Release Planning in Agile from a Testing Perspective
Release planning in Agile is the establishment of a series of scheduled feature deliveries based on the expectations of the Product Owner and Stakeholders. The scrum team is included in release planning discussions to outline features and functionality in the product backlog that have dependencies. Technical debt reduction, environment and integration dependencies can be included in releases along with new any features. Testers within a scrum team are key in establishing guidelines, and testing thresholds.
Releases can be scheduled after each sprint or after the delivery of a series of sprints. Release plans are iterative and will be revisited along with the product backlog. There are several approaches to guide features included in release planning such as Functionality Driven releases and Date Driven releases.
Establishing Guidelines for Release Planning
Each release should be defined based on a set of criteria that is agreed upon and reviewed during the life of an agile project for relevance. Two key criteria in establishing guidelines are:
- Prioritisation of the testing code base and
- Thresholds and approvals for testing
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: