• DevOps / (Bus)DevOps
• Design Thinking

Agile Project Management (AgilePM)

Prince2 agile.

• PMI-Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP)

Project Half Double

• Agile Program Management (AgilePgM)
• Scale Agile Framework (SAFe)

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Scrum at scale (s@s).

• Spotify Model
• Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD)
• Agile Fluency
• Open Space Agility (OSA)
• Agility Scales
• Disciplined Agile (DA)
• Toyota Production System (TPS)

Agile Digital Services (AgileDS)

• Management of Portfolios (MoP)
• Standard for Portfolio Management (SfPfM)
• Agile Portfolio Management (AgilePfM)
• Evidence-Based Portfolio Management (E-B PfM)
• Bimodal Portfolio Management (Bimodal PfM)
• eXtreme Programming (XP)
• Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
• Test-driven development (TDD)
• Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
• Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
• Experiment-Driven Development (EDD)
• User Experience Design (UX Design)
• Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA)
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
• Agile Modeling (AM)

As I said, I don’t go into depth on the approaches that are geared towards the portfolio-level, engineering-level, or organizational culture. So, I’ve put in bold the methodologies that I do cover in some depth in this article. For others, you can find more detail on my blog .

A Bird’s Eye View Of The Agile Forest

To get a first impression of the different approaches, I tried to bring some structure into the jungle of approaches, methods, and frameworks. 

In the image below, which I call my “ bird’s eye view on the agile forest ”, I position the 41 best-known agile approaches in a structure (some are in more than one spot). This picture is based on a simpler version in the book Scaling Agile In Organisaties that I published in 2017.

Below, I break down the structure of the picture. 

In the dark blue boxes, we see agile approaches that are only applicable in IT-focused organizations. All other approaches are in light blue, meaning that they can be used within IT and non-IT-oriented organizations.

The approaches, frameworks, or methods are positioned within two main sections: the “one-time programs/projects” section and the “business as usual/indefinite” section. Some fit within both, so they span the entire area.

Then, the approaches, frameworks, or methods are clustered based on which level they generally operate upon: engineering, team, programme or portfolio level.

Even though it’s light blue, the team level is really applicable in both IT-oriented and non-IT-oriented product development, services development, and operations. Meanwhile, the engineering level focuses specifically on IT-oriented product development.  

I also cluster some methods based upon their target: are they product-targeted, team-targeted, or culture-targeted? The business as usual or indefinite umbrella frameworks that are used more permanently (both product-targeted and team-targeted) focus specifically on IT and product development. The culture-targeted approaches help organizations increase their agility.

A few caveats:

• I haven’t mapped all the known approaches, frameworks and methods in this figure. And, to be honest, I think there is a lot of duplication, and it’s likely that commercial drivers play a role, too, to “develop” the next kid on the block without added value in comparison with the existing approaches, frameworks or methods.
• The line between IT and non-IT applications is not set in stone . For instance, the one-time, temporary projects and programme frameworks and methods are suitable for both IT and non-IT. 

Agile Methodologies That Digital Project Managers Should Know

In this section, I’ll give an overview of some of the most important methods and approaches that digital project managers should know. All mentioned frameworks or approaches embrace the Agile Manifesto and use some form of Scrum, but they differ depending on factors such as whether they are team- or product focused, what level they’re applied on, and more.

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Team-Level Agile

When teams start working with Agile, Scrum is often chosen. This is an obvious choice, but the question is whether this is always the right choice. In this Roman Pichler blog post , the link was made with the life phase of a product. 

During the first phase of a commercial product lifecycle, in which the commercial product is finally put on the market for the first time, the uncertainty is high, and the focus is on on-time delivery of the first market-ready product. A deadline has been set and that date must be met. 

During this phase, the focus of the entire development team is on delivering a commercially marketable product. The Scrum Master helps by removing blockers for the team, streamlining their processes, and championing the team and the project, without organizing the team itself. Scrum teams should be self-organizing.

This development process is perfect for Scrum with its iterative approach, being able to deal with uncertainty and working together on the result (the commercial product). Optionally, a second launch can take place with a next set of important functionalities, so that eventually a mature product is put on the market. 

Scrum is centered around 5 main ceremonies , which are as follows:

• Backlog grooming
• Sprint planning
• Daily scrum (also sometimes called a daily standup)
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

Each ceremony is timeboxed according to the length of the sprint itself. Many of these ceremonies have been adopted (wholly or in part) by teams running other agile software development methodologies, to form a patchwork or approximation of Scrum. Read about the differences between Scrum and Kanban (covered below).

In addition to Scrum, on the team level, you will see frameworks such as Kanban (as described in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams), or its relatives Scrumban, DevOps, and BusDevOps. This can be used within both IT environments and non-IT environments.

