Product Roadmap and Planning in an Agile Environment

Hi,

I have a multi-year project and at any given time, I want to be able to see the date the overall project is expected to be completed. However, much of the project has tasks that are dependent on product development teams that use Agile. This means that I'll have several tasks that don't have dates until the related work goes through planning. In addition, I'll want to pull backlog work into the work plan, as it is scheduled.

I'd love recommendations on how I can project an overall project complete date when I won't know detailed dates until the work goes through planning. For extra credit, it would be great if you have recommendations on how I can create an pull backlog work into the plan.

Much appreciated.

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Julio S.

Hi @Liz_Snavely

If my understanding is correct, you are trying to set up dependencies in your project where certain tasks won't have a defined end date, there are different features in Smartsheet that could prove helpful for this task:

Milestones: if you set a duration of 0, this can highlight tasks in your project to indicate that dates are subject to change or waiting to be fully defined without breaking the Critical Path where dependencies have been set - note that when setting predecessors, you may decide the direction of the flow with Start-to-Finish, Finish-to-Start, Finish-to-Finish, Start-to-Start
Baselines: another helpful resource if your trying to track deviation from the original expectation with regards to start and end dates of each task
Regarding working with Agile environments, if your team works with Jira we also have a Jira Connector that you may want to consider having a look at.

I hope these ideas can be of help to set you for success with your endeavours.

Cheers!

Julio

Liz_Snavely

@Julio S. Thank you for your recommendation. What I'm really looking for is a best practice to provide a total target time to complete date for the overall project when I don't have all task dates defined.

The Smartsheet guidance for Agile projects is not to use general assumptions to enter a temporary target complete date for sub project B, listed below; but to wait until you actually have a target complete date. For example, I could use an assumption that any undefined task will take 30 days and use that as a placeholder until I actually have a target complete date, but SmartSheet best practice is just to wait until you have a realistic target date. My question is whether there is another best practice anyone can recommend so that I can set project complete expectations with my stakeholders. Secondly, I want to know if anyone has used a good process for pulling backlog into their plan and how backlog work can be included in the overall project complete date.

A. Rebuild measure application target complete date: 4/23/23

B. Build time savings functionality target complete date: TBD

C. Resolve technical debt feature 12345 target complete date: 11/18/23

Julio S.

Hi @Liz_Snavely,

Thanks for clarifying,

I'm not tenured enough with Agile environments to be able to advise further on this topic, but I'm leaving this open for any possible input from other users who may have faced similar challenges. As a reminder, you also have the option of submitting new feature requests to our Product team by creating an Idea post in the Smartsheet Product Feedback and Ideas topic if you feel like you have any recommendations for the team about this matter.

Cheers!

Julio

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