A Revelatory Case Study on Scaling Agile Release Planning

Abstract

A way to scale up agile release planning to meet the requirements of multi-team agile development is a practice called joint release planning. A software product company piloted the joint release planning method. The aim of the company was to improve coordination of work of multiple agile development teams who develop a large legacy software product. Another aim was to improve communication between product management and development. We conducted a case study to explore how the new release planning method was executed. We gathered data by observing two release planning events, observing event planning meetings, and by conducting surveys. The events were attended by approximately 140 stakeholders, including over 10 development teams, who spent several days in a common space. The participants liked the method and considered it efficient. This revelatory case study provides the first detailed empirical description of this emerging method for multi-team agile release planning.