During the course of the product lifecycle, we see the amount of uncertainty and requested changes decrease. At this moment you can make good use of Kanban. In a continuous flow, user stories can be picked up, developed, and deployed one by one by individual team members.

In case there is only one permanent agile team to develop and maintain a product or service, and the team uses Scrum or Kanban with a product owner who prioritizes the product backlog, you might ask if there is a need for a project manager. I would say no, leave that team alone.

Get more info on using Kanban for project management here , and more about the differences between Kanban and agile here .

DevOps, (Bus)DevOps, and CI/CD 

If one looks at the often difficult transfer to production environments, the time-to-market can be shortened by properly arranging the transfer and reducing the number of transfer errors when development and production teams are merged, and the integration testing and deployment are automated (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, CI/CD). In this way a DevOps team is created.

Scrumban is the combination of Scrum and Kanban (also known as a hybrid project methodology ). In the first instance it was intended as a transitional model to switch from Scrum to Kanban and let the team experience Lean and Kanban concepts.

Nowadays it is an approach in which the team has chosen to work according to Scrum with sprints, but to use the Kanban board and system to continually view and improve its working method to optimize the flow of units of work (ex. user stories).

Scaling Up Towards Product Or Program Level Agile

In order to be able to use an agile way of working in an organization of some size, just having individual agile teams is in most organizations not enough. There are examples of organizations who have or are in the middle of creating a loosely coupled architecture based on micro services (ex. Bol.com in the Netherlands). Each autonomous agile team manages one or more micro services.

However, in most of the organizations the agile way of working needs to be scaled up, and where possible the overarching alignment needs to be taken care of. This can be done by a project manager or by institutionalizing the coordination. 

When institutionalizing the coordination, the project manager disappears but many project management tasks are fulfilled by others (ex. the integration team in Nexus, the Release Train Engineer and the Product Manager in SAFe, etc).

To institutionalize coordination, management of dependencies, and integration between the different permanent agile teams within the “business-as-usual” side, there are various frameworks available.

Nexus, as described in The Nexus Guide, is a framework for product or software development initiatives with three to nine Scrum Teams, in Sprints of up to thirty days. Nexus is the answer of Ken Schwaber, one of the founding fathers of Scrum, to the scalability of Scrum. 

It requires more than just the will and the agile behavior of the different Scrum teams to work together to deliver an integrated product. Nexus is based on and builds on Scrum and the rules and roles formulated in the Scrum guide. We can position Nexus over the team and program levels of SAFe, but it does not offer provisions on portfolio level.

Scrum at Scale (S@S, developed by Jeff Sutherland and Alex Brown) is a modular framework. The starting point at S@S is that an all-encompassing one-size-fits-all framework is not possible, but that every time we have to look at scaling the underlying Scrum principles. 

The framework can be tailored for your own organization by adding the needed S@S modules. S@S builds on the well-known Scrum framework. By analogy with Nexus you could therefore say that S@S is the answer from Jeff Sutherland, next to Ken Schwaber, the other founding father of Scrum, on the scalability of Scrum.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS, developed by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde) is an agile framework with rules, based on principles and doing experiments. 

The LeSS company offers a freely accessible knowledge base (less.works) containing the integrated approach, principles, process descriptions, definitions, roles, examples, et cetera, for large-scale, mainly IT-related, product development. Transparency is also a key concept within LeSS. The first version dates from 2005 and since then, work is constantly being done on the use and further development of LeSS.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

Scaled Agile Framework ( SAFe , developed by Dean Leaffingwell) is a framework to enable the scaling up of agile teams in order to create better systems, create higher employee engagement, and make use of correct cost considerations. 

This is the mission of the scaled agile organization and of the founder of SAFe, Dean Leffingwell. The scaled agile organization offers a knowledge base that is freely accessible to everyone, with an integrated approach in the form of process descriptions, definitions, roles, examples, etc. for Lean and Agile product development. 

SAFe is based on five core competencies: lean-agile leadership, team and technical agility, DevOps and release on demands, business solutions and lean systems and lean portfolio management.

Looking back at my map of the methods, in the “Business as usual/indefinite” section, we can see the above methods of SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, and S@S in the product-targeted section. They all relate to examples where multiple teams work on a single complex product or value stream (product-targeted frameworks). 

There’s a division between product and team targets, namely on the basis of cooperation between teams. In other words, can the individual teams work autonomously (with a team focus)? Or, do they have to work together to deliver a new or modified product (with a product focus)?

Additionally, several approaches (not listed in the figure) make a distinction between products that need cooperation between a maximum of nine teams (in total the team of teams must not exceed the Dunbar number of 125-150 people) and a team of teams of teams (ex. SAFe large solutions, Nexus+, LeSS Huge). An example of this in the real world occurs at Philips, a Dutch medical equipment supplier who uses SAFe and works with 20-30 teams on a single product.

