Rigorous Support for Flexible Planning of Product Releases — A Stakeholder-Centric Approach and its Initial Evaluation Ville Heikkilä Anas Jadallah Kristian Rautiainen Günther Ruhe

Ville Heikkilä, Kristian Rautiainen Aalto University School of Science and Technology Software Process Research Group Anas Jadallah, Günther Ruhe University of Calgary SE Decision Support Laboratory 2Ville Heikkilä

Introduction and research problem Process description and case study Key findings and discussion Contents 3Ville Heikkilä

Introduction Release planning by PM or PO Too many stakeholders for F2F Stakeholder Centric Release Planning (SCERP) 4Ville Heikkilä

Release planning problem... Features Releases k(1)k(2) Stakeholders S(1)S(2)S(q)... λ(2) = 2λ(1) = 7λ(q) = 4 Resources Objective function F(x) =  k=1…K  (k) [  n: x(n)=k WAP(n)] 5Ville Heikkilä Cap(k,r)  (1) = 9  (2) = 5 x(1)=1, x(2)=1 x(3)=2, x(N)=2

Case study Iteration Release Roadmap Hartbeat 6Ville Heikkilä

SCERP Step 1: Selection of critical stakeholders and pre-selection of candidate features Step 2: Prioritization of features Step 3: Collective effort estimation Step 4: Calculation of optimized release plan alternatives Step 5: Prioritization of alternative plans 7Ville Heikkilä 12345

SCERP 8Ville Heikkilä Selection of critical stakeholders and pre-selection of candidate features 12345

Done by the product owner Two most important companies using Agilefant 10 of 73 backlog items selected 9Ville Heikkilä Case study Selection of critical stakeholders and pre-selection of candidate features 12345

10Ville Heikkilä Prioritization of features SCERP 21345

Stakeholder invitation 19 of 33 participated in the end Cumulative voting Criteria: value, urgency and dissatisfaction Voting done in ReleasePlanner Time taken by voting was recorded 11Ville Heikkilä Prioritization of features Case study 21345

12Ville Heikkilä Collective effort estimation SCERP 31245

Only 2 active developers Collaborative effort estimation Full time equivalent (FTE) developer 13Ville Heikkilä Collective effort estimation Case study 21345

14Ville Heikkilä Calculation of optimized release plan alternatives SCERP 31245

Two next releases Release weights 9 and 5 Capacity 22 FTE-days ReleasePlanner created 5 optimized release plan alternatives Product Owner created a manual plan 15Ville Heikkilä Calculation of optimized release plan alternatives Case study 21345

16Ville Heikkilä Prioritization of alternative plans SCERP 31245

10 stakeholders 5 plans + manual plan Match score “Perfect match” (9) “No match” (1) 17Ville Heikkilä Prioritization of alternative plans Case study 21345

IDO1O2O3O4O5M F F F F F F F F F F Opt. (%) 100,098,998,697,196,893,4 Match 4,0 6,04,05,54,0 Plan optimization output 18Ville Heikkilä

6-choice attitude scale “I understood feature X” Attitudes towards method Free text field Survey 19Ville Heikkilä

Stakeholders understood the features and their priorities varied considerably Stakeholders understood and liked the method SCERP is time-efficient for the stakeholders Optimized plans were more acceptable than the manual plan List of candidate features was insufficient Not enough difference between criteria Key findings 20Ville Heikkilä

Does SCERP work? Does SCERP scale? Was the case success? Discussion 21Ville Heikkilä

Questions? 22Ville Heikkilä