### 5.1.3 Guidelines and Participants | Key Participants | Description | |:------------------------- |:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Team Coordinator (TeCo) | Supports/facilitates the execution of the iteration planning, ensuring the team gets the best out of it. Assists the team keeping the time slot and discovers any anti-patterns that may jeopardize the success of the meeting. | | Agile Team Member (ATeM) | Responsible for the execution of the Iteration Planning, including the setup and building of the Iteration Work Items List (WIL). | | Product Owner (PrOw) | Supports the execution of the Iteration Planning by proposing an Iteration Goal and providing all the necessary clarifications requested by the Agile Team Members (ATeM) when building the Iteration Work Items List (WIL). Accountable for the iteration goal agreed (output) with the Agile Project Core Team. | | Architecture Owner (ArOw) | Besides being also an Agile Team Member (ATeM), the Architecture Owner (ArOw) supports the Product Owner (PrOw) with the Iteration goal definition when enablement work is involved by clarifying potential dependencies or mitigating Architectural risks. | | Project Manager (PM) | Is informed about the Iteration Goal and the plan defined by the Agile Project Core Team (A-PCT) to achieve it. | #### 5.1.3.1 Guidelines - **Set time aside for unplanned events** – Because Bugs in Production, support required or other unplanned events cannot be foreseen, the Agile Project Core Team (A-PCT) should set some time aside to deal with those. For instance, 10% dedicated to unplanned events means that after calculating each team member’s availability, an additional 10% is taken, leaving the Agile Team Members (ATeM) with less time available to deal with the planned items. - **Assess Agile Team Members’s (ATeM) capacity in advance** – If every team member previously determines individual capacity, the team can save some time during the Iteration Planning. When doing this, the Team Coordinator (TeCo) should make clear the operating rules on this procedure, especially when additional time for unplanned events is required. - **Have the Work Items List (WIL) prepared** – A properly prioritised Work Items List (WIL) can make the difference between an intense but effective Iteration Planning and a deceptive and demoralizing ceremony. Ensure the Product Owner (PrOw), supported by the Team Coordinator (TeCo) and the Architecture Owner (ArOw) performs this task. - **Have the Acceptance Criteria defined** – The Work items the team has previously refined and estimated must have Acceptance Criteria. This helps the team defining their implementation strategy. - **Have an extra two or three work items ready** – After the team reaches its full capacity and finalises the confidence vote, decompose another two or three items. They will not be included in the iteration but will be ready to be tackled in case the team has extra time or a work item is dropped during the iteration. - **“Difficult-to-find” tasks** – When decomposing an item from the Work Items List (WIL), there will be a moment where the team will struggle to find more tasks. When this happens, they should move to the next work item. - **Using Yesterday’s weather** – This concept refers to using the team’s past velocity to determine their current capacity. Although PM2-Agile doesn’t recommend this practice, using past velocity can be useful for the Product Owner (PrOw) to evaluate how realistic the Iteration Goal is by comparing that value with the amount of points given by the work items foreseen in the Iteration. ![[5.1.3 Rasci Iteration Planning.png]]