The Spotify Model and ScALeD

Looking to the product-targeted frameworks, we see approaches that support IT departments maintaining dozens or hundreds of applications or services. In these settings, the dependencies between the teams are minimal (multiple team targeted frameworks). 

Here, the Spotify model (developed by Henrik Kniberg, Anders Ivarsson, and Joakim Sundén) can be positioned, but also Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD, developed by Peter Beck, Markus Gartner, Christoph Mathis, Stefan Roock, and Andreas Schliep). 

For both groups, there are essential interfaces between the teams in areas such as data integrity, security, and architecture that may not (but sometimes will) ask for coordination when implementing changes. In this group I don’t expect to find a project manager. Because these teams are autonomous, I believe that a project manager will not add value.

On the left side of the map, we see the one-time project frameworks. These are frameworks where the role of project manager is needed. Most of them are a further development of the more traditional project management frameworks:

Agile Project Management (AgilePM, which is derived from Dynamic Systems Development Method, aka DSDM) comes from Agile Business Consortium. It’s a method by which different, possibly permanent, agile teams and non-agile teams are coordinated for the duration of a project.

The AgilePM method for managing agile projects consists of a framework, comprising a philosophy, derived principles, and four building blocks: people, workflows , products, and applications.

The AgilePM philosophy is that every project must be aligned to clearly defined business goals and must focus on the early delivery of products that provide real added value to the business organization.

PRINCE2 Agile  (derived from PRINCE2 from AXELOS) includes both the existing PRINCE2 and the agile way of thinking. The agile way of thinking must be seen as agile behavior, concepts, frameworks, focus areas, and techniques. The existing PRINCE2 principles, processes, and themes remain, but should be tailored using the agile way of working and the project itself. 

PRINCE2 Agile searches for the best of both worlds where the emphasis lies in the use of PRINCE2 within project direction and project management, and an agile approach in the product delivery. Depending on the project situation you can apply more or less of the PRINCE2 or agile way of thinking.

Here’s a short video I created about PRINCE2 Agile.

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner or PMI-ACP (in addition to the PMBoK Guide of PMI) is not a stand-alone framework, but it is a certification based on different books (and the frameworks and underlying techniques described therein). 

Within PMI-ACP, seven domains are identified, each of which is subdivided into a number of task areas. The domains are Agile principles and framework, value-driven delivery, stakeholder management , team performance, adaptive planning , problem detection and solutioning, and continuous improvement.

Project Half Double is run by a community of dedicated project management practitioners who are passionate about what they do. It was co-created in an iterative way by a community of dedicated project management practitioners.

The methodology is based on the four building blocks to achieve double the impact in half the time: impact, flow, leadership, and local translation. 

Impact is all about stakeholder satisfaction. Flow represents high intensity and frequent interaction in project work, learning, and impact. Leadership shows that leaders must embrace uncertainty and make the project happen. Local translation is the fact that you have to tailor the methodology to the needs of the organization.

Disciplined Agile (DA) 

Disciplined Agile (DA) covers both one-time projects and programs as well as business as usual product development. The DA toolkit is a process decision toolkit that describes how agile software development, DevOps, IT, and business teams work in enterprise-class settings .

Disciplined Agile (DA) offers a portfolio process in which, in addition to projects, a number of “business-as-usual” aspects are taken into account, such as the permanent teams and the operational management of existing IT solutions.

Agile Digital Services (AgileDS) is there for delivery and the continuous operations, support, and maintenance of that service (permanent agile delivery team, using the product/service lifecycle).

Learn More About Agile Methods, Frameworks, & Approaches

Want to learn more about how to use Agile methodologies? Check out our expert-created courses in the DPM School.

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What Is Agile Methodology in Project Management?

• 1.  Project Management Basics
• 2.  Project Management Methodologies
• 3.  Project Management Life Cycle
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• 6.  Agile Methodology Basics
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• Agile Project Management

What Is Agile Methodology?

Agile methodology is a project management approach that prioritizes cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement. It divides projects into smaller phases and guides teams through cycles of planning, execution, and evaluation.

In this article, we share everything you need to know about Agile methodologies, Agile project management, Agile methodology frameworks, and how to implement them in your team. We’ll also share our Agile teamwork template to get started with Agile even faster.

[ Continue reading after the links ]

Quick links to explore Agile methodology related topics

• Agile Methodology basics
• Different types of Agile methodologies
• Four pillars of Agile
• Six stages of the Agile life cycle
• Agile Guide (complete guide)
• Scrum Guide (complete guide)
• Kanban Guide (complete guide)

Agile methodologies overview

The Agile Manifesto for Software Development put forth a groundbreaking mindset on delivering value and collaborating with customers when it was created in 2001.

Agile’s four main values are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

You can read more about the four pillars of Agile in our Agile guide.

What is Agile project management?

