An Agile Approach to Planning (25 minutes) This section serves as an introduction to the topic. It outlines that the goal of planning is to support reliable decision-making, not necessarily to come up with the exact ship date for a project. It introduces the idea that agile teams plan at three distinct levels (daily, iteration, and release).

Estimating Size: Story Points and Ideal Time (65 minutes) This section introduces the critical idea that it is important to estimate the size of a project before deriving its duration. Traditionally-managed projects have used lines of code and function points as measures of size. Agile projects use either story points or ideal days as measures of size. The advantages of each are described and small group exercise and discussion allow participants to experience the difference and to begin thinking about which approach will work best on their projects.

Approaches to Estimating (40 minutes) This section describes the advantages and disadvantages of various approaches to estimating including gut feel, expert opinion, and estimation by analogy. An approach called Planning Poker is introduced. Planning Poker is an agile descendant of the wideband Delphi approach and brings together most of the advantages of other estimating techniques. Participants practice estimating by playing Planning Poker. The experience is then discussed among the full group.

Iteration and Release Planning (50 minutes) Participants are introduced to two types of iteration planning: velocity-driven and commitment driven. The concept of velocity is introduced and three approaches for estimating velocity are given. It is shown how release planning on an agile project is simplified once all features have been estimated and the team has a reliable measure of its expected velocity.