Continuous release planning in a large-scale scrum development organization at ericsson

Abstract

Scrum development at large-scale requires a release planning process that supports the agile way of working and planning. Most of the existing release planning processes are plan-driven and ill suited for a large Scrum organization. This case study describes how release planning was conducted in a 350-person Scrum development organization with over 20 teams at Ericsson in 2011, and the related challenges and benefits. Data was collected with 39 interviews which were transcribed, coded and analysed. The release planning process was continuous and characterized by regular scoping and prioritization decisions, and by incremental elaboration of features. The challenges were the overcommit-ment caused by external pressure, managing non-feature specific work, and balancing between development efficiency and building generalist teams. The benefits were the increased flexibility and decreased development lead time, waste eliminated in the planning process, and increased developer motivation.