Agile project management is a process for managing a project that involves constant collaboration and working in iterations. It works off the basis that a project can be continuously improved upon throughout its life cycle and adapt to changes quickly.

What are the benefits of using Agile methodology?

Agile is one of the most popular approaches to project management because it is flexible, it is adaptable to changes and it encourages customer feedback.

Many teams embrace the Agile approach for the following reasons:

• Rapid progress: By effectively reducing the time it takes to complete various stages of a project, teams can elicit feedback in real time and produce working prototypes or demos throughout the process
• Customer and stakeholder alignment: Through focusing on customer concerns and stakeholder feedback, the Agile team is well positioned to produce results that satisfy the right people
• Continuous improvement: As an iterative approach, Agile project management allows teams to chip away at tasks until they reach the best end result

You can read more about the six stages of the Agile life cycle in our Agile guide.

See below an example from Wrike’s Agile project management dashboard from our Agile teamwork template . 

[ Continue reading after the image ]

Types of Agile methodologies

Agile project management is not a singular framework but an umbrella term that includes a wide range of methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and the Adaptive Project Framework (APF).

Scrum: It is ideal for projects with rapidly changing requirements, using short sprints. Kanban: It visualizes project progress and is great for tasks requiring steady output. Lean: It streamlines processes, eliminating waste for customer value. Extreme Programming (XP): It enhances software quality and responsiveness to customer satisfaction. Adaptive Project Framework (APF): Works well for projects with unclear details, as it adapts to constantly evolving client needs.

You can learn more about the different types of Agile methodologies in our guide.

Agile methodologies vs. traditional approaches

So, how do these Agile methodologies compare to traditional approaches to project management? Let’s highlight the Waterfall approach as an example.

When working with this traditional methodology, teams would follow a strictly linear sequence: requirements gathering, design, build, test, deliver. They are required to complete one phase before moving on to the next one. Changes are difficult to incorporate once a stage is completed and customer interactions are limited. As a result, Waterfall suits projects with fixed guidelines and minimal changes. 

By comparison, Agile methodologies are far more fluid in nature. Every Agile framework emphasizes a degree of adaptability, breaking projects into phases and embracing changing requirements. Through iterations and incremental efforts, they incorporate collaboration and customer feedback, leading to continuous improvement.

Agile in software development

Agile enables software development teams to stay adaptable.

With an iterative and adaptive approach, the aim is to produce the highest-quality software product that puts the customer at the heart of the process. By prioritizing flexibility, Agile teams can quickly react to changes, deliver products faster, and thrive in a collaborative environment.

By building Agile teams with the right qualities — such as self-organization and effective collaboration — you can accelerate the software development process while leaving space for vital customer feedback.

One of the most compelling reasons to adopt the Agile approach in software development is the dynamic workflows and work systems that contribute to a better end product. By listening to customer feedback and carrying out several iterations and rounds of software testing, you can iron out any kinks along the way and build the best possible software.

The Agile software development life cycle helps you break down each project you take on into six simple stages:

• Concept: Define the project scope and priorities
• Inception: Build the Agile team according to project requirements 
• Iteration: Create code factoring in customer feedback 
• Release: Test the code and troubleshoot any issues
• Maintenance: Provide ongoing tech support to ensure the product remains serviceable
• Retirement: The end of the product lifespan, which often coincides with the beginning of a new one

Read more about the Agile software development life cycle in our Agile guide.

Agile methodology in non-software projects

While many think of the Agile methodology as a solution mostly for the software industry, its applications extend far beyond.

Here are some examples of Agile methodology in action in various project types:

Marketing campaigns

By bringing together designers, marketers, writers and colleagues from other departments, you can build a cross-functional team ready to tackle marketing campaigns. Using sprints and a task backlog, you can identify the highest-priority tasks and streamline the execution.

To explore this approach, download the eBook 7 steps to developing an Agile Marketing Team . 

Event planning

Agile methodologies lend themselves well to event planning, as each part of the event can be broken down into a sprint, and daily standups or Kanban boards can help you maintain a clear strategic direction at all times.

Product development

As you might imagine, since Agile methodology works for virtual products, it can work just as well for physical products. This time, though, instead of troubleshooting code, you’ll be diagnosing and fixing prototypes.

Generally, to get the best out of any of the Agile methodologies for non-software projects, you should always aim to keep the customer in mind. Just as Agile software development must factor in the end user, non-software use cases benefit from a customer-focused approach.

By integrating the customer and their feedback in everything you do, you can better organize your priorities and plan your phases. It’s also a good idea to evaluate whether you need a systematic approach to tackling major projects or an easy-to-follow visual workflow for a series of smaller projects, as this can influence which framework is best for your team.

How to implement Agile methodology into projects

If you’re wondering how to apply these theoretical frameworks to your team’s workflows, here’s a step-by-step guide for Agile methodology implementation: 

1. Choose the right Agile framework

Your first priority is to select the right Agile framework for your team. 

