The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

Adaptive Planning

AUDIENCE

Product Managers, Customers

We plan for success.

Imagine you’ve been freed from the shackles of predetermined plans. “Maximize our return on investment,” your boss says. “We’ve already talked about the purpose of this team. I’m counting on you to work out the details. Create your own plans and set your own release dates—just make sure we get good value.”

Now what?

Valuable Increments

Build your plans out of valuable increments.¹ Valuable increments have three characteristics:

1. Releasable. When you finish working on the increment, you can release it and reap its benefits, even if you never work on it again.

2. Valuable. The increment benefits your organization in some way. (See “WHAT DO ORGANIZATIONS VALUE?”.)

3. Incremental. It doesn’t do everything. It’s one step in the right direction.

Don’t confuse “valuable increments” with “potentially shippable increments,” another common term in the Agile community. Potentially shippable increments are about a team’s technical ability to release changes. Valuable increments are about changes that actually make an appreciable difference to your business.

Similarly, a valuable increment is “released” only when you can achieve its value. Teams using continuous deployment will deploy their software multiple times per day, but it isn’t released until a configuration switch is flipped and the increment is available to its intended audience.

Valuable increments generally fall into these categories:

• Direct Value. ...