Create a Roadmap for your Project

Scrum has a tool for roadmap and release planning as well. We use two different mechanisms for the roadmap and the release plan. The roadmap is very high level and is intended to apply over your themes over time. This way everyone has a general sense of what the focus will be on, in a given time frame.

If we take an example of creating a Mobile app for food delivery service, there are so many components we have to take care of. From order placement to payment and delivery tracking, we need to decide the best order to work on this. So we will start from App design and order placement system, later on we will move to payment system which is a third party integration and most important feature of any business. Like everything else in Scrum this is a guideline not a rule.

The roadmap is considered to be updated at the end of every sprint. The team will be learning things and writing new stories throughout the sprint. So the roadmap is meant to be a meaningful document. It's just a guide, but it's a guide that will help you stay focused on getting the project done.

Release Plans

Once you've completed this you can organize your stories around the theme timelines you've created. This is how you create your release plan.

The release plan is the next layer of detail. It's a high level plan that's meant to connect the roadmap to the sprints. It provides visibility to how we're going to deliver.

In Scrum you must have fully functional stories completed at the end of every Sprint. You're not, however, required to release them to the stakeholders at the end of every sprint. This means you can complete all the work for two or three sprints before releasing the combined results together. You'll use your story points to help your team decide what they can do within each sprint. Once your team has been together for a while they'll reach what's known as a stabilized velocity.

What is a Scrum Sprint?

A Sprint is a time frame, not more than one month, during which a project or sub-project is completed. Most commonly a sprint is of 2 or 3 weeks time. After completion of one sprint, the next sprint starts immediately.

During the Sprint planning, stories, epics are created and during an ongoing sprint, no changes are made, that may affect the sprint goal.

Every sprint starts with a Sprint Planning Session and at the end of every spring, a Sprint Review Meeting is condcuted where the Product Owner reviews whether the commited tasks are completed. Also, a Retrospective Meeting can be conducted to look back at the issues faced during the last sprint, to improve upon those in the coming sprint.