Here’s a reminder of some of the most popular options:

• Scrum: Principle-based project management
• Kanban: Visual workflows and processes
• Scrumban: Hybrid of Scrum and Kanban
• XP: Customer-focused product development
• APF: Versatile teamwork

When selecting an Agile framework, consider the size of your team, the specific project requirements, and the level of experience your team has with the various methodologies. 

The more you know about your team and the projects you handle on a regular basis, the easier it will be for you to pick the right framework every time. 

2. Assemble your Agile team

An Agile team isn’t like any ordinary team.

If you want to find success with any of the Agile methodologies, you need to build a team with clear roles and responsibilities and a culture of collaboration.

What are some of the responsibilities of an Agile team?

• Self-organization : One of the cornerstones of an Agile team is the ability to self-organize. In Agile project management, the onus is on individual team members and teams to take initiative and organize themselves in a way that will lead to the highest output.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Going hand in hand with the need for self-organization is the Agile demand for cross-functional collaboration. Agile teams have to relay information across departments and be able to work closely with a range of colleagues.
• Iteration planning: Specific to Agile project management, iteration planning requires team members to outline the scope of individual sprints according to the product backlog.

3. Plan the project

Now that you’ve selected one of the Agile methods and assembled your A-team, it’s time to plan out your project.

Meticulous planning is one of the secret ingredients of successful Agile project management.

From the outset, you need to spend time clearly defining your project goals and scope. This will prevent unexpected setbacks and allow you to break down each portion of the project into manageable sprints (if you’re using Scrum).

You might also draw up a product backlog during the planning phase, which is most common in software development projects. The product backlog allows you to assign a priority level to your tasks so everyone on the team knows what they should focus on.

[ Continue reading after the animation ]

4. Manage stakeholder expectations 

Before you get your project underway, it’s important to check in with any key stakeholders to make sure you factor in their feedback.

Depending on the level of their involvement, your project stakeholders may then want to be kept in the loop throughout the process or at least receive regular updates. Creating feedback loops eases any uncertainty on the stakeholder end and allows you to stay open to change should it be necessary at any stage of the process.

5. Measure success 

Measuring project success is key to making meaningful progress with your Agile methodology of choice.

By paying attention to what worked and what didn’t during the project management process, you can extract key lessons to apply to future Agile projects. 

There are various ways to effectively track progress and measure success with Agile projects:

• Daily standups: Brief meetings to discuss obstacles and find solutions
• Sprint reviews : Informal sit-down meetings to present work and solicit team feedback
• Retrospectives: Reflections on past work to inspire and influence future progress

You should also introduce key performance indicators (KPIs) before embarking on any new major project, as getting specific will help you establish milestones and measure progress.

Implement Agile methodologies with Wrike

Now, you’re probably ready to start using Agile in project management following the steps we’ve shared . Wrike’s work management platform can support your team with resources to manage all - sprints, backlogs, and more. 

Our Agile teamwork template will help you set up your processes and launch your first project with Agile. Once you’re underway, you can use Kanban boards to manage your team’s workflows, visualizing progress and simplifying the process of assigning and completing tasks.

You can also use Wrike to oversee progress across your different departments  with cross-tagging and project dashboards that update to reflect changes in real time.

So, get started with Agile today and empower your projects in one platform.

Further reading:

• Agile Guide
• Scrum Guide
• Kanban Guide
• Should Your Business Go Agile? (Infographic)
• 8 Attitudes Guaranteed to Sink Your Agile Projects
• Is Agile Viable for Marketing Teams?

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• Agile project plan

Agile project plan template

Creating an Agile project with an Agile project plan template can help your team save time and stay consistent across projects. You can create an Agile project plan template in just a few simple steps.

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INTEGRATED FEATURES

Recommended apps.

Luckily, there are many different project management tools that you can use to plan a new Agile project. One of those tools is an Agile project plan template. 

What is an Agile project plan template?

An Agile project plan template is a repeatable framework that you can customize and use for any future Agile project. Using an Agile project plan template expedites the project planning process and ensures your team’s projects are organized consistently. 

Agile project plans are often organized in a Kanban board . In this format, a Kanban card represents a single task that needs to be completed, and it travels down different stages, represented by the different columns on the Kanban board.

What is Agile?

Agile is a common project management methodology that breaks large projects down into smaller portions of time, commonly referred to as “sprints.” Agile project management is an iterative process . This means that after each sprint or iteration, your team takes time to reflect on how things can improve for the next sprint.

You can use your Agile project plan template for any different type of Agile methodology, including lean project management , Kanban , and Scrum .

How to create an Agile project plan template

Agile project plan templates are often organized in one of two ways: a Kanban style board or Gantt chart . The Kanban board is best used if you want to see what tasks are in specific stages, whereas a Gantt chart is better for identifying project progress in a more linear manner.

