The fourth of five (5) steps in Feature Planning seeks to ensure that each Feature's design provides an appropraite, and acceptable, increment of Business Value.
Feature Planning - Step 4 of 5: Review
What's Before
Prior to this step the given Feature was refined during IT1 - Step 3 of 5: Feature Analysis & Design, when the Team responsible for its delivery worked with relevant stakeholders to define the Business Value increment the Feature is expected to provide.
What's Happening Now
Step-by-Step
To Gain this State
While in this State
To Attain the Next State
- To progress to this state a Feature must have all of its expected attributes completed. No further changes to its attributes are anticipated nor permitted.
- It is possible for a Feature to regress to this state if, after being signed off as “Ready”, some additional review (e.g., by an additional party, or by a party who was supposed to participate in the earlier review but did not) is now deemed appropriate.
- The Solution Owner will manage the priority of Features in this state:
- Priority is a force ranking - no two Features share the same priority.
- Those with the highest priority (i.e., those the Business wants soonest) should appear at the top of the column; those with lower priority towards the bottom.
- A Feature with this state should be reviewed by all parties affected by its definition. In general, this means representatives from:
- Business / Process Owner;
- Solution Owner and any SMEs;
- DevSecOps; and, possibly
- QA.
- It is important that Business / Customer and SME representatives provide a review, as these will be to whom the developed solution will be demonstrated for their acceptance. Such individuals should be named within the Feature description or Acceptance Criteria.
- If all parties involved in the Review choose to ‘Accept’ the Feature definition then the Feature is now considered “Ready” for further progress. It is now available for selection during a Release Planning Event.
- The Feature should be promoted (or demoted) by the Business / Process Owner, or similar individual who will be asked during delivery whether or not the Feature is "Done". Skipping their input at this time tends to lead to re-work and missed expectations. Having them promote (or demote) the Feature ensures their participation in this task.
- If any of the parties involved in the review chose to ‘Reject’ the definition, the Solution Owner will return the Feature to an appropriate, earlier state depending upon the changes requested.
Receiving the Right Feedback
This step is not always as simple as it seems. Often a Team or an individual will take a Feature on a tangent from where it was originally intended to go. This may be due to some inputs introducing a bias, or perhaps a miscommunication or misunderstanding among participants in the Feature's Analysis & Design. Regardless of how it happened, this is the final opportunity for stakeholders to correct or clarify that the Feature's definition is, in fact, what they are requesting.
Another common challenge is ensuring the right people contributed to the Feature's definition. Often key individuals are too busy or otherwise unable to participate in the workshops or meetings during which the Feature was defined. Review of the refined Feature does require some time, but no where near as much as will be required to re-build or re-define the Feature after its build gets underway. This is one of those "ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure" steps in a Solution's lifecycle.
Participation & Updates to the WMS
The Solution Owner is ultimately responsible for ensuring each Feature has been reviewed by the appropraite stakeholders.
Upon receiving stakeholder feedback if the Business / Process Owner for whom the Feature will be delivered have not already done so, the Solution Owner moves the Feature on the Feature Planning Board either: right, to the 'Ready' column (progress); or left, to the 'In Analysis' or 'On Roadmap' columns (regress).
What's Next
Features which have been reviewed by key stakeholders and deemed suffieciently thorough will progress to the fifth and final step in the IT1: Feature Planning task - IT1 - Step 5 of 5: Manage "Ready" Features.