Setting the Vision

• The Goal
• Where to Begin
• Good Questions
• Ways to get it Done
• You Need Input
• Stakeholder Vision Document
  • High-level Release Scope
  • High-level Release Plan
  • Consumers/Users
  • Methods to Gather Feedback
  • Acceptance Criteria

The Goal

The goal is to be on the same page as your stakeholders—most importantly, the consumers of your project and your project sponsor.

Reach agreement on the objectives before you start the work—before the first user story is created.

Where to Begin

Get started by collecting the information you’ll need to reach alignment. Work with your team, key stakeholders, and your sponsor to gather the following:

• High-level scope
• High-level release plan
• Who are your customers
• What mechanism will you use to gather feedback on your product
• Acceptance Criteria
• Anything else you can think of that could impact the project

Good Questions

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR SPONSOR:

• Does your sponsor have a sense of the project objectives?
• QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF:
• Have I uncovered as many risks as possible? Are they all addressed?
• QUESTIONS TO ASK THE TEAM:
• Have we listed all the project assumptions we can think of?

Ways to get it Done

You’ll populate the stakeholder vision document. This document serves as an initial common agreement on things like the high-level scope the release plan, who the consumer is, how will your team be gathering feedback, and acceptance criteria, before the team starts writing a line of code.

The requirement details will continuously be defined and refined in the coming iterations.

You Need Input

You will need input from your stakeholders when populating this document. It should be a team effort.

Stakeholder Vision Document

Typically, agile projects focus on getting working product to users quickly, enhancing the product as user feedback is generated.

You will need short cyclic scheduling to allow for continuous improvement of your product based on user feedback.

To consolidate all of this information, you will need to create a Stakeholder Vision Document. It will have the following:

• High-level Release Scope
• High-level Release Plan
• Consumers/Users
• Methods to Gather Feedback
• Acceptance Criteria

High-level Release Scope

An example of high-level release scope:

Create an automated garden box you can control from your phone to create ideal conditions for plants.

High-level Release Plan

An example of high-level release plan:

• Build
• Test
• Gather feedback
• Launch

Consumers/Users

Once you have the scope and the release plan, the next step is determining the consumers of your product. Consumers can be internal, external, or both.

Methods to Gather Feedback

Gathering feedback from end users is a critical step in agile methodologies. It allows you to continually build value into the product based on what the end user really wants and needs. There are many ways to gather feedback.

• Moderated user testing sessions
• Remote unmoderated user testing sessions
• Interviews

Acceptance Criteria

In agile methodologies, acceptance criteria refers to a set of predefined requirements that must be met in order to mark that something (in this case, your product) is complete.

• Is the product fully functioning as expected?
• Is the product tested and verified?
• Is the product ready for market?