Before creating your Agile project plan template, take a look at your current Agile planning process. Identify the specific stages your tasks go through, what information product owners or project managers need to know at a glance, and the specific details your team needs to complete a task.

Agile projects typically track work in flight, so you might want to organize your template by stages like: To Do, In progress, and Done. Tasks in the “To do” section are often referred to as the product backlog or just backlog. You can customize the “In progress” stage to fit your team’s unique workflow. For example, some teams will have different stages for scoping, reviewing, and developing. 

The next step of creating your Agile project plan template is identifying what information should go into each Kanban card, such as story points , start and end dates, and who is responsible for this task. The best way to do that is with a Kanban card template . 

Why use a digital Agile project plan template

Using an Agile project plan template is extremely beneficial, not only for project managers or product owners , but for the whole team. Here are a few reasons why you should create an Agile project plan template in a digital project management tool:

Visualize the project in different views. If you’re a product owner, it might be easier to look at the project in a Gantt chart style view to quickly identify deliverable dependencies. For those working on completing the tasks, it might be easier to view the project as a Kanban board. 

Automate data reporting. Some digital project management tools have the functionality to automatically create charts and graphs, such as a burndown chart . This can help project managers save time and help Agile teams understand how much work the development team needs to complete before a sprint is over.

Collaborate with project team members in real time. Gone are the days of outdated documents and stagnant spreadsheets. With a digital project management tool, you can see your project schedule, tasks, and information in real time.

Integrated features

Board View . Board View is a Kanban board-style view that displays your project’s information in columns. Columns are typically organized by work status (like To Do, Doing, and Done) but you can adjust column titles depending on your project needs. Within each column, tasks are displayed as cards, with a variety of associated information including task title, due date, and custom fields. Track work as it moves through stages and get at-a-glance insight into where your project stands.

Reporting . Reporting in Asana translates project data into visual charts and digestible graphs. By reporting on work where work lives, you can reduce duplicative work and cut down on unnecessary app switching. And, because all of your team’s work is already in Asana, you can pull data from any project or team to get an accurate picture of what’s happening in one place.

Milestones . Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal. 

Dependencies . Mark a task as waiting on another task with task dependencies. Know when your work is blocking someone else’s work, so you can prioritize accordingly. Teams with collaborative workflows can easily see what tasks they’re waiting on from others, and know when to get started on their portion of work. When the first task is completed, the assignee will be notified that they can get started on their dependent task. Or, if the task your work is dependent on is rescheduled, Asana will notify you—letting you know if you need to adjust your dependent due date as well. 

Google Workplace . Attach files directly to tasks in Asana with the Google Workplace file chooser, which is built into the Asana task pane. Easily attach any My Drive file with just a few clicks.

GitHub . Automatically sync GitHub pull request status updates to Asana tasks. Track progress on pull requests and improve cross-functional collaboration between technical and non-technical teams, all from within Asana.

Jira . Create interactive, connected workflows between technical and business teams to increase visibility around the product development process in real time—all without leaving Asana. Streamline project collaboration and hand offs. Quickly create Jira issues from within Asana so that work passes seamlessly between business and technical teams at the right time. 

ServiceNow . Reduce manual work for IT teams working in ServiceNow by automating task creation in Asana and providing cross-platform visibility into real-time status and context. Internal-facing service teams that use ServiceNow to track and manage employee tickets often receive requests that require actions outside ServiceNow, like fulfilling hardware requests, or responding to a payroll question. This integration makes it easy to connect ServiceNow to actions and updates taken in Asana.

How do you create an Agile project plan template? .css-i4fobf{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform 200ms ease-in-out;transition:transform 200ms ease-in-out;-webkit-transform:rotateZ(0);-moz-transform:rotateZ(0);-ms-transform:rotateZ(0);transform:rotateZ(0);}

If you’re creating an Agile project plan template for the first time, visualize your team’s workflows and consider what stages your tasks need to go through to be considered complete. Each step should be a defined stage in your Agile project plan template. From there, consider what information needs to go on a Kanban card. This could be contextual user stories, story points, and due dates. Once you establish that information, you have the skeleton of an Agile project plan that you can save as a template for future projects.

Agile is a project management framework that breaks work down into smaller periods of time—most commonly, two-week sprints. The goal of Agile is to maintain a working style that allows for quick pivots to strategy. Should your team need to shift gears for any reason, your team can shift towards a different strategy, hence the name “Agile.”

How do I implement the Agile methodology for my team?

When you are ready to plan your first Agile project, begin with the project goal. Establish a product roadmap to help shape the strategy that will help you achieve these goals. From there, you can begin sprint planning and implementing daily standups. After your first sprint, run a retrospective meeting and start the process over again.

Should I use a digital Agile project plan template?

Absolutely! Using a digital Agile project plan template makes creating an Agile project easy. With just a few clicks, you can have your team’s specific Agile framework up and ready to go for their next project. Just add the tasks into the backlog, and you’re ready to get your Agile project started.

Related templates

Scrumban template

Is your team transitioning from Scrum to Kanban or vice versa? A Scrumban template can help your team make that transition a little smoother. Here’s how.

Sprint backlog template

Learn how to create a sprint backlog template in Asana to keep your Agile team organized and on track.

Postmortem template

Use a postmortem template to keep track of your postmortem meeting—the post project check-in meeting. Hosting postmortems helps you improve processes for future projects

Product backlog

Establishing an organized product backlog is an important part of the Agile process. Get started by using a product backlog template.

Incident management template

When incidents happen, speed is key. Organize and track incidents as they occur so you can find solutions fast.

Kanban board

Visualize your workflow with a Kanban board template. Quickly see the stage and progress of each task, so your team knows exactly what’s on track—and what needs attention.

Sprint planning

What if your sprint plans actually matched the work your team was doing? Plan your next sprint like a pro with this template.

Daily standup meetings

Make your daily standup meetings efficient and keep a record of what you discussed by using our template.

Sprint retrospective

Manage your sprint retrospective agenda and track follow-up work with our template to keep improving your team's work and processes.

Web design process

Try this template to simplify your web design process and keep your designers and developers on the same page, even across tools.

Software and systems deployment

Deploy software across your organization efficiently and consistently with our comprehensive deployment checklist.

Kanban card template

Creating a Kanban card template ensures consistency across your Agile team. Use a Kanban card template to keep your Agile team efficient and organized.

Create templates with Asana

Learn how to create a customizable template in Asana. Get started today.

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Developing your agile methodology skills, agile methodology skills.

Agile methodology was initially designed for the software industry. Today, many industries embrace agile for developing products and services due to its nature and the enhanced efficiency it offers.

“Agile” is a term used to describe software and project development approaches that involve planning, learning, improvement, teamwork, evolving product, and early delivery. It promotes adaptability in response to changes. Developing agile methodology skills makes you versatile and adaptable to change, which is valuable for personal development and in the job market.

This guide will give an overview of agile methodology skills, why they are important, and how you can develop and implement them in the workplace.

What Are Agile Methodology Skills?

Agile methodology skills are the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with software and project management teams and create a flexible customer-centric project management approach that prioritizes innovation and value. 

The primary emphasis of agile methodologies is to help you prioritize flexibility, collaboration, and interactive development to deliver customer value in an efficient and adaptable manner. 

Agile methodology is a set of practices you can use in software development and project management that prioritize flexibility, collaboration, and progress. With agile methodology, software development teams can continuously improve their projects and adapt to changing requirements as the project progresses.

Why Are Agile Methodology Skills Important?

With a focus on continuous improvement, an agile methodology has the potential to enhance the chances of success for your project significantly. Unlike the linear project management approach, you avoid making changes at the last minute since you incorporate customer needs as the project progresses.

Here are the reasons why agile methodology skills are important:

• Adaptability to change: Change is constant in any business environment. Agile methodology skills provide you with the tools and mindset to embrace change. With its interactive approach, agile allows you to quickly adjust your plans, ensuring that your projects stay on course and maintain their value even in unpredictable circumstances.
• Customer-centric approach: Continuous customer collaboration throughout your project's life ensures that your product aligns perfectly with customer needs. By refining your products using real-time feedback, you can develop solutions that deeply connect with your intended audience resulting in customer satisfaction and loyalty. 
• Enhanced team collaboration: Agile methodology skills promote teamwork and facilitate communication. Teamwork helps you overcome obstacles and exchange ideas. This collaborative atmosphere also boosts problem-solving abilities and facilitates knowledge sharing, resulting in team unity and successful project outcomes.
• Transparent progress tracking: You can track the progress of your project by using sprints, which divide projects into time-limited iterations. This enables you to create projects easily, monitor their progress, identify and address bottlenecks, and promptly resolve any issues that may arise. 
• Efficient resource allocation: You prioritize tasks based on their significance and urgency and ensure that resources are allocated effectively. This approach helps you to keep projects within budget and optimize the utilization of the resources at hand.
• Faster time-to-market: You’re able to speed up timelines by delivering components in increments after each sprint. This strategy allows you to become responsive to market demand—releasing features sooner and providing benefits to both customers and stakeholders. 

What Are the Benefits of Having Agile Methodology Skills?

As more and more companies transition into a digital work environment, agile methodologies can revolutionize project management and overall operations. Teams can effectively align processes and increase productivity across the company.

