Forecasting for Agile Teams

By William Davis
Learn how to create an agile sprint or release forecast using the built-in statistical functions of Microsoft Excel. Assess and improve the quality of your forecasts, and learn how to share your forecasts with stakeholders.
Play course overview
Course info
Level
Intermediate
Updated
Sep 11, 2019
Duration
2h 48m
Table of contents
Course Overview
Course Overview 2m
Why Do We Forecast Agile Development Efforts?
Course Introduction 4m Ashley Chooses Which Product to Build 8m Why Do You Forecast? 3m What Questions Does Forecasting Answer? 4m Module Summary 2m
Estimate Your Product Backlog
Planning Poker and Relative Estimation 4m Velocity Is an Average Result 5m Introducing Planning Polka 4m Playing Planning Polka 4m Using Heuristics 4m Estimating Story Cards 3m Module Summary 2m
Using Statistical PERT’s Agile Forecast Tab
Complete 100% of the Work 80% of the Time 3m Downloading Statistical PERT 4m Demo: Introducing the Agile Forecast Tab (SPERT Normal Edition) 7m Demo: Forecasting with Higher Probabilities 3m Demo: Examining the Normal Distribution 3m Demo: Forecasting for Established Teams 2m Demo: Release Forecasting 1m Demo: Forecasting with Hard Delivery Dates 2m Demo: Introducing the Agile Forecast Tab (SPERT Beta Edition) 3m Module Summary 1m
Creating More Refined Forecasts
Forecasting for Established Teams 3m Demo: Calculate a Standard Deviation from Historical Data 5m Demo: Forecast a Single Iteration 2m Demo: Setup for a Multiple Iterations Forecast 2m Demo: Forecast Multiple Iterations 4m Demo: Calculate a Finish Date Manually 1m Demo: Forecast Using Most Recent Team History 4m Demo: Forecast for a Team's Varied Capacity 2m Module Summary 1m
Improving Your Forecasts
Assessing Quality Using the Binomial Distribution 8m Forecasting for Sprint Planning 3m Forecasting Quality Assessment Guidelines 4m Demo: Assess Forecasting Quality using Excel 10m Ways to Improve Your Forecasts 5m Module Summary 2m
Communicating Your Forecasts to Stakeholders
Three Benefits of Forecasting 3m Four Forecasting Attributes 3m Creating a Bell-curve Visual Forecast 3m Creating an Emoji Forecast 4m Seven Steps to the Forecasting Story 6m Reforecast Frequently 2m Demo: Create a Bell-curve Visual Forecast 8m Module Summary 2m
Description
Course info
Level
Intermediate
Updated
Sep 11, 2019
Duration
2h 48m
Description

In this course, Forecasting for Agile Teams, you will create and share forecasts for your agile software development effort. First, you will learn why forecasting is important. Next, you will discover how to forecast using Microsoft Excel and a freely-licensed spreadsheet file called Statistical PERT. Finally, you will explore how to improve your forecasts and effectively share them with stakeholders. When you're finished with this course, you will have the skills and knowledge of agile forecasting so you can forecast future agile-developed products.

About the author
William Davis
About the author

William is an experienced Scrum Master, agilist, and project manager who creates positive transformations through training, coaching, and mentoring software development teams.

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Section Introduction Transcripts
Section Introduction Transcripts

Course Overview
Hi, I'm William W. Davis, and welcome to my course, Forecasting for Agile Teams. I'm a scrum master, project manager, and agilist living in South Florida. Forecasting release dates for agile-developed software is hard for many product owners and Agile team members. With Agile, there are no schedules, but stakeholders still want to know when they can ship or deploy new products. This course will introduce you to agile forecasting using an estimation technique called Statistical PERT. You'll find that Statistical PERT makes it easy to forecast agile release dates and determine how much work to bring in to your next planning cycle, like a scrum sprint. In this course, I'll cover these major topics: understanding why forecasting is an important skill, discovering how to very quickly estimate everything on your product backlog, using Statistical PERT to forecast possible agile delivery dates, creating more refined forecasts using your team's historical data and available capacity, and effectively sharing your forecasts with stakeholders. By the end of this course, you'll know how to create agile iteration and release forecasts using nothing more than the built-in functions inside Microsoft Excel. Before beginning this course, you should be familiar with basic statistical terms and have a working knowledge of Microsoft Excel. Please join me to learn how you can create forecasts with the Forecasting for Agile Teams course, right here at Pluralsight.

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