Balanced Iteration Planning

Published 6 February 08 by Justin French

RedBubble does agile development — it’s our own blend, but I guess it aligns best with the goals of Scrum).

Both myself (something like a team leader) and Pete (something like a product owner) both independently came up with an interesting proposal for creating a balanced iteration, so we’re going to give it a try.

Our backlog is overflowing with stories that we’re itching to build, and they each represent real value to the business. We can’t do them all, it’s hard to stay focused, and it’s hard to say “no” to things we obviously need.

Typically the backlog consists of three types of stories:

• big things that will win the war and align well with our long-term goals as a company
• useful things that the community has been asking for (and which we agree they need)
• shitty things that we aren’t excited about, but we have to do

In any given iteration (in our case, a week) we’re going to try to deliver a balance of the three.

• stay on track
• show some love
• do what we have to do

Update: An iChat conversation with James led us to the idea that it’s quite similar to a balanced diet — everyone knows what it is, and everyone knows why it’s a good idea, but occasionally (or frequently for some) the lure of tasty snacks and sugary treats pulls us away from things we know we’re supposed to be eating for our long-term health.

I’ll let you know how it goes in a few weeks.