Here are the benefits you'll get from developing your agile methodology skills:

• Expanded job opportunities: 94% of software development companies have adopted agile–resulting in a growing need for professionals with agile methodology skills. The skill gives you a competitive advantage for various job opportunities. Whether you're involved in software development, project management, or any other field, your proficiency in agile paves the way for roles that align with your talents.
• Versatility: Agile skills are not limited to any industry or job position. Skills like customer focus, collaboration, technical proficiency, and cross-functional collaboration can be applied to a range of projects. You can adapt and excel in any role, making you a valuable resource and increasing your confidence when faced with new challenges.
• Career progression: You can showcase your capability to lead projects, collaborate and deliver outcomes effectively. You position yourself for leadership opportunities since you can guide teams toward success.

Examples of Agile Methodology Skills in the Workplace

Adopting an effective project management methodology is essential for success. Software teams can break down a project into small increments and continuously integrate feedback resulting in product engineering success.

Here are examples of how you can apply agile methodology skills in the workplace:

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Ci/cd refers to a collection of techniques that facilitate automated integration of codes into a shared repository followed by their deployment to production environments. for instance, if a source code has undergone integration and testing within an integration pipeline, it can be automatically deployed to staging or production areas. companies use the ci/cd approach to guarantee that software remains consistent, minimizing the chances of integration problems and accelerating the delivery of features.  , scrum master, a scrum master is a leader in a project who prioritizes the team's needs. they organize scrum events like stand-up meetings, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives (past reflection). a scrum master uses agile skills to eliminate obstacles that may hinder the teams' progress while ensuring everyone adheres to the scrum framework.  , adaptive planning, software companies create flexible plans that can be adjusted according to feedback and evolving situations. for instance, if a new requirement arises, the team can modify the schedule for the sprint or iteration. this approach ensures that the team remains responsive to customer needs and market fluctuations without being constrained by plans that might become outdated.  , project management, project managers and software developers break down the project into tasks and iterations, constantly monitoring progress to ensure adherence to deadlines., personal task management, individuals can create a list of tasks they need to complete during a sprint or iteration and prioritize tasks based on significance and estimated completion time.  , personal development, agile methodology fosters a knowledge-sharing and mentorship culture, which helps the people involved to grow and benefit the entire team., how can i use agile methodology skills.

Agile methodology skills equip you with flexibility, adaptability, and customer-focus in the workplace.

Here are different ways you can use your agile methodology skills:

• Software development: As a software engineer , you can use agile principles to create software iteratively, facilitating feedback and adaptation. Popular Agile frameworks include Scrum, Kanban, and extreme programming (XP).
• Product development: As a product developer , you can use agile methodologies in the development of goods. You can refine and improve the product by incorporating user feedback and adapting to actual market requirements to ensure product success. 
• Project management: You can use agile principles in various projects as a project manager . You can handle marketing campaigns, event planning, and construction projects by dividing them into smaller, more manageable tasks.
• Marketing and advertising: In marketing campaigns, you can break advertising tasks into small phases to experiment with market changes. As a marketing manager , you can promptly adapt to evolving market dynamics and customer preferences.
• Business process improvement: You can utilize agile methodologies to optimize and improve business processes by identifying areas that need revisions and testing modification. You can continuously adapt business strategies based on research findings and improve your company’s outcome.

How Can I Learn Agile Methodology Skills?

You can learn agile methodology skills by enrolling in degree programs offered by WGU’s College of IT or WGU's College of Business

With our College of IT and College of Business degree programs, you’ll be able to:

• Classify algorithms according to how their running time grows, using Big O notation.
• Collaborate on troubleshooting software problems and recommending solutions.
• Create project plans based on the agile project management strategies model.
• Develop software system testing or validation procedures using agile methodologies.
• Lead project stakeholders through the agile project management strategies model.
• Revise project plans based on project requirement changes.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can i learn and develop agile methodology skills.

There are different operating systems that companies use based on their needs and functionality. They include:

• To become proficient in agile methodology, familiarize yourself with concepts such as Scrum and Kanban and apply them in practical scenarios. 
• You can enhance your knowledge by enrolling in courses at WGU's College of IT or WGU's College of Business . You can also read books on the subject, engage with communities, attend workshops, and gain hands-on experience through involvement in projects.
• Additionally, obtaining certifications like Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) can validate your skills.

What is the role of a scrum master in Agile projects?

The role of a scrum master is vital in the scrum methodology to eliminate any obstacles that may hinder the team's progress, ensure that the scrum processes are followed, and promote communication. Scrum masters encourage collaboration and guide the team to improve.

What is the difference between Agile and traditional Waterfall project management?

Agile and Waterfall are two project management methodologies that have contrasting approaches. Agile methodology is characterized by its nature, allowing flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing requirements.

On the other hand, the waterfall methodology follows a sequence where each phase is completed before moving on to the next one. Agile methodology emphasizes customer involvement and continuous feedback while waterfall relies heavily on planning.

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