Agile Estimation and Planning

Contrary to a common misconception, agile projects are rigorously planned - what differs from traditional process models is when and by whom. Agile planning activities are distributed in time and involve the whole team, rather than being concentrated in the early phases by a few people.Many organisations find the agile approach to be faster, more accurate, and more responsive than traditional methods. Many also find it difficult to shift expectations to get those gains.In this session we'll take an overview of the several levels of planning activities in an agile methodology, illustrate one common practice with a group exercise, and relate some actual experiences using this approach.

Our speaker

Edward C Horvath, PhD - Senior Industrial Fellow, Software EngineeringDr Horvath received his bachelors' degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Master of Arts and PhD from Princeton University, all in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science. His early research was in the complexity of algorithms, particularly related to sorting and optimal scheduling.In an industrial career spanning more than three decades, Dr Horvath was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories for twelve years, where among other projects he was a design engineer for the Tuxedo OLTP system and AT&T's commercial email system. He has led software development teams at Sun Microsystems and several startup and emerging growth companies, including multidisciplinary international development teams. Among the resulting products are optimization products for major airlines, key elements of the standards-based Defense Messaging System for the American Department of Defense, the market-leading QuickMail system for Macintosh-based computers, the market leading ichat internet messaging products, and Sun's Java System Directory (LDAP) product suite. For over 10 years Dr Horvath has been introducing Lean concepts and Agile practices to a variety of software development teams, and this is his current area of interest and research.Prior to coming to Massey University, Dr Horvath served on the faculties of The Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M International University, The Cooper Union, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Nova Southeastern University.Areas of technical expertise:    * Software Engineering    * Real-time and store-and-forward communications    * Distributed Systems and Fault-Tolerant computing    * Communications and Presence Protocols    * Algorithm complexity and optimization    * Identity Management