Written by How can we do a baselining Agile? Now let’s start by understanding what the baseline is so that we may prepare some plans. Maybe it’s related to scope; it’s connected to the schedule. It’s related to cost, and we create one reference version. You can call it an approved version or an agreed version. Whenever we do our future execution, we refer to how well we adhere to that particular supported version.
“We can say that this is the baseline which we need to follow, and we will see how we are going along. Following in the traditional project management space, we always do variance analysis which is the major thing which you do as a monitoring and controlling to find a variance”.
We need to have a reference point, and that reference point is all about the baseline. So now, when we move to the agile world, we understand that we are no more following the last thing that the past will evolve over some time. So, especially if you are doing a PMP certification, you see the traditional and the Agile world. You may wonder, “can I do a variance analysis in an Agile? Can I have some baselines in agile? I used to have scope, time, cost. Those baselines in my predictive life cycle world. Can I have something in the Agile World also so? One of the things is very clear from the understanding of an Agile: we cannot have a scope baseline in an Agile.
Until the project is finished in a way so the scope is developed rather than agreed and baseline, so we set the product and only when the product is ready or when the features are ready, we can say oh, this is what we wanted to get. So hence, a scope is not something that can baseline. Then you may wonder that in a predictive life cycle, the scope was the foundational thing. So, therefore, you have a baselining of scope, then you do a baselining of schedule on top of it, and then you on top of it you may do a baselining of cost, and then you may make an adjustment here and there. But, everything starts from what we are planning to develop, and that’s where the scope baseline was coming.
When we do not have a scope baseline in an Agile world, can we have a schedule and cost baseline for some amount of reference analysis and depending upon the context to which we are adhering.
In general, in the Agile world. We can Have a schedule and cost baseline not necessary all the time. Still, as a project management space, you may have some projects where you do a schedule and cost baseline and without baselining the scope so how it could be so you may say let’s try it for six months. We want to achieve a particular goal in six months, so you are baselining those six months as a schedule. It’s not like that you are creating a plan for it. In six months, I will run two iterations per month to run 12 iterations, and this is what we want to achieve; and in the future, if it takes less than six months more than six months, we want to have a variance analysis related to it.
- Similarly, we can say that okay six months six hundred thousand, so we will spend hundred thousand per month this is how our team capacity would be.
- We will see how we are adhering to our spending and achieving the goal we wanted to accomplish by spending this much.
- We can also understand a baselining of schedule and cost, which is used in some variance analysis to show how well we are adhering to our path and target, which we have set based on the schedule and cost.
Inside this, the requirement is going to evolve continuous prioritization is the key, and you try to achieve your goal your objective of doing this whole thing by way of doing constant prioritization of the scope, so you keep the score flexible, but you can still have if needed schedule and cost baselines in Agile
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