Lean from the Trenches

Planning the Release

We know our velocity: it used to be three features per week on average, and now it’s four to five. This information is useful for long-term release planning. We don’t know exactly what our velocity will be in the future, but it is probably safe to assume that it will be in the range of three to five features per week, on average.

So, if someone wants to know “How long will it will take implement this?” (waving a list of feature areas) or “How much of this can we get done by Christmas?” we can give a realistic answer—as long as we know the number of features.

The problem is, for long-term planning we don’t know the number of features. All we have is a bunch of vague ideas. We might call these epics or feature areas. Some ...